Journal Ironica's Journal: The Nature of Magic 1
It occurs to me that magic, by definition, doesn't exist. The definitions presented by the dictionary are distinctly unsatisfying; most refer to the occult or supernatural. But when it comes down to it, something is "magic" if it simply cannot be.
All kinds of things (for example, predicting the future, influencing the weather, or instantaneously appearing and disappearing) are dubbed magic. We name a thing magic if we cannot tell how it could possibly happen. Either we know it to be impossible on the face of it (levitation, invisibility, etc.) or we know that it can be done, but not without certain prerequisites that aren't currently present (moving from one location to another without travelling the space in between, for example).
It has been argued that we need magic. I won't disagree; one of my favorite quotes is "Logic gives man what he needs; magic gives him what he wants" (Tom Robbins in Another Roadside Attraction). But in terms of what stock we put in it, it's important to recognize just what we categorize as magic. It seems that, for all practical purposes, magic is the same as imagination. It just now occurred to me that they even seem to share a common root... I'll have to crack open the OED on that one sometime. We do, I think, need the ability to conceive of and comprehend the impossible; otherwise, new things never become possible. But knowing the difference between imagining a way to cure cancer with crystals and actually believing that you can do it, right now, can be a life and death matter.
There is still a lot in this world we don't understand. Most of it has to do with how we work; we're still quite foggy on just what makes us self-aware, intelligent, or even alive. We can say "this is alive" and "this is not alive," but we don't know how to go from one to the other (without using a currently living organism to process the non-living matter, anyway). But calling such a thing "magic" can be misleading. It implies, to many people, that it not only isn't possible for us to do now, but that it never can be understood; that its very nature is supernatural, which of course is a paradox.
Ok, done babbling, back to calculating mortgage payments for my math homework that was due last week... and I'll be dreaming of some magical way to have all my homework done while I read
Dreams.... (Score:2)
Dreams, magic, imagination, aspiration. Its all the same thing. Its the ability to lie, to oneself or to others. Its the ability to look at the unpleasnt chores you have to do, the unpleasant life you live, and concieve of it being more pleasant, in some way that doesn't currently exist. Its given us stone axes and the atom bomb. Its given us the violin and the MP3. On the base level its the synthesis of pain and intelligence trying to find away from that pain. An animal suffering the pain of hunger might leap on another animal for food, but only with intelligince will she think of planting crops, or pillaging the farmers further down the fjord.
As with everything its all in how you look at it, and as with the butterfly, its prettiest if you don't look too closely. Magic is the idea that someone somewhere can do something about the things that bother us. Its no different than innovation really, its just further down the same road. The farmer plowing his fields by hand might glance over at the oxen standing idly by and say 'He doesn't look busy'. He might also daydream of a magical wizard who has some sort of plowing device that lets him stay indoors more and spend more time plowing the wife. Magic in one day and age, to be sure, but simply a tractor a few years later on. Magic yesterday is the ability to fly to distanct places instead of riding a horse. Magic today is teleporting there and avoiding the hassle of airport security. Don't prattle on to me about your carry on limits, or its back to the plow with you.
This is the base view though. Magic looks better if you view it with a soft focus lens. Its the glimmer in the eye of the builder putting one clay brick on another for some house when in his eyes he can see a far off land of gleaming towers of metal and glass. Its the lie he can tell to himself that he knows another person as well as he knows himself, that he can love and be loved in return. Or is it the truth?
Well that all depends on if you believe in magic.