On Magic

Yesterday, we went to the theatre. After the play we found a booklet for the play scattered on a desk in the theatre space. There was an interview with the director of the play. Although buried in the text, this paragraph in the interview almost instantly poked out my eyes.

When we think about the figures that make up today's manosphere, whether political or cultural, we often find that their power is not based on reasonable arguments. It is very easy to rationally expose what they are wrong about. But they still somehow hypnotize crowds and manage to convince people. As if they really had magical power. That is why I think that the return of patriarchy and the dominance of the white man also includes something magical and enchanting, which perhaps our intellectual bubble does not want to reflect. We still think in the rigid regime of rational modernity of a disenchanted world. But the world is enchanted again and we must learn to read the aesthetics of this enchantment, to think about the vectors of its action. The magic of charisma has great consequences for the world today.

Why do I want to write about this in the first place despite being enchanted by the play's director Ivan Buraj who never ceases to amaze me. I love his crystal clear delivery in the paragraph cited. Did he just splashed the sentences out of nowhere during the interview? I don't think in terms of magic as often. I don't think I am able to even use the words magic or magical, or enchantment in an argument that would feel sound for me. Magic does not feel to have solid roots in my rational world, no more. Perhaps this gap is what takes my attention. Buraj points us to it. His reflection and the ease with which he just pulls out the magical dimension feels like he knows what he is doing. It feels like he had thought about this before. Obviously, he is a theatre director. He trained himself in specifically not being called out being a professional magician while magic, in fact, is all he does.

The reason why Buraj's argument feels sound is because it is sound. In my world, magic has very low resolution and its hard to speak about. But Buraj knows what he is doing. When he drags the discussion into the dimension of magic, he makes a shortcut for me. I perceive it as a shortcut because I live in the world that is disenchanted. Every word is a shortcut, a compression of thought, and magic is one of the very special ones which gets fuelled by mystery, unearthly stuff, and, uncertainty. The origin of the word magic comes with the notion of ‘to be able’ or ‘have power’ from Proto-Indo-European root magh-. The same root from which the words ‘may’, ‘might’ or even the word ‘machine’ come.

One of the cores of magic is the ability to predict the future. Our civilization and science relies on predictions since forever. Magic is inevitable part of this. Until we get more information. Information in almost all notions stands in a certain opposition to a state that is uncertain. Uncertainty is a beast for limited creatures like us who need models to get through a day. We better have a model of uncertainty to be able to think about it. Uncertainty is concerned about the unknown. Some people differ the unknown based on what is knowable and unknowable. What is interesting about magic is that it rules over the space of uncertainty which is most concerned with which we cannot know. Magic is the power over what cannot be understood. It is the power over unknowable unknown. To have power over the unknown means to have power over anything. This is philosophical side of logical implication.

As if they really had magical power.

The point is that magic does not matter. It is more important how we interpret what manifests as magic and how we relate to it. It is a cheap talk of mine to say its human nature to fight entropy, our own disintegration. Fear of uncertainty is physically conditioned. Yet the riskiest strategies in the long term are often the ones which minimize risk in short term. This is why we can go and need to go through periods of learning. I decompose apple so I can spend some time learning and decompose my today's worldview. What happens to people when they cannot spend some time learning to temporarily decompose their worldview? They need the magic that rules over the unknown. The free energy. To stand still.

I am not confusing physical notion of information with information in philosophical sense of meaning. I believe this con-fusion. Uncertainty is inevitably a source of power. It is energy that fuels cities as well as poets.