A Tip for Writers

I learned something useful recently that I’d thought I’d share for those who wish to be writers.

A few weeks ago, during a storm of deadlines and work stress, my usual writing computer died.  It’s also a fairly high powered gaming computer, and it does this occasionally and I have to reinstall Windows.  The tech support for this particular company seems to regard that as both normal and desirable.  What they seem to forget is that it takes an entire day to install Windows.

In frustration, I went and bought a Macbook.  I will resist the urge to proselytize, but here’s what I learned:

Keep your gaming computer and your writing computer separate, and you will triple your productivity.

Nanowrimo

I’m doing Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, despite not realizing it until about four days in.  I’m already way behind, but I’m not giving up.  Even if I don’t finish it in November, I hope to at least get a detailed outline done.  I’d really like to write a novel.  I’ve resisted it by thinking, “well, I could write a book on magic and get some money,” but no matter what those don’t bring in that much.  So why not amuse myself, do something for the intrinsic reward, and not worry about cash?  Of course, I did write my books on magic for the intrinsic reward; I’ve never had an illusion about how much money a writer makes.  But writing a novel is a crazy, kind of irresponsible thing for an academic to do.  So — I’m doing it.

Samhain

So for Samhain my partner and I had a dinner party.  It started with “we should have some people over” and ended with the moving of furniture and the building of a trestle table in the living room while I translated the menu into my poor French.  Things have a way of growing in my house — all but my houseplants.

We had a “dumb” course (potage de pomme de terre) and then we passed a cup and poured a bit of our drinks into it and remembered a person important to us.  Even though relatively few of us were pagan, we all kind of got into it and I at least found it moving.  Many of us spoke of old teachers (that’s what happens when the host goes first, and the host is a professor).  It was really wonderful to hear how people who have passed live in, in a real and physical sense, among the living.

I haven’t been to a circle or thysia in — oh my, almost a decade.  But it’s kind of cool that I could still get spiritual nourishment out of a meal with my Christian, Jain, and even atheist friends.  And I think they enjoyed it too, even though I did finally give up on trying to find a French equivalent for “Mattar Paneer.”

A Note to Architects

When you design a classroom please plan to place the clock opposite the whiteboard.  The students do not need to see the clock.  The professor or teacher does.  When you put the clock above my head, it serves as a distraction to students.  It also means I must crane my neck around to time my lesson plans.

Why do the people who design things rarely consult with the people who use them?

Misplaced Television

You know, I like Borders (the bookstore) a lot.  They serve fairly good coffee in the cafe, and they carry my books (sometimes).  I wrote a chunk of my dissertation and some of my first book in that cafe, most of my entertainment budget involves books I buy from there.

But whoever decided to put a television in the cafe is an idiot who should be fired immediately.  I don’t want to listen to an advertisement for a show about, I guess, older women who have sex with younger men, a dozen times in an hour, and I surely don’t want the same annoying music looped over and over to compete with the store music.

Why Can’t You Teleport?

A recent comment asked some pretty good questions, which I’ll paraphrase as “if matter is just an idea, why can’t you do miraculous things like teleport or travel in time?”  and “What are the exact mechanics of magic?”

The first question is a good one because it illustrates a common misunderstanding of my first book.  I’m not saying that reality is “just” an idea, because “just” implies that there’s something more real than ideas.  I’m saying what we call thought or consciousness, and what we call matter, are the same thing.  Matter isn’t just conscious — animism — but a kind of consciousness itself.  It isn’t “just” a symbol.  Being symbolic is what makes it really real.

Secondly, as to the limits of magic — I actually have no idea where they are.  I haven’t reached them yet.  I’ve seen and even, I think, caused what could be called telekinesis, although I can’t rule out self-deception completely.  I haven’t seen teleportation, and I think it’s pretty unlikely, but probably not impossible.  The thing is, I live with a wonderful person.  Sometimes, I say “could you do the dishes?” and he says “sure.”  But if I said, “could you buy me an elephant and paint him a light mauve” I suspect he’d say “um, what?”  Hold on, I’ll try it.

Okay, bad example.  He said “sure, but it’ll have to be a little one.  Oh, and if I get you an elephant, you have to be in a parade with me.”  So that didn’t work out the way I expected — and neither does magic every time, although it doesn’t usually result in me marching in a parade.  Still, in general, likely requests, like “do the dishes” will be heard.  Unlikely requests, like “buy me an elephant,” won’t.  People get jobs all the time, so communicating the idea for a new job is easy; people don’t teleport all the time.  In information science, we say that the quantity of information of a message is the inverse of that message’s probability, and the more information a message contains, the harder it is to communicate clearly.  I think the same rule holds true for magic.

As far as the mechanism, I don’t know.  I’m not sure there is one, in the sense of a mechanical string of cause-and-effect.  Magic is, by definition, acausal, or so it seems to me.  When I ask my partner to do the dishes, my request doesn’t cause him to do the dishes; it leads to him doing the dishes, but it doesn’t cause it the way that, say, hitting a billiard ball causes it to fall into a pocket.  The mechanistic material paradigm is not one that I share; only a small subset of all possible ideas obey the mechanical logic of cause and effect.  Many more ideas obey the logic of metaphor and the pragmatic logic of language.  I suppose that’s a disappointing answer, but I really doubt that any explanation of magic that reduces it to mechanics will be very effective or helpful in the long run.

Hypochondria

You know you’re watching too much House when you notice a red line on ball of your thumb and think “I wonder if I have some sort of disease” before you realize that you were just grading papers.

This looks like some of my parties

I would watch this show, if someone would invent it:  A talk-show hosted by Noam Chomsky.

COVR award

Magic Power Language Symbol has won the COVR award in the category of magic.

Practical Information Magic

In the comments to my last post, Ater asks how I would go about doing practical information magic.  What, in other words, makes it different from energy work.  Ater writes:

What I’m really interested in is how one would go about doing direct/mental magic in the Information model? Why do you consider this model more useful than the others? For example, if I wanted a new camera I would sit down, relax and raise energy. I’d form this energy into a ball between my hands and I would visualize the camera I wanted inside the ball and so on. Then I would just tell the energy ball (or thoughtform) to go on its merry way and get me that camera. That’s pretty simple and straightforward. How would you go about casting this spell using the Info model?

The glib answer to your question is, you just did.   What did you imagine you were doing when you “told” the ball to do something?

The longer answer is, you have a point: my first book is not so specific about how the information model works out in practicalities.  My second book is better at that.

To see how it works, imagine that your spell failed.  You didn’t get the camera you wanted?  From an energy model perspective, the failure may have been in not raising “enough energy.”  That’s where you’d be inclined to look, if you were trained in the energy model.

From the information model perspective, you’d be more inclined to look at how you conveyed the desire.  Were you clear?  Was the channel clear?

The energy model cannot explain why we must be in a certain state of consciousness, or why we must use symbols.  But the information model can.  The state of consciousness is our channel of communication; it must be clear.  The symbols are our language; they must be shared.  Moreover, the Communicant is very good at reading us: if we don’t fully and completely want what we’re asking for, we’re less likely to get it.  None of that can be explained with the energy model.

Another place the energy model totally falls down is explaining divination.  The closest people come is talk about cards “absorbing energy” and “vibrating,” all of which strikes me as rather contrived when the obvious nature of the cards is that they’re symbols interacting in a symbol system to communicate information (well, more accurately, meaning — but that’s my next book).

The symbol of energy is a fine and dandy one.  If I wanted a camera, I’d probably do something rather similar to what you did.  But I’d think of it very, very differently.  The important bits would not be the ball of energy for me, but the symbol I used to describe the camera and my actual, real need or desire for the camera.  And if the spell didn’t work, I’d treat it as a failure in communication, not as a failure in mechanics.  (And if the spell did work, I’d say “thank you,” as one does when someone gives you something you want)

I don’t want to replace energy work or argue that those who use it are somehow not doing real magic.  I just want to point out that the information model shifts our focus to other areas of our work that we too often ignore, and it includes the energy paradigm as well.

You also mentioned that “everything is a symbol” is pretty obvious to you.  After all, you said, Aphrodite is clearly a symbol of love.  But the point I’m making is, you’re a symbol too.  Not just gods, but people, life situations, cars, music, and socks — all are symbols.  They’re all information we understand by placing into symbolic frameworks of meaning, and they all can be affected by a greater or lesser degree by magic therefore.  I don’t deny the existence of an external world: but we experience it only through symbols.  For all intents and purposes, our experience of reality is one of symbol.

I hope that clarified.  My second book goes into a bit more depth, I think, on the symbolic nature of things and stuff.  And I’m really glad that you read my book and disagreed with me.  One of my main goals is to get people talking and thinking critically about magic, not just rehashing the same old ideas.