Sci Fi and Magic

luka

Well-known member
Third do you take the crowleyhead line that all magic is a carni con? Pharaoh sanders is contemptible hucksterism and so on?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
there are acceptable forms of magic but they are never revealed directly. so yeah Pharoah is a bit of a con artist.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
noones listened to killa priest apart from Craner on here anyway.

When I went to see ghostface killah (and embarrassed myself by telling him I was “the kid with the fat knob”) he was supported by Mr doom and there was “mystery guest”.

Turned out that mystery guest was killah priest. I was a bit shocked he’d been demoted to being “a guest”. Thought he’d secured a higher place in rap than that.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Hasn't he just said it?? ie magic is that which is not revealed? Broad definition like, but it does make sense. It's anything that you hear that doesn't make sense in a way you understand??
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Eh, alright just rant by yourself then!

no silly willie the ppoint is when you define magic as magic it loses its ineffable quality.

sci fi is a uniquely cold war thing in music. so to then juxtapose or dichotomise it with ineffability seems a bit of a stretch to me.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
star wars is wicked because it’s got the force and all that, whereas star trek’s gross
I think your OP is interesting and accurate in articulating one of strongest repeating themes over the last year or so, since this place came back to life

but like, hell no

for me trek >>> wars by infinity. I don't want to get into a nerd fight, I just think my opinion is equally valid to yours, which you're giving as basically a statement of fact.

wars is middling retelling of a Chosen One fantasy narrative, but in space. it's fine. it's main achievements are 1) advances in special fx 2) selling toys.

trek is a dreamy (and flawed) utopian vista that literally changed the world.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
without the god and magic the technology is just an ends in itself
"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", as the saying goes

I think it's a false dyad, dichotomy, diametric

I think you're defining magic very narrowly and archetypically; religious ecstasy, sorcery, witchcraft

does not "The Angels Fell" contain much magic within it? tell me it doesn't. protean magic, unknowable depths.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
that the sci fi on its own doesn't operate with the same splendour and intensity.
I don't agree with this at all. I think, again, it's a subjective opinion.

ultimately it's a philosophical difference, I think

certainly I'm no fetishist of technology (more "too late to back out now for better or worse"), but the science has its own splendour and intensity

that of human achievement without the aid of magical powers or deities, but simply talent, hard work, dedication, the drive to create
 
Dyad is a good word because it suggests these things aren’t completely distinct oppositional ways to see world but co-exist in conversation and influence each other in weird ways. It’s making me think about alchemy and the occult and christianity with their proto-scientific elements.

The driest rationalist take is that the greatness of science is in its rejection of woo woo, and obv this is partly true, the skepticism, empirical method is invaluable,but it doesn’t take desire and irrationality and anxieties into account, the things that motivate us to do anything with the method… the why? Why do we choose to turn the lens where we do

All kinds of mythical impulse and fantasy can inform this and the intuition and imagination and creativity required to make scientific leaps can also be inspired by myth (jungian horseshit) and sci-fi and music and tolkien bros building tech empires

The collective desires and fears that influence technological progression can have spiritual sources… omnipotence, omnipresence, all seeing eye, teleportation, eternal life, time travel it’s easy to see how the telephone, the internet, TV, space travel have been informed and encased and contextualised by spiritual ideas. Hyperstition is getting at this isnt it?
 
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