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ysabetwordsmithThis year in Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I'll be posting questions from the new 2024 questionnaire that I made. If you like the questions, feel free to follow along. You can post your answers in a comment below, or make a post in your own blog and link to it in a comment.
Question 20: What is something that you believe that most other people don't? Why do you believe that?
Magic works, even in local-Earth. There's not a lot of it here, but there's enough to do some small things easily and some medium things with effort. I have on occasion seen and done some spectacular things. There are a lot of different kinds of magic, depending on culture, locale, and individual talents.
I give off magical energy like body heat, and one of the things it does is tend to fry electronics and machinery. Bothersome and only somewhat possible to get around. The keyboard I'm typing on? I've somehow melted through several of the keys. Never seen that before, and it's one of the weirder examples of burnthrough that I've seen, especially because plastic tends to be magically null. Something in the mix might've made it receptive. Usually the effects I see are like blowing out lightbulbs. More positive examples are enhancing the growth of plants and subtle senses like danger-sense.
As for belief, well, it's like believing in gravity. It's there and can be felt. Most people just don't pay any attention to it and don't know how to manipulate it. I don't blame anyone for disbelieving things that they haven't encountered. But they do tend to freak out when they're around me and reality does something "impossible." They're also quick to ask me for help if they wind up with a ghost or some other blatantly non-mundane problem in their lives.
One thing I'm watching for very closely right now is titans. A friend mentioned having seen very large lightning elementals with a distinctly humanoid shape. I find this disturbingly plausible. 1) The weather has become so violently intractable over the last decade or so that I rarely get any results from contacting it directly, and I go through the land spirits instead. 2) On a similar timescale, there's been a tendency for storms to have a wind-wall at the front, and snap off trees at the base. At least, I though it was the wind-walls doing that. 3) But I've also seen silos punched in with marks that really, really look like something hit it with Super-Strength, like you see in movies. That bit of evidence stuck in my mind because it was so weird, and when I heard about the titan sighting, I thought, well that would explain it neatly.
So, yes, I also think about magic in a scientific sense, looking for evidence and testing theories to see which is the best fit. Think of a spectrum, with magic at one end and science at the other. Bend it like a torc so the ends face each other. In the gap is quantum mechanics. It's all part of the same thing, Unified Theory of Everything. It's all just energy, forces, patterns. But you have to know that to see how the parts fit together. My tendency to do science to magic annoys other magic-users, and my tendency to do magic to science annoys other science-users. *shrug* I'm a devout empiricist, I use whatever works. I'm not going to abandon a perfectly workable tool just because someone else doesn't believe in it.
Question 20: What is something that you believe that most other people don't? Why do you believe that?
Magic works, even in local-Earth. There's not a lot of it here, but there's enough to do some small things easily and some medium things with effort. I have on occasion seen and done some spectacular things. There are a lot of different kinds of magic, depending on culture, locale, and individual talents.
I give off magical energy like body heat, and one of the things it does is tend to fry electronics and machinery. Bothersome and only somewhat possible to get around. The keyboard I'm typing on? I've somehow melted through several of the keys. Never seen that before, and it's one of the weirder examples of burnthrough that I've seen, especially because plastic tends to be magically null. Something in the mix might've made it receptive. Usually the effects I see are like blowing out lightbulbs. More positive examples are enhancing the growth of plants and subtle senses like danger-sense.
As for belief, well, it's like believing in gravity. It's there and can be felt. Most people just don't pay any attention to it and don't know how to manipulate it. I don't blame anyone for disbelieving things that they haven't encountered. But they do tend to freak out when they're around me and reality does something "impossible." They're also quick to ask me for help if they wind up with a ghost or some other blatantly non-mundane problem in their lives.
One thing I'm watching for very closely right now is titans. A friend mentioned having seen very large lightning elementals with a distinctly humanoid shape. I find this disturbingly plausible. 1) The weather has become so violently intractable over the last decade or so that I rarely get any results from contacting it directly, and I go through the land spirits instead. 2) On a similar timescale, there's been a tendency for storms to have a wind-wall at the front, and snap off trees at the base. At least, I though it was the wind-walls doing that. 3) But I've also seen silos punched in with marks that really, really look like something hit it with Super-Strength, like you see in movies. That bit of evidence stuck in my mind because it was so weird, and when I heard about the titan sighting, I thought, well that would explain it neatly.
So, yes, I also think about magic in a scientific sense, looking for evidence and testing theories to see which is the best fit. Think of a spectrum, with magic at one end and science at the other. Bend it like a torc so the ends face each other. In the gap is quantum mechanics. It's all part of the same thing, Unified Theory of Everything. It's all just energy, forces, patterns. But you have to know that to see how the parts fit together. My tendency to do science to magic annoys other magic-users, and my tendency to do magic to science annoys other science-users. *shrug* I'm a devout empiricist, I use whatever works. I'm not going to abandon a perfectly workable tool just because someone else doesn't believe in it.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-05-14 10:53 am (UTC)Most people don't seem to believe in reincarnation. Me, BTDT. Or as the joke goes, I used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a previous life.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-15 09:10 am (UTC)Hence why I really, really don't want to go where the rest of humanity seems determined to take this planet. Been there, done that, ripped up the T-shirt to make molotovs...
>> Or as the joke goes, I used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a previous life.<<
This is a favorite cartoon.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-05-14 04:50 pm (UTC)Is it because I posted them early and set them to PRIVATE, then on the correct day, I added the Three Weeks For Dreamwidth tag and set them to PUBLIC?
I will know for next time if that is the case.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-14 06:32 pm (UTC)However, the feed is also just plain glitchy. You'll notice I'm using both "three weeks for dreamwidth" and "threeweeks" tags? It's supposed to catch several variations, but doesn't always, so using the main two has a better chance.
I check for my posts and, if they haven't appeared in the feed after 6 minutes, I try reposting them. Sometimes that works. This year I've only lost a few that didn't appear in the feed. Last year was worse in that regard.
I recommend that you do a wrapup post on May 15 like "Thank you for joining Three Weeks for Dreamwidth. Here is a list of my posts for this event in case you missed any."
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-14 07:32 pm (UTC)And thanks for your hard work over 3W4D, I noticed it and I'm sure everyone else has too ⭐
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-14 07:41 pm (UTC)You're welcome!
Also, someone else mentioned that if a blog is set to Adult or other restricted access, setting an individual post to all ages will not make it appear in any feeds; and there's no way for a person to set what levels of content they wish to see in feeds or recommendations, so it defaults to the lowest common denominator. DW has gotten into more censorship with levels recently, which may or may not be temporary based on code updates. You might want to check your settings to see if that's causing the problem.
>> And thanks for your hard work over 3W4D, I noticed it and I'm sure everyone else has too ⭐
*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service!
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-15 11:26 am (UTC)You did great, it's appreciated!💖
(no subject)
Date: 2024-05-14 06:49 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-14 06:59 pm (UTC)For future reference, I suggest exploring the atheist materials posted online until you find a summary that is close enough to your beliefs to be useful. You can then simply point people to that link.
My usual approach to repeated questions is to write one detailed answer and then use that link, but it does take writing time. Finding someone else's good-enough version saves time.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-14 07:08 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-14 07:22 pm (UTC)I do interfaith work, which involves folks from many different faiths. I'm generally smooth with it unless someone is being a jerk, and that's most likely with some flavors of Christian. I usually get along with atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and other nontheists.
Also, like I said, I'm an empiricist. If someone hasn't encountered the divine, it's perfectly reasonable for them to disbelieve it. The stories sound like woo if you haven't had personal experience. People are free to examine the evidence and draw their own conclusions. (Which is one of many stances that incline some Christians to dislike me.)
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-14 07:32 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-15 09:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-05-16 04:22 am (UTC)