Saturday, 12 November 2016

Magical thinking - but does that mean it's untrue?

The kite flyers - by William Arkle

It's funny, but in my mind I often label secular Leftist arguments as 'magical thinking' - yet on this blog I often advocate... magical thinking. In other words, recognition of the world beyond the five senses (and scientific measurements).

So, is magical thinking good or bad? The answer is magical thinking is bad (incoherent) if it is based on a metaphysics that rejects the validity of magic; but merely rational if the metaphysical foundations include 'supernatural' realities.

So, what is wrong with the 'magical thinking' of the Left is that they have chosen to accept only a materialist universe of whirling atoms making partly deterministic, partly random patterns (which are only patterns in the mind of a beholder, not objectively); in which death is extinction, and life has no objective purpose or meaning... A life with no base or basis; and yet they speak of, and are attached to, magic hopes.

Of course, this is a good thing from the point of view of their possible salvation - since they continue to recognise what is necessary; even as, with another part of the mind, they reject its reality. At some point they may become aware of their cognitive dissonance, and do something effectual about it.

But for someone like me it would be dishonest not to practise and advocate magical thinking! Indeed, it is a habit I need to cultivate - and perhaps this need is primary.

Magical not in terms of 'ritual magic', which is a quasi-scientific attempt to control the world (in practise, nearly always for personal gain); but in terms of recognising and trying to understand the wide world of causes and entities, outwith the bounds recognised by modern consciousness.