Because I don’t. And maybe I should. But I can’t. Or can I?

First off, today’s vid :

Now back on topic. Do I believe in magic?

No, and that’s despite of (or because of) all the pro magical thinking propaganda I was bombarded with as a child in the 1970s.

We got so much bullshit about the “power of imagination” and how things can be true “if you just believe in them” back then that it’s no wonder we grew up cynical little Gen X’s.

Yes, Boomers, I am saying you made us this way. You meant well and were trying to give us the sort of support for imagination and creativity and vibrancy that your Greatest Generation parents couldn’t give you, but it was all a load of crap, you stupid hippies!

Anyhow, where was I?

Oh right, my lack of believe in magic. As far as I can remember, I was always a relentlessly logical child and belief in magic never really stood a chance with me.

I mean, I wasn’t even in elementary school when my relentless questioning forced my siblings to admit that Santa Claus wasn’t real.

And when I heard that, I was relieved because now things made sense again.

But the fact that being a rational materialist like I have always been is logical and makes sense does not actually make it a good idea, and that’s the sort of conflict I struggle with as I keep bumping against the limitations of logic and the internally and externally consistent mindset like a bee bumping against a window as it tries to get past a barrier it is simply not equipped to understand.

I can relate.

Because reality isn’t enough, people. That’s the conclusion I have come to. Whether we consciously believe in magic (or God, or ghosts, or whatever) or not, the human mind needs to be able to exceed the limits of the real world in order to generate the emotional inputs needed to keep one’s mood from going below a certain red line.

Essentially, the mind needs the capacity to be self-rewarding when reality is not providing enough reward center stimulation at that moment to keep us feeling like we are good little monkeys and a credit to our family and tribe.

It really does come down to that on an evolutionary psychology level.

That’s why I keep circling back to this subject and my pondering about learning to fly. None of the roads I am on lead to happiness. Happiness is out of the reach of logic and reason and the need for one’s knowledge to be one contiguous picture. At some point I need to leave the road and fly there instead.

And that doesn’t make any sense. Obviously. So the really big step – the leap of (or into) faith – would be to learn to be okay with that.

For the first time in my life, I would have to learn to accept that something can be true even if it does not make sense and is not justified or logical or reasonable.

Like, for instance, believing in angels. Just to pick a random example.

It’s a matter of believing things because you choose to (and need to) believe them instead of believing them because you have figured out that they’re true.

And that’s a pretty heavy concept, man. I don’t know if I can handle it. I have had this relentlessly logical mindset for my entire life and it completely defines my worldview and my mindset and my umwalt and departing from that feels like I would be embracing insanity and the unknown.

But other people manage it and they are much, much stronger and healthier and happiest and more well adjusted than I have ever been.

So no. I don’t believe in magic.

But I am going to get there somehow, by God.

More after the break.

My previous solution

The previous time I tackled this whole “learning to fly” thing, I ended by reminding myself what an awesome rebel who has never felt bound or compelled by other people’s rules I am so why should the rules of logic be any different?

Which felt quite good to type at the time but now seems… insufficient.

The truth is that there’s not going to be a logical solution to the problem of illogicality. The only solution is to step off the edge of my reality and plunge into a world that follows a different set of laws, ones that are primarily emotional as opposed to be rooted in something like an internally consistent model of reality.

My model might be just as full of shit as anyone else’s but it at least makes sense.

So I would have to decide, consciously and deliberately, that the new rule of my world is that I will be happy, period. And absolutely everything within my demenses, including reality itself if necessary, will bend to this new dictum.

I feel like this necessarily involve telling the world where, how, and with what common household objects it can go fuck itself.

And I am not against that. It does seem to suggest that there’s been some sort of anger at the world seething within me that I somehow forestalled via being so logical, as if I locked away a great deal of emotions via facile justifications.

Hmm. This warrants further investigation. I might be onto something there.

Perhap I have done that a fuck of a lot in my life : used my icy precise logic not just as a way to pursue truth but as a way to nullify nearly all of my passionate emotions.

By becoming detached from them. By escaping the emotional mode in which I felt exposed and vulnerable by retreating into finding things “fascinating” and studying them like some kind of ersatz scientist.

Have you noticed that the expensive words come out when I’m uncomfortable?

What would life be outside all this “fascination”? I honestly don’t know. I would have to take off this SCUBA suit and wade into the water with the rest of you, I guess.

I know how bad that makes me sound and you’re not wrong.

I guess I know the nature of this cage I’m in now. It’s made of logic and science and detachment and analysis and “fascination”.

Given that, there is clearly only way for me to get the hell out of here :

I’m going to have to learn to fly.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.