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Where is the. Non! Sense? That's what I want to ask...
Can I just add to dAB's point here something that occured to me after his mention of Korzybski. Korzybski's name pops up time and again in any serious magick-related reading (RAW etc) not because of any actual magickal connection, but because of his theory of General Semantics, which basically holds that (and I am severely compressing complicated ideas into simple phrasing here, so be warned) the language we use to describe things governs the way we think about them, or, to put it more bluntly, our language creates our 'reality'.
Korzybski's mention here caught my eye, though, not because I've been reading about him in a magickal connection, but in terms of education - as some of y'all may know I have decided to get Quixotically involved in the world-class hames that is the British Educational System, which is one reason I quite like Runce's 'sixth form is for kids' line. As part of my officially unsanctioned wider reading, I was looking at Neal Postman's The End of Education, the final chapter of which looks at the way in which language shapes reality, and has a hefty section on Korzybski...
All of this set me thinking about education in terms of the ideas I've came across in my magickal practice: the SNAFU principle, the eight-circuit theory, etc. And I realised, once again, that these ideas we label 'magick' or 'magick-related' can not be kept in a neat little box, and apply across the board, because, as Uncle Al might have said, magick isn't just for ALL, it is ALL...
I know a guy who comes to the school I'm teaching at who's running a therapy course for young male delinquents which basically involves putting them through initiations: dumping them out in the woods with no food, far away from their friends and all the support networks they've came to rely on, and making them get food, and then cook it, and then find their way out of the woods, etc. Again: magickal theory finding its way into reality in a 'non-magickal' context. Move somewhere else, do something else, become someone else. 'There is no 'I'. Nothing 'is'.'
...which, of course, is why we're not 'mages', in the same way we're not 'gay' or 'straight' or 'young' or 'old' or 'American' or 'Muslim'. All those are just labels...
As I've been pointing out, Runce's use of the language of 'common sense' limits his imaginative landscape and makes it conform to a dull, prosaic notion of reality. It also limits our perception of where he's coming from - presumably why some posters (thisself included) immediately jumped on Runce in predictable circuit two either/or fight mode, and the more thoughtful posts (of which I would hope this could be one) have came only now, when the linguistic commands are being interrogated. It may be that Runce intended this from the get-go: I certainly find it interesting that he uses the example of his friend the MC as a representative of 'common sense', because MCing has always struck me as something of a magickal act when done well: creating a specific psychological state in the audience through the use of language. Yet at the same time the MC has taken on notions of some dubious 'street' realism, as exemplified by that dreariest of all calls to arms from a few years back, 'keep it real'.
Pah! Keep it surreal, that's what I say...I don't know fish. |
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(sorry – I'm enjoying this.)
