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“So you can see that from my perspective, you can feel free, Sam, to use your magical tool-box to change my mind about ethics. I’m assuming that those tools in your box can be used in a huge variety of ways other than, metaphorically speaking, hitting me over the head with them, or using them to cut open my skull and extract neurons.”
Which you would rather I did not do - but since, by your argument, the best way for me to know whether a tool is a violent one is to see whether you scream, you rely upon my good will.
I admit I partly wrote that paragraph because I was tickled by the kinky logic of attempting to influence you by mundane methods to influence me by magical means to believe that it’s immoral to influence people by magical means and one should only influence them by mundane methods (!). …But I sincerely am open to being magically nudged towards a change of mind on this matter. For example, maybe my experience is severely limited – in which case your spell might arrange for me to be around to see the damage that love spells daily wreak in people’s lives, thus encouraging me to consider your anti-love-spell stance more reasonable than I now do. And unless your explicit intention is to do me violence (I doubt this – you seem like a pleasant fellow), I’m happy to risk the screams and the psychic mind-rape etc.
Of course, as with anything else, in the end I do rely on your good will, intelligence, and competence. And on my own strength. And on my allies. But I don’t see your “targeting” me with a change-of-mind spell as incompatible with your good will and intelligence.
I'm looking at the street. However, I have some suspicions about the people in it. I think, for example, that that woman lying there by the side of the road may not, in fact, be sunbathing. She may just have been hit by a truck. The fact that she is not screaming does not indicate that she is not injured - it may instead indicate the extent of her injury.
I think Bertie would notice the woman lying there. I doubt he’d imagine she was sunbathing – when was the last time he saw someone sunbathing on a busy, crowded street? I hope that he’d go over to her, gently shake her shoulder, and say “Excuse me, ma’am – are you alright?”
“Oh, hello. Yes, thank you. I’m just working on my tan.”
“Oh? Er…alright then.”
“Hmm… While you’re here, would you mind rubbing some of this sun-lotion on my back?”
“Er. Um. Okay…sure.”
“Here, let me just unclasp my bikini first….”
I won't know until I look closer - something you appear unwilling to do.
When I look as close as I can at the world of magic, I notice that it conforms, to a great extent, to what I had expected to find. In addition, I notice that other people often vehemently disagree as to the nature of that world.
When I look closely at the “mundane” world, I notice that the purely subjective component of my experience is much smaller. That component still exists, and is a fascinating aspect of my experience; but it’s much smaller.
This inclines me towards paying much more attention to my experience of the mundane world, when I’m wondering if I’m doing the right thing.
You just said that magick is invisible. It follows that it may inflict invisible injuries
If my injury is totally invisible – if I can’t feel it or see it or taste it or smell it – if I can’t empirically experience it, and no one else can empirically observe it of me – if, in fact, it has no presenting symptoms whatsoever – then what kind of injury is that? It sounds like a Craggy Island insurance-fraud scheme, to be frank.
“I’m inclined to look at the visible, empirical results of the magic, rather than the alleged mechanism of the magic.”
I looked at mechanisms because I was following your line and looking at consequence. Since, by your reasoning, we can't know what the mechanism might be, we have to look at options to determine the nature of the consequences. If we don't know the mechanism, we don't know what's happened - so we have no idea what the consequences are. On that basis it would be considered unethical to continue in many other areas of life.
I hope it’s clear by now that by “consequences” I was referring particularly to empirical “mundane-world” consequences.
Let me put it like this: I know apparently sane and educated people who will passionately argue that by practising any kind of magic, Bertie is allying himself with demonic forces and going against the Will of Divine Perfection.
For that matter, some people believe that Jesus weeps every time I masturbate. How do I respond to that?
“Look, it feels good; it’s supposed to prevent prostrate cancer…”
“But Jesus weeps! You attract astral shells! You dissipate your Chi!” It could be true: ultimately, I don’t know the consequences of my actions in the invisible world.
Unless I’m evil, and my deliberate intention is to make Jesus weep (“Cry, motherfucker, cry!!") then all I can say to those concerned about my actions in this regard is “Look, I’ll keep my eyes open, and if hairs start growing on my palms, or I start losing my eyesight, and I become pale and drawn and languorous, then maybe (!) I’ll stop.”
I’ve heard apparently sane and educated people assert that when a heterosexual couple are having sex outside of marriage, God’s Law is being violated, and “the woman is being exploited”.
When I look at people who are restricted in some “mundane” manner, I notice that they seem unhappy, or stressed, or unhealthy, or their consciousness is restricted, or they “lack life”. She says she loves her husband, but she looks tired, her smiles are wry, and she flinches at his “playful” comments about her weight. He says he doesn’t have an obsessive-compulsive disorder, he just likes to be punctual, but his laugh is nervous, and when the bus is a minute late, he sweats, and paces back and forth, and gets out his cell-phone to call a taxi.
Photos I’ve seen of people who have been apparently “zombified” or placed under a hex show them to present similar symptoms. If Gelt or Sir Miles had managed to brain-wash KM to the point that KM was thanking them for it, I imagine that KM’s “thank you” would lack a certain something. I’m honestly sceptical about the possibility for the God-like “psychic-editing” that you postulate, where there’s no presenting symptom other than the love or hate or indifference itself. It sounds like an Outer Church wank-fantasy more than anything else, to me. If such a thing is possible, then we don’t have free will anyway, do we?
I don't know why you assume Bertie has not deliberately attempted [zombification/ psychic-editing]
I was giving a treatment of my strategy for ethical behaviour. If Bertie’s taste is such that he’s deliberately, consciously trying to zombify someone, then I’m guessing he’s not going to be interested in my strategy, and won’t be reading this thread.
“Cause-and-effect, as understood in the scientific model, doesn’t come into it.”
Nonsense. Science doesn't acknowledge magick because no one has presented science with a set of repeatable proofs. There's absolutely nothing in the cause-and-effect approach which prevents it from seeing the linkage in a Shamanic operation between ritual and result. For Horkheimer and Adorno, and many others, shamanisms and religions were simply early paradigms attempting to understand, influence and control the world - our present exemplar of the type being science. The logic of instrumental magick - magick performed for a specific worldly result - is entirely transparent to scientific thinking.
Again, I disagree. This may be a discussion for another thread, but…
Cause-and-effect, as I understand it to exist in the scientific model, doesn’t come into the magical model, as I understand it. The scientific cause-and-effect account will miss significant elements of the sympathetic-magic account. In fact, it will miss the distinguishing feature of the sympathetic-magic account (as I’m describing it): the “call-and-response” nature of the linkage between ritual and result; the sentience, the will, the vitality, of the tree or the stone or the human. The scientific model, as I understand it, does not deal with the subjective or the non-measurable. You’ll be hard pushed to find even a Psychology researcher who investigates the purely subjective elements of, say, my response to hearing Christina Aguilera sing “Genie In A Bottle”. And what scientist has built “free will” into their account of phenomena? A scientific account of free will or magic, as I see it, is probably a contradiction in terms – it will at least be a “debunking”.
I suspect that one of the reasons for our disagreement on the ethics of love spells is that you regard magic as simply a bit of science that hasn’t been proven yet, like that Arthur C. Clarke law, while I regard science and magic as different filters for perceiving reality and informing our actions.
“Cause-and-effect” accounts of phenomena disregard free willl. You seem to be insisting that I accept a “cause-and-effect” account of magic. If I accept such an account, then free will not appear in it, and any act of magic I describe that involves another person will appear unethical.
Well, now, there's a notion. An offer. A consensual love spell. What a novel idea...
I don’t think the idea is as novel or unusual as you suggest. For example, a talisman – as I understand it – would work by the same kind of “call-and-response” process.
Let me try to sum up your position as fairly as I can, to see if I get it. How’s this:
Even if the caster of a love spell doesn’t consciously intend it, the love spell may quite possibly be harming its target anyway. In fact, it probably is harming its target. The harm caused may not be empirically apparent to the caster or the target, and only apparent when one rationally considers the various possible mechanisms for the spell to work. Given this, my inclination to pay attention primarily to empirical data strikes you as wrong-headed at best – and, at worst, a perverse unwillingness on my part to face the possible consequences of my actions.
How was that?
Would you like to try summing up my position?
BTW, a thought provoked by the historical turn on this thread: To what extent are we influenced by Christian concepts of a Divine Order – and Materialistic concepts of a Clockwork Universe – in how we formulate spells and perceive their consequences? And to what extent could expanding beyond those concepts improve how we formulate our magick and help us leave behind unnecessary anxieties about making use of it? |
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