Friday, July 1, 2022

Magic

As a consumer of fiction, I must confess to being uninterested in stories that rely on "magic".

That was not always so. I thought Ursla LeGuin's stories in the Earthsea Trilogy to be excellent but I was a much younger person when I read those.

I think many contemporary authors cut their teeth on those books as well. At the risk of spoiling the books for those who have not read them, the two messages that undergird the stories is that "Knowing something's or somebody's true-name gave you power over it" and "Ultimately, we carry the seeds of our self-destruction and the truest test of magical power is our ability to control those seeds".

True-names

This is where my thinking diverges from most books and movies that employ "magic" as a leg holding up the story-line.

To me, "true-name" means family. Family is where magic resides. It is where people lay aside their own best interests and extend a hand to family members who need it. In a larger sense, name can also mean tribe.

Consider the first sentence in The Lord's Prayer (a.k.a. The Our Father):

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name...

There are two word in the first ten that invoke the bonds of family. Those bonds are reciprocal bonds of privilege and responsibility, authority and accountability, priority and self-sacrifice.

The magic of "family" is what causes adults to suspend their careers for two decades to raise a family, pass up promotions, tone-down hobbies, cross the country to help members in need. 

I was reminded of this when I received a blizzard of get-well cards from the Macomb County branch of the family who belatedly heard of my mishap.

The Woke movement's war on the meaning of all words destroys that "magic".

Women are no longer women. Men are no longer men. America is no longer America. Children are encouraged to disown their parents and are treated as heroes.

All good intentions and acts of charity are debased by attributing them to the crassest of motives.

What did Jesus say?

Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.  Luke 12:51-53 

We need to make choices. Do we follow domineering family members like lemming over the CRT-Woke-Intersectional cliff or do we stick to proven values? Do we continue to offer the privileges of "family" to toxic people or do we firewall them away from us for our own safety and sanity?

Thanks for letting me rant

Thanks for letting a grumpy old man get something off his chest. Now I have to get ready to drive into Lansing to feed my mother her lunch.

Bonus images





7 comments:

  1. It's not magic, but knowing the name of something has power - imagine the difference in a story that you're listening to where the storyteller talks about a dog - and you later discover that it was actually a wolf. Or troubleshooting a computer problem when someone says that their "CPU" isn't working, only to discover that the problem is actually that their monitor is broken. There is great power and knowledge in names. It's a fundamental component of how a society functions (or slowly stops functioning).

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    1. I agree. Just think of the power of "keywords" and Internet searches. People who are gifted at keyword selection have a big advantage.

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  2. Proverbs 4: 22For they are life to those who find them, and health to the whole body. 23Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow springs of life. 24Put away deception from your mouth; keep your lips from perverse speech.…

    Follow divisive and perverse family or Jesus? Humm, hard decision. But an important one.

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  3. Richard Bach once made the observation "Seldom do people of the same family grow up under the same roof". To honor God it is sometimes necessary to exclude some people, even family. To compromise on ideals, morals, or beliefs never works toward good but only evil. Abortion 50 years ago was not the free for all it grew to become. That compromise cost millions of lives over the years. Moral issues must be met head on and resolved in accordance with God's law.

    Snoopy the Dog said " No problem is so big it cannot be run away from". That may work in the K9 community but not in the human realm.

    Glad to hear you are continuing to heal. Praying for the completion of that healing with no long term effects.

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  4. I tend towards over-thinking things but …

    Non sequiteur? Men and women (the generalities not specifics) think differently (Duh!), have different priorities, perspectives and approaches.

    Men tend towards black/white, right/wrong, good/evil judgements. Women towards ‘shades of grey’. After all you wouldn’t treat a child who “stole” a cookie from the kitchen as you would an adult who did so from a store. So, men - right/wrong, guilt/innocence; women – who/what/where/when/why and all the associated excuses, justifications and non-judgemental ... er, judgement. Men – appropriate (often severe) punishment, women – nuanced/graduated punishments (minor tending towards ‘rehabilitation’) after accepting any/all excuses/justifications. Etc.

    It’s arguable that women's approach/perspective works much better within the family (tempered with some male input). It’s demonstrably evident that it has been an utter disaster for country, culture and society.

    As you say, family, those who know you best (know your true name), is paramount (one of the fundamental/foundational aspects of our country, culture, our very civilisation). To me it seems as if almost every ‘modern’ woe (from the failures to open depravity) can be laid at the door of “treating society as a whole as if they were family” and the assumption they are not ‘evil/the enemy’ they’re ‘recalcitrant children’ who need understanding and ‘tolerance’.

    Civilisation arguably began with the development of spreading limited aspects of family/tribal ‘trust’ through wider society (and never developed in areas where family/tribe is still the only real trust allowed – high trust vs. low trust societies). We’ve obviously gone too far (in assuming those ‘not like us’ are just misunderstood, and in applying ever increasing feminist ‘family’ approaches to every aspect of society).

    The cure? I’m not sure (now) there is one (failing a total reset/collapse/return to basic survival to reassert reality). A first step, I suspect, is, as you say, firewalling 'them' (be they actual family or not).

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  5. You all have too many words for me. Good post. Life is choices.

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