Overheard in the wind...
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was curious about everything. Her parents were smart and often knew the answers to her questions. When they didn't, the internet did. So, between the husband, wife and WiFi, the girl's inquiries were ruthlessly dispatched. Until one day...
It was the summer holidays and the girl had spent many blazing hot afternoons reading books. Now, books are actually trees in disguise (why do you think they have leaves?) and try to plant ideas in our heads, so you shouldn't be surprised to know what happened next. As the family sat down to dinner one evening, she asked what magic was and whether it was real. The parents did not quite know what to say. On one hand, they could dismiss the idea of magic as irrational nonsense and introduce her to the 'magic' of science and math. The father was itching to tell her all about the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Series, as a matter of fact. A look from the mother quelled him. She pointed to her daughter's current literary pursuit - The Magic Faraway Tree - and the proverbial paisa dropped. The girl had been reading Enid Blyton's Rewards series! Books filled with elves, sprites, pixies, brownies, fairies, goblins and whatnot. Page after page of magical characters. No wonder, he'd started stumbling upon his daughter carefully examining the legs of chairs in the house.
So, rather than destroy her sense of wonder, the parents gave her their understanding of magic. And destroyed the world instead.
How, you ask? Well, before I tell you, please understand that it wasn't the parents' fault. Nor the girl's. It was just how magic worked.
Magic, real magic, can exist but it has an unfortunate relationship with the unknown. That is, the more uncertainty there is, the more magic there is. It's a cosmic see-saw. To the earliest people, practically everything was unknown. So, they could experience magic very easily, all the time. However, slowly and steadily, people began to know things. Observation. Reasoning. Cause & Effect. The see-saw slowly and steadily started tilting the other way but magic still had the upper hand. It would, thanks to religion. Which, if anything, was magic's rocket fuel for a heck of a long time. Still is, come to that. That's why the occasional miraculous cure takes place. Enough people with the right amount of faith congregate at a certain spot and Abracadabra.
Well, we say "Abracadabra" or "Hey Presto" but they're just words for a massive distortion of the field; a temporary tipping of the see-saw in magic's favour. The amazing part is just how quickly the balance tips the other way thanks to detailed, scoff-filled explanations by myth-busters. That's the way it is, though. Whichever side is on top tries to stay top-dog. There was quite a lot of chaos in the middle when the see-saw was wavering wildly and people couldn't decide if something was magic or science and even whether either was better. Ergo, witch burning.
Going round after round with great thinkers of every age, magic was taking a bit of a beating, down but never out. The most stunning blow was probably delivered by the Industrial Revolution. Science, technology, engineering and math were the 4 horsemen of the Magipocalypse and every creature and art of magic began to fall under their relentless pursuit of truth, facts and knowledge. Pixies, fairies, ghouls and even the poor Sasquatch began to fade away because these creatures stood on the see-saw and their side was literally tipping above our field of vision (Note: The bigger creatures took more time to fade, which is why there are still hazy sightings of Bigfoot and Nessie). Never mind sorcery, necromancy or divination, even the Tarot was being dealt a bad hand. Magic faded away because our sense of wonder or the unknown was being firmly and surely blanketed by science's dazzling patchwork quilt. The internet was as close as we got to wiping magic out completely. Quite a bit of humanity began to depend on the internet for knowledge and information. Even the slightest tremble of uncertainty (especially in chats amongst friends) was straightened out with a quick internet search for facts. But then, things took an unexpected turn thanks to two words, one idea - Fake News.
It took a bit of time before people realised just how little of what they were reading and watching on the internet was actually true. The more links and sources we perused to confirm individual things, the more the see-saw began to waver. No one knows when it finally happened, but skepticism against facts became the norm. Case in point: flat-earthers anti-vaxxers. Once the species' collective uncertainty began to spike, the balance was no longer on science's side, giving magic an opening. With the BS being pedaled on every 2nd hyperlink and the news-breakers transforming into news-makers, magic had momentum. It boded its time every April 1st, when the certainty about fakery was at its highest. In 2019, this reached critical mass. However, one of magic's basic rules was its dependence on the spoken word. A spell, so to speak.
The little girl's parents didn't narrate all this. However, they'd given her enough food for thought for her to ignore her meal and ponder. After a bit of silence, the mother cheerily tried to simplify it by saying that magic became real when the number of people who did not know things for sure was more than those who did. And, rather unthinkingly, the dad said "Yes, like right now". Which was as good an incantation as any.
Magic likes tradition. There was a bang, a flash, a puff and every magical creature that had ever lived blinked, took a deep breath, stretched... and bared teeth and claws. The see-saw had unwittingly tipped again. Humanity didn't stand a chance.
Song for the moment: Metallica - ...And justice for all
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was curious about everything. Her parents were smart and often knew the answers to her questions. When they didn't, the internet did. So, between the husband, wife and WiFi, the girl's inquiries were ruthlessly dispatched. Until one day...
It was the summer holidays and the girl had spent many blazing hot afternoons reading books. Now, books are actually trees in disguise (why do you think they have leaves?) and try to plant ideas in our heads, so you shouldn't be surprised to know what happened next. As the family sat down to dinner one evening, she asked what magic was and whether it was real. The parents did not quite know what to say. On one hand, they could dismiss the idea of magic as irrational nonsense and introduce her to the 'magic' of science and math. The father was itching to tell her all about the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Series, as a matter of fact. A look from the mother quelled him. She pointed to her daughter's current literary pursuit - The Magic Faraway Tree - and the proverbial paisa dropped. The girl had been reading Enid Blyton's Rewards series! Books filled with elves, sprites, pixies, brownies, fairies, goblins and whatnot. Page after page of magical characters. No wonder, he'd started stumbling upon his daughter carefully examining the legs of chairs in the house.
So, rather than destroy her sense of wonder, the parents gave her their understanding of magic. And destroyed the world instead.
How, you ask? Well, before I tell you, please understand that it wasn't the parents' fault. Nor the girl's. It was just how magic worked.
Magic, real magic, can exist but it has an unfortunate relationship with the unknown. That is, the more uncertainty there is, the more magic there is. It's a cosmic see-saw. To the earliest people, practically everything was unknown. So, they could experience magic very easily, all the time. However, slowly and steadily, people began to know things. Observation. Reasoning. Cause & Effect. The see-saw slowly and steadily started tilting the other way but magic still had the upper hand. It would, thanks to religion. Which, if anything, was magic's rocket fuel for a heck of a long time. Still is, come to that. That's why the occasional miraculous cure takes place. Enough people with the right amount of faith congregate at a certain spot and Abracadabra.
Well, we say "Abracadabra" or "Hey Presto" but they're just words for a massive distortion of the field; a temporary tipping of the see-saw in magic's favour. The amazing part is just how quickly the balance tips the other way thanks to detailed, scoff-filled explanations by myth-busters. That's the way it is, though. Whichever side is on top tries to stay top-dog. There was quite a lot of chaos in the middle when the see-saw was wavering wildly and people couldn't decide if something was magic or science and even whether either was better. Ergo, witch burning.
Going round after round with great thinkers of every age, magic was taking a bit of a beating, down but never out. The most stunning blow was probably delivered by the Industrial Revolution. Science, technology, engineering and math were the 4 horsemen of the Magipocalypse and every creature and art of magic began to fall under their relentless pursuit of truth, facts and knowledge. Pixies, fairies, ghouls and even the poor Sasquatch began to fade away because these creatures stood on the see-saw and their side was literally tipping above our field of vision (Note: The bigger creatures took more time to fade, which is why there are still hazy sightings of Bigfoot and Nessie). Never mind sorcery, necromancy or divination, even the Tarot was being dealt a bad hand. Magic faded away because our sense of wonder or the unknown was being firmly and surely blanketed by science's dazzling patchwork quilt. The internet was as close as we got to wiping magic out completely. Quite a bit of humanity began to depend on the internet for knowledge and information. Even the slightest tremble of uncertainty (especially in chats amongst friends) was straightened out with a quick internet search for facts. But then, things took an unexpected turn thanks to two words, one idea - Fake News.
It took a bit of time before people realised just how little of what they were reading and watching on the internet was actually true. The more links and sources we perused to confirm individual things, the more the see-saw began to waver. No one knows when it finally happened, but skepticism against facts became the norm. Case in point: flat-earthers anti-vaxxers. Once the species' collective uncertainty began to spike, the balance was no longer on science's side, giving magic an opening. With the BS being pedaled on every 2nd hyperlink and the news-breakers transforming into news-makers, magic had momentum. It boded its time every April 1st, when the certainty about fakery was at its highest. In 2019, this reached critical mass. However, one of magic's basic rules was its dependence on the spoken word. A spell, so to speak.
The little girl's parents didn't narrate all this. However, they'd given her enough food for thought for her to ignore her meal and ponder. After a bit of silence, the mother cheerily tried to simplify it by saying that magic became real when the number of people who did not know things for sure was more than those who did. And, rather unthinkingly, the dad said "Yes, like right now". Which was as good an incantation as any.
Magic likes tradition. There was a bang, a flash, a puff and every magical creature that had ever lived blinked, took a deep breath, stretched... and bared teeth and claws. The see-saw had unwittingly tipped again. Humanity didn't stand a chance.
Song for the moment: Metallica - ...And justice for all
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