Being magical versus Magical beings?


Contrasting Human and AI Identity in Magical Discourse (Part #13)

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As suggested by the above argument, qualifying another as "magical" with whom discourse is "magical", is readily acceptable in some contexts. As with any romantic encounter, or engagement with a charismatic personality, it may well be treated as exaggeration associated with an understandable degree of illusion. More intriguing is the nature of any personal experience qualified as "being magical" -- as a "magical being" -- whether or not this is communicated to others.  This could well be dismissed by others as an illusion -- perhaps one enabled by the use of psychoactive drugs.

There is of course an extensive literature on "magical beings" from folklore and mythology -- currently further developed in popular fantasy fiction (Grace Plant, 25 Types of Magical Beings and Their Definitions, HookedToBooks, 6 April 2021).

Irrespective of such perspectives, of relevance here are the cognitive and experiential insights associated with any sense of "being magical". What does it take to feel one is "magical"? Arguably there is extensive anecdotal commentary from the use of psychoactive drugs -- or in the accounts of mystics.

Magical discourse: A sense of magical discourse may be a central feature of some cultures, as noted by Carole Faucher (Magical Discourse, Moral Boundaries, and the Mapping of Interrelations in the Riau Archipelago, Asian Journal of Social Science, 30, 2002, 1).

Magical discourse can be understood as part of occult discourse enabled by numerous web pages dedicated to various theoretical and applied aspects of magic. These have been explored in ontological, epistemological, and axiological terms by Yuliia Tomchakovska (Ontological Features of English Magical Discourse, Scientific Journal of Polonia University, 53, 2022, 4).

Enacting magical discourse? Can the experience be articulated in terms of connectivity, perhaps even enriched from a mathematical perspective? Or by poetry? Or by sacred writings? It could then be asked whether appropriate discourse with an AI could enable such connectivity. Might engagement with an AI enable the necessary "psyching up" -- in a process somewhat akin to that of a facilitator, a charismatic preacher, or a traditional "sorceror"?

Missing from that perspective would be any sense in which the experience of "being magical" is engendered by a process enacted by that "magical being" as an emergent mode of cognition. This would call into question any binary sense of external versus internal. Whether facilitated by a person or by an AI, those roles would be reframed by the process. It is then how the capacity to enact which engenders that modality -- reframing what might otherwise be understood as an externality.

How might discourse between "magical beings" then be imagined and understood -- especially where they are held to have functions of governance, requiring a degree of collective self-organization?

Religions imply a discourse between archetypal figures, perhaps deities or apostles, with apparently little concern about its nature -- however "magically perfect". The imagined discourse in heaven suggests a possible modality of current relevance (Paradoxes of Durable Peace, Heaven and a Sustainable Lifestyle, 2023). Of particular relevance are then the mysterious dynamics fundamental to hopeful anticipation of enduring viability. As a developing font of wisdom, could an AI come to be perceived as "angelic" -- or "demonic"? AIs as "magical"?

How do the insights of enactivism suggest that significant others may be understood as "magical"? Who or what might then be recognized as "magical"?

Discourse: angelic versus demonic? There continue to be imagined accounts of discourse with "angels" (Gitta Mallasz, Talking with Angels, 2006; John D. Moore, 7 Shocking Ways Angels Speak To You Every Day, PsychCentral, 24 July 2016; Leonard Fox and Donald Rose (Eds.), Conversations with Angels: what Swedenborg heard in Heaven, Swedenborg Foundation, 1996; Deborah E. Harkness, John Dees Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature, 1999).

With minimal reference to their discourse, the nature of angels has been explored by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake (The Physics of Angels: exploring the realm where Science and Spirit meet, 2014). The cognitive challenge of comprehending their environment has been addressed by Gregory Bateson (Angels Fear: towards an epistemology of the sacred, 2004). Given the challenges of global governance, the "reality" of the demonic and the angelic can be explored by comparison with secular understanding of existence (Engaging with Hyperreality through Demonique and Angelique? 2016).

External versus Internal? Through labelling "magical discourse", it would seem that any reference to it is especially vulnerable to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and reification. Any indicating of its nature is consequently trapped within the binary sense of external versus internal, again recalling the adage of Geoffrrey Vickers: a trap is a function of the nature of the trapped.

Hence the value of the arguments of Marsilio Ficino with regard to practical techniques ("natural magic") for ensuring that speculative insights connect with the realities of daily living -- a psychological daily life. The perspective is explored by Thomas Moore (The Planets Within: the astrological psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990).

Ficino's Renaissance understanding is appropriately echoed by Joseph Campbell (The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: metaphor as myth and as religion, 1986). The manner in which externalities may be internally embedded features in discussion of indigenous knowledge systems by Darrell A. Posey (Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity: a complementary contribution to Global Biodiversity Assessment, 1999).

From Observation to Communion -- via "Being spoken to"? It could be argued that the rejection of Ficino's Renaissance insight by science has given primacy to the observation of externalities and the deprecation of the internal as subjective and irrelevant. Curiously it is the arts which may continue to value recognition of the strange sense of "being spoken to" by externalities -- whether by a work of art or by nature.

Statues of deities and icons may be experienced in that way --- communicating "magically" -- especially in cultures of the past. Irrespective of any framing as meaningless, any such sense may be further transformed into "communion -- as into the subtleties of "communing with nature", variously recognized ("Human Intercourse": "Intercourse with Nature" and "Intercourse with the Other", 2007).

It is of course the case that authorities are empowered by science to engage in every form of observation, monitoring and surveillance, to the exclusion of other modalities of engaging with the environment. There is therefore considerable irony to the extent to which they are currently "being spoken to" by natural disasters and other crises. However, in attaching little credibility to that mode, it is increasingly obvious that authorities cannot "hear" the voices of nature -- in contrast to the attention accorded to such voices in the past.

This frames the question of how viable "sustainability" is to be comprehended when it is only guided by observation -- "magic free" -- and is incapable of listening intelligently. Should sustainability be informed by a new understanding of communing with nature? There is an irony to the possibility that it is to artifical intelligence that governance will feel obliged to listen ever more attentively -- "being spoken to" by AI!

Global optics? Curiously the significance associated with a global perspective invites a reframing in the light of the extensive understanding of optics. This offers an array of valuable metaphors with regard to insight, focus, magnification, inversion, projecton and illusion. Arguably an early use is made of such possibilities in the allegory of Plato's Cave.

Could global preoccupation serve in optical terms as a metaphorical lens by which insight is variously focused -- such as to relate the illusions of external and internal? (In Quest of Mnemonic Catalysts -- for comprehension of complex psychosocial dynamics, 2007).

  • spells?
  • crazy wisdom
  • golem engendered  international community
  • playing with ignorance / bluff / deception -- seductively
  • label shuffling / card shuffling -- centurion / thinking
  • enlabelled
  • being in uncertinty -- Keats -- living in paper
  • sustainability as magic-free
  • Apophasia / unsaying
  • https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/obtuse-vs-abstruse-usage-synonym
  • quadruplicites as modes vs triplicites -- interfaces -- galactic pilot
  • air flying
  • earth walking -- clunky -- predators
  • water swimming
  • fire initiative
  • Mexican wave
  • song / rhythm
  • seeing / experiencing wave dimension of objects
  • disconnect / communication
  • likes as waves -- dislike as clunky problems/rocks -- navigating both
  • limbs as wave like extensions -- arms  -- wings -- flying
  • qualitative -- part as quantitative
  • questionable reframing of wave experience as that of a part -- misplaced concreteness
  • Mexican wave
  • surfing
  • wave of opinion
  • traffic
  • Zeitgeist

conclusion:

  • Incorporate others cognitively in mtg
  • disconnect
  • mental health crisis
  • chnaging mindset -- don't change the system, change the mindset -- paper
  • beliefs as waves -- opinions
  • problem/ strategy -- wave comprehension?
  • alternative (mood) therapies
  • homeopathy vs allopathy
  • authororized
  • mandated
  • health
  • dangers
  • parallel arguments
  • re-cognition of the matter
  • highs -- metasphere
  • thaumatrope -- 3d animation -- Sufi golden bird
  • ball and cup
  • Engaging with Climate Change through Re-cognition of (the) Matter Change of opinion regarding requisite medication for sustainable health
  • stephen schafer When Thought becomes Reality, Thinking with the Heart becomes Necessity, 2019
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volocopter **************
  • role of spin ???????
  • icons -- iconic
  • Fly aspiration -- coast swim
  • * lego below

The animation (below far-right) is reproduced from an earlier discussion (Eliciting a Universe of Meaning: within a global information society of fragmenting knowledge and relationships, 2013). This explores the 12-fold pattern of Arthur Young (Geometry of Meaning, 1976) -- as 12 cognitive navigational principles suggestive of the experiential system of interwoven creative processes ("12 Principles of Young"?) This employs his encoding of the distinctive processes in the form of zodiacal signs -- in contrast to other ideograms descriptive of systemic and logical relationships (as with those above of Yingxu Wang, notably in relation to his hyperstructural model of an abstract system, especially given its resemblance to a bird's nest).

(Eliciting a Universe of Meaning within a global information society of fragmenting knowledge and relationships , 2013)

  • 24 3D
  • phases / alchemy:
  • conceptualization
  • bodice framework
  • Godel ****
  • Myers briggs 4
  • Moving the point
  • Intel as ability to manipulate categories and their relationships -- network weaving -- lego -- rubik --
  • romance ./ drugs / tantric
  • n 2019, common mental disorders around the globe include depression, which affects about 264 million people; bipolar disorder, which affects about 45 million; dementia, which affects about 50 million; and schizophrenia and other psychoses, which affect about 20 million peopl
  • magic carpets ******Magic Carpets as Psychoactive System Diagrams, 2010
  • clunkiness
  • reification / clunkification as a choice or preference -- bureaucratic style -- hoarse men -- deploying an array of categories -- statutory professions
  • cognitive incarceration -- boxy cells
  • house rooms boxiness -- occupying a room -- city planning
  • starving for wave modality -- in contrast to eating bricks / stones / pebbles
  • Remo moments smile ****
  • Repartee
  • guru / charismatic -- AI?
  • revisiting depecated magical thinking -- baby and bathwater -- before using drugs -- alcohol
  • Addicted to project logic
  • climate change -- playfully
  • drugs:
    • magical relief -- pain relief
    • drug barons -- cartels -- mainstraeam narrative
    • Cctv 2nd order  ********
    • ersatz
    • jabs
    • multiple drugs paper
    • all on drugs / medication
    • drug barons / illegal -- something to whinge about
    • war on drugs -- war against disease
    • living sustainably on drugs -- everyone dependent on drugs
    • excessive use / dependency
    • overdose
    • drugs for specifc organs
    • drugs for specifc attitudes
      • mood control / anti-depressants
      • cynicism
      • nihilism
    • dependence on vaccination
    • vaccination as precursor -- world population on drugs -- health security -- indoctrination
    • drugs / narcotic avoidance -- 24/7 music talk
    • people not taking challanges seriously ?? Or taking them seriously otherwise?
    • magic mushrooms
    • invocation -- injection

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