Causal theory:
Apr. 16th, 2007 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7The Oddz - [Sellout-'The Stupidest Song on the Radio' (Album Version)]--- Are we ever really free of causal relationships? What I mean is that, even in magical systems, can we ever be truly said to be out of the realm of cuase and effect? Jung calls synchronicity an acausal relationship of two things, a conicidence. I think what he means, there, is that they are not related to each other, not that there is no causal history, shared by each of them. They are each, obviously, causally connected, in that they have a shared origin. We can trace these thingsbackward to a common source, and figure out the things to which we should be paying attention. We can line things up, just so, and wander from place to place, with minimal intervening difference.
The Dust Brothers - [Homework]--- But that's not what I mean, when I ask these things of cause and effect. What I mean is that many people think of magic as outside the realm of causal relations. Why? We perform an action, we direct a spell, we supplicate, invoke, evoke, raise, or abjure, and we direct the world to move in such a way as to make something happen, and it does. If it does. Depends on how often your spells work, I guess. Anyway, what I'm saying is that what we think of as acausal magic is really just a process that we don't understand, something to which we are not used. As such, we don't see the intervening steps, we don't count the meticulous little actions necessary to make something arise, seemingly, out of nothing. (Loreena McKennitt - [Santiago]). This is because we, as a whole, do not think of things as having more than one "right answer."
How do you open a door? You stand up (or don't), move toward it, reach out your appendage, grasp or touch the door-opening mechanism, and it opens. How many different nouns, verbs, and adjectives can we substitute, there, for those vagaries? Many. And what about building a device that opens doors for you? You need to know the mechanics of door, opening, first, don't you? How a door works? Locks, tumblers, springs, levers, all that. Or, say someone already build that device, and made it remote controlled. All you have to do, then... Is push a button. And, underneath, you know that there are years of mechanistic training and preparation, at work, all converging on your opening door, but you don't know what that is, save that it took a lot of training and skill for someone to design the thing that it took you seconds, and no particularly advanced reasoning to use, properly.
Squarepusher - [Circlewave]--- Think about magic. You don't know how it works. You know that it works, when it works, with the same relative assurance that you have for the light switch, or the door-opening device: Namely, that events E correspond with circumstances C, more often than not, and that, therefore, there is likely a causal relationship between events E and circumstances C. Which is cause, which is effect? You don't really know, aside from you know that you did one thing, and then another thing happened. But that, in the face of such notions as Backward Causation means really very little. Who wants to be their own grandfather's cause of birth? Eh?
This is all that we know of causation: 1)We are in a world that seems to engage in it, more often than not; 2) we do not know of any uncaused cause, which causes us all sorts of problems; and 3) everything's kind of strange.
Aphex Twin - [Come To Daddy (Little Lord Faulteroy Mix)]--- With those three pieces of information, in mind, we are forced to ask: What can we really discount as "acausal?" Things which may seem unconnected are possibly merely connected by ways that we do not understand, and that which we call causally related may only be similar-looking blips on a soupy radar matrix.
These thoughts brought to you by my contemplation of Mike Carey's ideas of Magic, Carl Jung's ideas of causation, David Hume's idea that cause must needs preceed effect, and the letter Q.
Tom Waits - [Burma-Shave]--- I'll probably be expanding this into something larger, later, so... watch several spaces.
The Dust Brothers - [Homework]--- But that's not what I mean, when I ask these things of cause and effect. What I mean is that many people think of magic as outside the realm of causal relations. Why? We perform an action, we direct a spell, we supplicate, invoke, evoke, raise, or abjure, and we direct the world to move in such a way as to make something happen, and it does. If it does. Depends on how often your spells work, I guess. Anyway, what I'm saying is that what we think of as acausal magic is really just a process that we don't understand, something to which we are not used. As such, we don't see the intervening steps, we don't count the meticulous little actions necessary to make something arise, seemingly, out of nothing. (Loreena McKennitt - [Santiago]). This is because we, as a whole, do not think of things as having more than one "right answer."
How do you open a door? You stand up (or don't), move toward it, reach out your appendage, grasp or touch the door-opening mechanism, and it opens. How many different nouns, verbs, and adjectives can we substitute, there, for those vagaries? Many. And what about building a device that opens doors for you? You need to know the mechanics of door, opening, first, don't you? How a door works? Locks, tumblers, springs, levers, all that. Or, say someone already build that device, and made it remote controlled. All you have to do, then... Is push a button. And, underneath, you know that there are years of mechanistic training and preparation, at work, all converging on your opening door, but you don't know what that is, save that it took a lot of training and skill for someone to design the thing that it took you seconds, and no particularly advanced reasoning to use, properly.
Squarepusher - [Circlewave]--- Think about magic. You don't know how it works. You know that it works, when it works, with the same relative assurance that you have for the light switch, or the door-opening device: Namely, that events E correspond with circumstances C, more often than not, and that, therefore, there is likely a causal relationship between events E and circumstances C. Which is cause, which is effect? You don't really know, aside from you know that you did one thing, and then another thing happened. But that, in the face of such notions as Backward Causation means really very little. Who wants to be their own grandfather's cause of birth? Eh?
This is all that we know of causation: 1)We are in a world that seems to engage in it, more often than not; 2) we do not know of any uncaused cause, which causes us all sorts of problems; and 3) everything's kind of strange.
Aphex Twin - [Come To Daddy (Little Lord Faulteroy Mix)]--- With those three pieces of information, in mind, we are forced to ask: What can we really discount as "acausal?" Things which may seem unconnected are possibly merely connected by ways that we do not understand, and that which we call causally related may only be similar-looking blips on a soupy radar matrix.
These thoughts brought to you by my contemplation of Mike Carey's ideas of Magic, Carl Jung's ideas of causation, David Hume's idea that cause must needs preceed effect, and the letter Q.
Tom Waits - [Burma-Shave]--- I'll probably be expanding this into something larger, later, so... watch several spaces.
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incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 05:40 am (UTC)Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 05:56 am (UTC)Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:02 am (UTC)lol and what're they gonna do with that?
They have American Idol, I don't think you have to worry about Sanjaya accidentally rippin a hole through our reality.
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:31 am (UTC)Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:02 am (UTC)Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:05 am (UTC)I'm pretty opposed to people ever knowin anything that can grant them that much control over -everything-.
Fortunatly, this kinda common knowledge would require someone to actually make it to the end of one of your LJ posts. (i feel old, it takes me a good hour to crank out an entry)
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:09 am (UTC)Read Doktor Sleepless. Oh wait, you did. I know you did.
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:12 am (UTC)and while i'm all about turnin loose all thirty-one flavors of Chaos, I like to be able to know that I ain't gonna get a magic bean bag of -sleep- to the back of the head. (gotta love those Solaris kids)
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:18 am (UTC)Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:21 am (UTC)(who am I kidding, I love a good mess)
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:24 am (UTC)Come on.
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:11 am (UTC)Don't feel bad. I've had posts take two or more hours because I start doing other things like watching tv or looking up some point in the middle of them.
And no one's Really figured out how much power is in that shit. Think about it. We need it. Radios are standard in cars. If you don't have a tv, you at least have one in your house, or some other way to listen to music.
I've only known one person who professed to not like music. Period. It was my dad's ex-girlfriend, and she was a bitch and batshit insane.
As essential as it is, or possibly because of the ubiquity that's caused, it's taken completely and utterly for granted. Even after string theory, even after it's been found that our nervous system runs on it.
Shit...i might as well just post about this...
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:14 am (UTC)so I guess ya could say that the music of my heart is belt-fed and has a cyclic rate.
Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:22 am (UTC)Re: incantations
Date: 2007-04-17 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 06:02 am (UTC)And Jung's definition of synchronicity being acausal only is so, assuming that everything in the Uni/Multi/Polyverse is not connected in some way to everything else. Though one thing does not Directly cause the other, they are connected, and it reflects and refracts influence through subtle and often strange channels.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 06:07 am (UTC)So my reading about someone I know, and then seeing them the next day are not causally related, in any way other than they had the same resonance source, i guess we could put it... Different parallel ripples, from the same splash? Imperfect metaphor, but i guess it'll do...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 06:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 06:18 am (UTC)