Magic and the world
David Friedman
general issue of making one's version of magic consistent with the rest
of the world, especially the human part. Long ago, reading the first of
the Paksenarion books, I was impressed by the fact that the author had
thought about the question: why would there be physicians in a world
where magic could be used to heal people, and wouldn't that world be
different in other ways as well? She solved the problem by making
healing magic very expensive, thus not an option for most people most of
the time.
In my world there are magical healers, but they aren't very common. I'm
guessing that at most one person in a hundred is a mage of some sort,
perhaps substantially fewer than that. Different mages have different
talents, but things are complicated by the fact that the same effect can
sometimes be produced in different ways using different talents. As a
rough guess, I figure healers are something like one in a thousand to
one in ten thousand.
That means that the average farmer or villager doesn't have access to
one in the short term, although there might be a traveling healer who
came through every few months. A powerful noble probably has one healer
on staff, and an army of a few thousand probably has more than one
healer.
The other use of magic that one might expect to significantly change the
society is truth telling. Some mages can tell whether someone is
lying--deliberately telling an untruth in order to deceive. That ought
to somewhat simplify government, courts, contract negotiation and the
like. It also has the unattractive feature of making torture more
effective as a way of extracting information than it is in our world.
But I'm not sure I see any of that resulting in radical changes.
Magic can also, of course, be used to hurt people; a reasonably powerful
fire mage, for instance, can kill anyone within (I'm guessing) a hundred
yards or so by burning some vital part of him. But then, a skilled
archer can kill at that range too, so I'm not sure that makes a big
difference.
A further feature of the society in its interaction with magic is the
connection to gender. The traditional view was that women's magic and
men's magic were entirely different things, even though they could
occasionally be used for similar purposes. Thus I suspect that all
"healers" are women, but that some (male) mages do some healing
spells--which they think of as a different way of achieving a similar
effect, but not as the activity that defines them.
In fact, as is now recognized by up to date mages, men and women have
different but overlapping distributions of talents and their magic is
the same general sort of things and obeys the same principles. One
result of this recognition is that the College has recently started to
admit a few female students.
I am curious as to whether there are big social effects I am missing, as
well as analogous questions for other people's worlds. One issue I
haven't thought much about is birth control and abortion. I wouldn't be
surprised if healers could do one or both, but healers may be
sufficiently rare not to make it readily available to most people.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
Erol K. Bayburt
<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>I've been thinking a bit, in the context of _Salamander_, about the
>general issue of making one's version of magic consistent with the rest
>of the world, especially the human part. Long ago, reading the first of
>the Paksenarion books, I was impressed by the fact that the author had
>thought about the question: why would there be physicians in a world
>where magic could be used to heal people, and wouldn't that world be
>different in other ways as well? She solved the problem by making
>healing magic very expensive, thus not an option for most people most of
>the time.
>
>In my world there are magical healers, but they aren't very common. I'm
>guessing that at most one person in a hundred is a mage of some sort,
>perhaps substantially fewer than that. Different mages have different
>talents, but things are complicated by the fact that the same effect can
>sometimes be produced in different ways using different talents. As a
>rough guess, I figure healers are something like one in a thousand to
>one in ten thousand.
A quick google finds http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos074.htm which states
"Physicians and surgeons held about 567,000 jobs in 2004" This works
out to 1 physician to a little over 500 population. So your rough
guess could well make magical healers equivalent to modern
specialists, with non-mage physicians doing most of the medical work.
OTOH, how much better is a healing mage vs a non-mage physician in
your world? A big difference would tend to give healing mages a high
status, and encourage people with marginal healing-mage talents to go
into that field.
>
>Magic can also, of course, be used to hurt people; a reasonably powerful
>fire mage, for instance, can kill anyone within (I'm guessing) a hundred
>yards or so by burning some vital part of him. But then, a skilled
>archer can kill at that range too, so I'm not sure that makes a big
>difference.
An archer needs a bow and arrow to kill at that range. What does a
fire mage need? If a fire mage could kill a man at that range while
empty-handed and stark naked, that a big difference. If she could do
so without anyone noticing that she's the one who did the killing,
that's another big one
>
>I am curious as to whether there are big social effects I am missing, as
>well as analogous questions for other people's worlds. One issue I
>haven't thought much about is birth control and abortion. I wouldn't be
>surprised if healers could do one or both, but healers may be
>sufficiently rare not to make it readily available to most people.
In general, a lot depends on how easy it is for a mage to create
various effects. If a mage can heal, or kill, or do whatever, with
just a few seconds of concentration, that's very different from
needing an hour-long ritual with various magical tools, special
powders, etc. to acomplish the same thing.
What magical animals and plants (if any) exist in your world? If the
non-mage physicians can draw on an extensive pharmacopoeia of magical
herbs, for example, then they'll be more effective, and the rare
healing mages will be relatively less important.
Can mages create "pre-cast" spells that take effect later, when the
mage is no longer around? Can objects be imbued with magical power? If
they can, under anything resembling reasonable conditions, then I'd
expect a lot of mage-work to consist of doing so, rather than of being
called out to cast spells "personally."
What kind of magic exists to protect against accidental injury or
deliberate physical attack?
What can magic do to boost productivity in agriculture or
manufacturing? Or to create goods and materials of superior quality -
not because they're imbued with magical power, but because magic was
used in their making?
--
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com
Elyse
wrote:
> Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
> Published by Baen, in bookstores now
Have you thought about the effects on communications? (Are there any
communicative applications of magic?) I was watching a show about the
battle of Gaugamela a week or so ago that pointed out that Alexander
and his officers could only communicate with their soldiers (and each
other) with drums and bugles, and once the battle got noisy even that
was difficult. And the men couldn't really send any information back.
So even a small improvement in cmmunication (or information gathering)
could make a big difference on the battlefield.
In the civilian sphere, consider that most of the plot of Merchant of
Venice is possible because no one knows whether a particular ship has
sunk or not. Lives and fortunes depend on the information.
The ability to know thing faster than a man on a horse or a ship under
sail could bring a message could have enormous impact in many aspects
of society.
--
Elyse Grasso
http://www.data-raptors.com Computers and Technology
http://www.astraltrading.com Divination and Science Fiction
http://www.data-raptors.com/global-cgi-bin/cgiwrap/emgrasso/blosxom.cgi
WebLog
David Friedman
"Elyse" <emgr...@data-raptors.com> wrote:
> Have you thought about the effects on communications? (Are there any
> communicative applications of magic?) I was watching a show about the
> battle of Gaugamela a week or so ago that pointed out that Alexander
> and his officers could only communicate with their soldiers (and each
> other) with drums and bugles, and once the battle got noisy even that
> was difficult. And the men couldn't really send any information back.
> So even a small improvement in cmmunication (or information gathering)
> could make a big difference on the battlefield.
>
> In the civilian sphere, consider that most of the plot of Merchant of
> Venice is possible because no one knows whether a particular ship has
> sunk or not. Lives and fortunes depend on the information.
>
> The ability to know thing faster than a man on a horse or a ship under
> sail could bring a message could have enormous impact in many aspects
> of society.
>
Yes, it could. So far as I can tell, there aren't any magical forms of
fast communication available. One mage, whose circumstances are very
special, can see out of (I think) any fire anywhere, but the method
can't be replicated and almost nobody knows about it. There doesn't seem
to be any mind to mind communication at a distance, although there are
difficult and dangerous ways of using magic to force information of
someone.
More generally, I agree that communication is an important issue in
trying to made the world consistent with the magic. In my case, my world
with magic actually has slower communications than the world without
magic of my first novel, because the latter had carrier pigeons and even
a sort of crude heliograph.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
David Friedman
A good healer is much better--can, for instance, heal a wound in
minutes. But they are probably rare.
One of the points made at some length is that magic isn't very strong.
So a good healer isn't someone who can heal everything wrong with a sick
person, it's someone who can tell what the one crucial thing wrong is,
fix that, and then let the rest heal itself. So for anything much beyond
cuts, being a good healer requires both talent and training.
> >Magic can also, of course, be used to hurt people; a reasonably powerful
> >fire mage, for instance, can kill anyone within (I'm guessing) a hundred
> >yards or so by burning some vital part of him. But then, a skilled
> >archer can kill at that range too, so I'm not sure that makes a big
> >difference.
>
> An archer needs a bow and arrow to kill at that range. What does a
> fire mage need?
Nothing. But a modern person in our society can do it with sufficient
skill plus a handgun that can be pretty easily concealed, and that fact
doesn't seem to have drastic effects on the society.
> If a fire mage could kill a man at that range while
> empty-handed and stark naked, that a big difference. If she could do
> so without anyone noticing that she's the one who did the killing,
> that's another big one
Who did it won't be obvious, unless, perhaps, another mage was watching.
But it may be obvious how it was done, and there's unlikely to have been
more than one fire mage within range.
I have one scene in which a very powerful fire mage is sitting in the
dark with his eyes closed, using his magical ability to observe things
some distance away (as in a quarter mile, not fifty miles), when a
burgler gets into the shop, doesn't see him, steps on his toes, panics,
and knifes him. The mage kills the burgler almost instantly. The person
who comes in very shortly thereafter notices a smell of burnt meat. The
mage, once his injury has been dealt with, takes the burglar's knife and
drives it into the corpse to provide an explanation for the death; the
fact that he is a mage being something he very much wants to keep secret.
The person who comes in correctly deduces that he is a fire mage but
chooses to keep the secret (many details omitted--she's one of my two
protagonists). Someone else who came in immediately might or might not
make the same deduction. Someone who carefully examined the burglar's
corpse, especially a mage who did it, would be very likely to realize
how he was killed--but there's no reason why the corpse would be
carefully examined, given that the fire mage's cover identity is a
respectable local jeweler.
It occurs to me that there is another important feature of magery that I
haven't mentioned and that might matter. Many mages can "perceive"--see
things with their eyes closed. Thus a good healer can actually look
inside the body, searching for what is wrong.
> >I am curious as to whether there are big social effects I am missing, as
> >well as analogous questions for other people's worlds. One issue I
> >haven't thought much about is birth control and abortion. I wouldn't be
> >surprised if healers could do one or both, but healers may be
> >sufficiently rare not to make it readily available to most people.
>
> In general, a lot depends on how easy it is for a mage to create
> various effects. If a mage can heal, or kill, or do whatever, with
> just a few seconds of concentration, that's very different from
> needing an hour-long ritual with various magical tools, special
> powders, etc. to acomplish the same thing.
Some mages can do some thing with just a few seconds of concentration.
Many things require more elaborate procedures. Also, a mage has a
limited range of talents. One way of overcoming the limits is to use
material reagents that substitute for the missing talents. It's implied
that they are very weak substitutes, so useful either for very small
effects or for effects that only need a tiny bit of the kind of magic
provided by the reagent.
> What magical animals and plants (if any) exist in your world?
None, unless you count the four elementals, one for each of the four
elements. They aren't animals or plants, though--more like natural
forces.
> If the
> non-mage physicians can draw on an extensive pharmacopoeia of magical
> herbs, for example, then they'll be more effective, and the rare
> healing mages will be relatively less important.
Interesting idea, but I don't think so. A non-mage can have, say, a
protective amulet created by a mage. But I don't think non-mages can do
magic using magical items, although it's not impossible that things will
develop that way in the future, as understanding of how magic works
becomes better.
> Can mages create "pre-cast" spells that take effect later, when the
> mage is no longer around?
Yes.
> Can objects be imbued with magical power?
Yes.
> If
> they can, under anything resembling reasonable conditions, then I'd
> expect a lot of mage-work to consist of doing so, rather than of being
> called out to cast spells "personally."
Very likely.
> What kind of magic exists to protect against accidental injury or
> deliberate physical attack?
I don't think very much. The College is inside a protective magical
sphere, but at this point that's a one of a kind item, although that's
in the process of changing.
> What can magic do to boost productivity in agriculture or
> manufacturing? Or to create goods and materials of superior quality -
> not because they're imbued with magical power, but because magic was
> used in their making?
It can almost certainly help in agriculture, for instance by protecting
animals against disease or pests. I don't know of its being used to
manufacture non-magical items, but it's an interesting thought.
One thing I haven't mentioned is that although mages are rare, it is now
realized that practically everyone else has at least a little magic and
uses it in a less conscious and sophisticated way--the farmer with a
green thumb, the hunter who is unreasonably lucky at finding game.
Tina Hall
> I've been thinking a bit, in the context of _Salamander_, about the
> general issue of making one's version of magic consistent with the rest
> of the world, especially the human part. Long ago, reading the first of
> the Paksenarion books, I was impressed by the fact that the author had
> thought about the question: why would there be physicians in a world
> where magic could be used to heal people, and wouldn't that world be
> different in other ways as well? She solved the problem by making
> healing magic very expensive, thus not an option for most people most
> of the time.
What about other magic and the world being different in other ways?
(And how many can use it; is it really so rare? If yes, why?)
In my ME series, there are healers all over the main city. There's
also magic all over that place. Minimum healing can be done with
lots of skill, but even a low-skilled person can do difficult
healing with the right talent. And training. The poor are usually
untrained, except for those that end up in the Evil Overlords's
school (he is big on training those with lots of skill/strength).
Some of them go back to the area of the city they came from, and
offer their skills for as much as their patients can afford.
I don't see why it would have to be expensive. Why not _let_ people
use magic to heal people?
(In the S&E, each tribe has different talents. One is excellent at
healing, some are good enough, some are almost useless, but the
latter can always go to the others and get healing for free.)
> In my world there are magical healers, but they aren't very common. I'm
> guessing that at most one person in a hundred is a mage of some sort,
> perhaps substantially fewer than that. Different mages have different
> talents, but things are complicated by the fact that the same effect
> can sometimes be produced in different ways using different talents. As
> a rough guess, I figure healers are something like one in a thousand to
> one in ten thousand.
Do you want them to be that rare? (If yes, why?) Or is that just how
your numbers work out somehow, decided by your backbrain or
something?
> That means that the average farmer or villager doesn't have access to
> one in the short term, although there might be a traveling healer who
> came through every few months. A powerful noble probably has one healer
> on staff, and an army of a few thousand probably has more than one
> healer.
What about history? Wouldn't folks with a talent for healing be
prefered mates for reproduction? Or is that not passed on? (Magic
can work any way, after all.)
> The other use of magic that one might expect to significantly change
> the society is truth telling. Some mages can tell whether someone is
> lying--deliberately telling an untruth in order to deceive. That ought
> to somewhat simplify government, courts, contract negotiation and the
> like. It also has the unattractive feature of making torture more
> effective as a way of extracting information than it is in our world.
Why that?
> But I'm not sure I see any of that resulting in radical changes.
What about exposing the rulers as greedy liars? Underlings as not
loyal? Trading... Depending on how many of those truth-tellers you
have, crime and corruption might not have a chance unless in the
hand of the truth-tellers. How did the world develope with those
talents present for as long as magic? (If it is.)
In any case, I don't see it developing into anything like we've had
or got on our world. Unless your magic just popped into being,
without history, a few weeks ago.
> Magic can also, of course, be used to hurt people; a reasonably
> powerful fire mage, for instance, can kill anyone within (I'm guessing)
> a hundred yards or so by burning some vital part of him. But then, a
> skilled archer can kill at that range too, so I'm not sure that makes a
> big difference.
Depends on whether you can see the magic flying from one to the
other, or whether no one can know who did it. And would the first
folks who witnessed it run screaming or run after the culprit, and
probably get killed the same way? Would First Cavemage become leader
of the band and they run after mammoths (or whatever) with
fireballs?
> A further feature of the society in its interaction with magic is the
> connection to gender. The traditional view was that women's magic and
> men's magic were entirely different things, even though they could
> occasionally be used for similar purposes. Thus I suspect that all
> "healers" are women, but that some (male) mages do some healing
> spells--which they think of as a different way of achieving a similar
> effect, but not as the activity that defines them.
> In fact, as is now recognized by up to date mages, men and women have
> different but overlapping distributions of talents and their magic is
> the same general sort of things and obeys the same principles. One
> result of this recognition is that the College has recently started to
> admit a few female students.
How do you explain that they're not the ones who already went to
college, and now a few males are admitted, too? Does your present
setting match any feasible history? (Always assuming it didn't just
pop into being a few weeks ago.)
With magic, history doesn't go our way from the moment people can
use it. Our history is the one that didn't have magic, after all.
> I am curious as to whether there are big social effects I am missing,
> as well as analogous questions for other people's worlds. One issue I
> haven't thought much about is birth control and abortion. I wouldn't be
> surprised if healers could do one or both, but healers may be
> sufficiently rare not to make it readily available to most people.
Why doesn't everyone have magic?
Can your magic prevent ageing/let one live hundreds of years?
How's strength distributed?
What I'm wondering about here is, is there some way for early magic
users to develope into tyrant mage-rulers? Why should nobles rule
(how did your world get the nobles in the first place), instead of
the mages?
Unless it's not humans, I wouldn't buy a common scenario of the
mages stepping back and letting someone else rule. Human nature and
all that...
--
Tina
WIP: Some Fantasy thing, untitled so far.
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Posted to Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition.
Crowfoot
> use it. Our history is the one that didn't have magic, after all.
Well -- depends on who "we" are. To many people all over the
world, some sorts of magic are a cultural given, usually the very
basic stuff like finding out who has cursed you so that you've
fallen ill, figuring out what dead Grandma needs to satisfy her
so her ghost won't come around making trouble, producing good
luck procedures and objects or procedures for purifying a dwelling
(new or old), insuring good crops and human fertility -- it's all
over the place, once you move back a bit to take in the world of
not-Europe and not-US; and it coexists with greater or lesser
degrees of modern technology and medicine (as in the case of
South American and Mongolian-area shamans, Tibet, most of
Asia, especially once you get out of the cities).
Our own (Western, I'm assuming) history is by no means free
of magic, if you read accounts written at the time of events, not
the re-interpretations of historians of the modern era. For that
matter, there are great numbers of Westerners who now seem to
believe in magic -- people who pay Feng Shui masters to come
align the stuff in their houses, people who pray and make
sacrifices to "Saints" in hopes of supernatural intervention -- I
think it's very limiting to think of the West's modern history as
*only* the history of the Enlightenment, plus the Industrial
Revolution and Darwin etc. Most people of Darwin's time -- not
most *intellectuals" but most *people* -- did not read Darwin.
For that matter, many otherwise modern Americans put their
iPods aside and go to revival meetings at which entirely magical
healings are believed (by the participants) to take place .
History may go the way of the guys with the biggest cannon, but
to *most people* in that history -- who live their lives out of
earshot of those cannon and often don't hear the "news" of a
momentous battle until years later if ever -- magic is still very
powerful.
This may be changing as electronic communication bind us all
tighter together and Western materialism trumps all (among
the young, at least), but judging by what I saw last year in
Thailand -- a place in which technology is galloping hand in
hand with economics AND a teeming pantheon of gods, spirits,
and powers of all kinds -- magic still rules much of the behavior
of population at large. Moreso, I hear, in rural Indonesia,
Korea, and for that matter, Japan, among other places.
I think many writers who are interested in magic could benefit
by reading less fantasy fiction and more reportage about magic
as it survives in the world we live in; because it does, side by
side with helicopters, sunglasses, and laptops, and you get a
good idea of what effects magic (or the belief in it, which to the
people involved is the same thing) has on social and economic
life.
> What I'm wondering about here is, is there some way for early magic
> users to develope into tyrant mage-rulers? Why should nobles rule
> (how did your world get the nobles in the first place), instead of
> the mages?
In traditional magic in the "real" world, the practice of magic is so
consuming and so damned *dangerous* to the practitioner that
"ruling" doesn't enter into it: just surviving the doing of your job
while still remaining sufficiently linked to your community to
be accepted/protected by it, does. The systematized magics of
much of fantasy fiction strikes me as mere technology, with none
of the vast danger, unpredictability, and personal oddity that is
recorded regarding actual practitioners of recent centuries. Vine
de Loria's book about Indian practitioners, "The World We Used
to Live In", or maybe "The World We Lived In" (I returned the
book to the library) might be a good place to start.
Not that reality need clamp limitations on the creative
imagination; but there's a lot to be learned about how people's
behavior is modified by belief in magic by studying the behavior
of non-fictional populations which do in fact believe in it (although
they may also believe in the reality of the Kalashnikov).
SMC
David Friedman
Crowfoot <page...@swcp.com> wrote:
(lots of interesting stuff snipped_
> Not that reality need clamp limitations on the creative
> imagination; but there's a lot to be learned about how people's
> behavior is modified by belief in magic by studying the behavior
> of non-fictional populations which do in fact believe in it (although
> they may also believe in the reality of the Kalashnikov).
On the other hand, it matters whether their belief is correct. Tanks
really do stop bullets; enchanted shirts don't, as people wearing those
shirts found out. So one has four possibilities:
Magic doesn't exist and people don't believe in it
Magic doesn't exist and people do believe in it--arguably the world we
live in.
Magic does exist and people do believe in it--the world of most fantasy
fiction.
Magic does exist and people don't believe in it--the world of occasional
fantasy fiction, although there are generally at least a few believers.
Nicola Browne
news:ddfr-5D2B7E.0...@news.isp.giganews.com
> In article <pagemail-DCF6C1...@iruka.swcp.com>,
> Crowfoot <page...@swcp.com> wrote:
>
> (lots of interesting stuff snipped_
>
> > Not that reality need clamp limitations on the creative
> > imagination; but there's a lot to be learned about how people's
> > behavior is modified by belief in magic by studying the behavior
> > of non-fictional populations which do in fact believe in it (although
> > they may also believe in the reality of the Kalashnikov).
>
> On the other hand, it matters whether their belief is correct. Tanks
> really do stop bullets; enchanted shirts don't, as people wearing those
> shirts found out.
Where belief is concerned it is a question of interpretation
of events. If the bullet was not stopped by the shirt perhaps the ritual
was
to enchant it was badly done, pehaps the owner 's faith was weak.
Perhaps the bullet had been drenched in magic of its own,
perhaps the magic failed to teach the particiapnts something.
The failure of a magical artefact, ceremony or religious prayer is
no proof of the falsity of belief to the believer.
Nicky
>
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Helen Hall
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes
>I've been thinking a bit, in the context of _Salamander_, about the
>general issue of making one's version of magic consistent with the rest
>of the world, especially the human part. Long ago, reading the first of
>the Paksenarion books, I was impressed by the fact that the author had
>thought about the question: why would there be physicians in a world
>where magic could be used to heal people, and wouldn't that world be
>different in other ways as well? She solved the problem by making
>healing magic very expensive, thus not an option for most people most of
>the time.
>
ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
poor will just have to heal naturally or die. They would probably try to
make shift with home cures. Each village may have the equivalent of a
"wise woman" or "cunning man", who would be the villagers'
doctor/psychiatrist/counsellor, but the professional healers (whether
magical or non-magical) are likely to only deal with the wealthy
families who can afford them.
Unless you have some sort of religious or social movement that feels
that it's a good thing to bring medicine to the poor? Otherwise I could
see healing being a scarce resource that would be exclusive to those who
can pay for it.
>In my world there are magical healers, but they aren't very common. I'm
>guessing that at most one person in a hundred is a mage of some sort,
>perhaps substantially fewer than that. Different mages have different
>talents, but things are complicated by the fact that the same effect can
>sometimes be produced in different ways using different talents. As a
>rough guess, I figure healers are something like one in a thousand to
>one in ten thousand.
How many doctors per head of population do we actually have in our world
right now? One per every thousand or so is probably a far better ratio
than in many third world countries today.
Another point: why would non-magical healers have developed at all if
magical healing is seen as the way things are done? Unless some of the
village women's cures were found to work reliably. They would then be
cheaper than calling in a professional healer, so may be adopted more
widely.
For what it's worth, the way I've dealt with the problem is that the
doctors in Baradel are Christians. The minority Christian population
won't have anything to do with magical healing because they believe it
comes from the Devil. (Or at least they're not supposed to allow anyone
to perform magical healing on them. Some of them are rather more
pragmatic when push comes to shove!) It's the Christian physicians who
are researching anaesthetics, surgery and various drugs. A Beccian
healer can just do it all with magic. But I have made the healing talent
very rare in a population where only one in say ten thousand has any
magical talent at all. I think this makes sense because a living
organism is a very complex thing. Thus fiddling with it to make it
better must take extremely fine control of the magical power.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
_A Legacy of War_, a fantasy murder mystery, now on the web at:
http://helenkenyon.livejournal.com/413.html
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <jf0dt2tf08b6gc8sc...@4ax.com>,
> Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:13:59 -0800, David Friedman
> > <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
> > >Magic can also, of course, be used to hurt people; a reasonably powerful
> > >fire mage, for instance, can kill anyone within (I'm guessing) a hundred
> > >yards or so by burning some vital part of him. But then, a skilled
> > >archer can kill at that range too, so I'm not sure that makes a big
> > >difference.
> >
> > An archer needs a bow and arrow to kill at that range. What does a
> > fire mage need?
>
> Nothing. But a modern person in our society can do it with sufficient
> skill plus a handgun that can be pretty easily concealed, and that fact
> doesn't seem to have drastic effects on the society.
I'm not sure how drastic the effects are, but ISTM the major effect of
handguns has been to make it much easier for weak, unskilled people to
kill strong, trained people.
I reckon, although unskilled, it wouldn't take very long to learn how to
kill someone at 100 yards with a rifle. It (I'm guessing) would take
much longer to learn how to do it as an archer.
So I'd expect some effect on bodyguards and security. A king might feel
no need for bodyguards approaching a few ordinary people. And crowd
surveillance becomes less of a problem making speeches (I'm assuming you
can't conceal a longbow in a pocket).
Similarly in close-up combat. I doubt I could kill anyone with even
elementary unarmed combat or martial arts training, even if I had a
knife and they didn't, unless I caught them by surprise. I reckon any
punk could kill an unarmed man from six feet with a handgun.
Does that make a difference to how dangerous it is to wander around the
wrong part of towns at night? To whether a criminal can survive as a
loner, instead of part of a gang?
Jonathan
Jonathan L Cunningham
> > With magic, history doesn't go our way from the moment people can
> > use it. Our history is the one that didn't have magic, after all.
>
> Well -- depends on who "we" are. To many people all over the
> world, some sorts of magic are a cultural given, usually the very
> basic stuff like finding out who has cursed you so that you've
(snip)
> In traditional magic in the "real" world, the practice of magic is so
> consuming and so damned *dangerous* to the practitioner that
> "ruling" doesn't enter into it: just surviving the doing of your job
> while still remaining sufficiently linked to your community to
> be accepted/protected by it, does. The systematized magics of
I'm not sure that "real" world practitioners (outside, or even inside,
Western societies) have as much of a problem as you say. They can be
feared (for their ability to curse) as well as "needed" (for their
ability to remove curses) etc. But that's not what I wanted to respond
to.
I think the element of danger is an interesting, and important one, that
is indeed missed by a lot of "magic-as-technology" fantasy and also by
"magic-as-psychic powers".
Even in "magic-as-controlling-spirits" there may be an element of risk
(if the control slips) but the assumption is that done *right* the
magician *will* control the spirits.
The approach I use in some of my own writing is
"magic-as-asking-spirits" (I avoid "invoking" or "evoking" here, to
avoid complications). This *can* be very dangerous.
Imagine a non-magical, but fantasy, analogy. You want to shift a
tree-stump, say. It will be a lot of work to dig it out. But you know
that, a little way up the mountain, lives a bad-tempered cannibal giant.
He could easily pull out the tree-stump without raising a sweat.
The easy way to shift the tree-stump is to go up the mountain, and offer
to pay the giant to shift it for you. Do you go?
Suppose you know he just *loves* plums, and you harvested so many this
year you have more than you want. Offering plums is bound to put him in
a good mood.
Of course, after he's come down into the village (or farm) and removed
the stump, and eaten all the plums you paid him. Plus all the plums you
hadn't planned to pay him. Plus the apples you stored for winter. Plus
your prize milch-cow (he's not a vegetarian, remember) you still have
the problem of hinting that perhaps it's time he went back to his
mountain ...
The most powerful magicians (in my world) are those who have managed to
locate and contact powerful, but good-natured and helpful spirits. But
even they have their off-days, when they are feeling grumpy.
Jonathan
nyra
>
> In article <pagemail-DCF6C1...@iruka.swcp.com>,
> Crowfoot <page...@swcp.com> wrote:
>
> (lots of interesting stuff snipped_
>
> > Not that reality need clamp limitations on the creative
> > imagination; but there's a lot to be learned about how people's
> > behavior is modified by belief in magic by studying the behavior
> > of non-fictional populations which do in fact believe in it (although
> > they may also believe in the reality of the Kalashnikov).
>
> On the other hand, it matters whether their belief is correct. Tanks
> really do stop bullets; enchanted shirts don't, as people wearing those
> shirts found out.
On the other hand, a space-based missile defence system won't stop
bullets, but a ceremonial steel-plated robe may.
It's quite obvious that a shirt is simply not the proper item to use:
it's made of fabric - interwoven threads, sewed together. The fibres
pass before and behind each other over and over, and in sewing, they
already have let a _steel_ needle pass through them. It's just not
made to keep steel outside.
A steel plate's contact with other metal consists of pressing and
hammering - non-invasive methods of pushing and beating metal
_against_ them. Little wonder that armour plate is more apt to let
metal bullets bounce off.
Much of real-world "magic" is simply a way of interpreting the
world[1].
And much of magical practice is (auto-)suggestion, i.e. there are
quite enough magical workings which actually work(ed) because people
expect(ed) them to work.
[1] preferably in a way allowing you to speak ill of the mad old biddy
on the border of the village
> So one has four possibilities:
>
> Magic doesn't exist
Assuming you have a definition of 'magic' as a phenomenon which either
exists or doesn't. To me, the statement is a bit like 'Homeopathy
doesn't exist'; i.e. for me, the core question is not the existence of
the thing, but whether it's useful/meaningful.
--
's morgens: zorgen, 's avonds: min,
brengt het kruipen van de spin
Ric Locke
> I don't know whether your world *would* have physicians. Just as
> ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
> until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
> schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
> poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
Helen, you're a good person, but this is the sort of thing that diverts
threads into politics, or runs people off who get tired of gritting
their teeth. You are also easily intelligent enough to reflect for a
moment and get an inkling of why.
Regards,
Ric
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Dan Goodman
> Well -- depends on who "we" are.
I think two things are getting confused here: the existence of magic,
and belief in it.
David sees our world as one in which magic doesn't exist -- no matter
how many people believe in it.
Note: I think you underestimate the percentage of people in American
society who believe in magic. They may call it nanotechnology,
Objectivism, nutritional science, scientific socialism, futurology, or
whatever -- but they're using the name of something non-magical as a
label for magic. At least half of what political professionals believe
about politics is magic, for example.
Slight digression: "Dental healing" is one form of magic I find odd.
If you have amalgam fillings, the dental healer will turn them into
gold fillings -- not restore the teeth to full health.
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
future http://dangoodman.livejournal.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Dan Goodman
> In article <pagemail-DCF6C1...@iruka.swcp.com>,
> Crowfoot <page...@swcp.com> wrote:
>
> (lots of interesting stuff snipped_
>
> > Not that reality need clamp limitations on the creative
> > imagination; but there's a lot to be learned about how people's
> > behavior is modified by belief in magic by studying the behavior
> > of non-fictional populations which do in fact believe in it
> > (although they may also believe in the reality of the Kalashnikov).
>
> On the other hand, it matters whether their belief is correct. Tanks
> really do stop bullets; enchanted shirts don't, as people wearing
> those shirts found out. So one has four possibilities:
>
> Magic doesn't exist and people don't believe in it
>
> Magic doesn't exist and people do believe in it--arguably the world
> we live in.
>
> Magic does exist and people do believe in it--the world of most
> fantasy fiction.
>
> Magic does exist and people don't believe in it--the world of
> occasional fantasy fiction, although there are generally at least a
> few believers.
I see at least one more possibility: One kind of magic exists; people
believe in another kind of magic, but not the kind which really exists.
Helen Hall
<warl...@hyperusa.com> writes
>On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:31:45 +0000, Helen Hall wrote:
>
>> I don't know whether your world *would* have physicians. Just as
>> ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
>> until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
>> schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
>> poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
>
>Helen, you're a good person, but this is the sort of thing that diverts
>threads into politics, or runs people off who get tired of gritting
>their teeth. You are also easily intelligent enough to reflect for a
>moment and get an inkling of why.
>
list of things that can no longer be mentioned on this group for fear of
starting a flame war.
How we're supposed to do world building here any more, I don't know.
Helen
(Of to write some words in the WIP)
Nicola Browne
news:c6fD+pIP...@baradel.demon.co.uk
> Your comment has been noted. I will add "social history" to the long
> list of things that can no longer be mentioned on this group for fear of
> starting a flame war.
I think it ought to be possible to talk about social history
without launching into contemporary politics.
I seems to me quite clear that when there were a shortage of doctors
most people didn't see one and that doctors wishing to make
a living - tended to accept payment for their services from people
who had something to pay them with.
A magical skill wouldn't have to work the same way. Maybe those
who possess it believe that they have to renounce worldly goods,
or have to offer their services to those with the fewest resources,
or those who need them most, or those most prepared to pay in
some other way by singing a song or writing a poem, or
cutting their hair, or pledging allegiance to a particular god or
tending a particular forest etc..
I like fiction best when it's unexpected.
Maybe next time I write a book with magic I'll make it wilder
and more anarchic. It seems to me that the nature of the magic
and the means by which it is wielded ought to have quite radical
impact on the society: more of the same but with magic ( which is how
I've handled it in the past) is probably not the most interesting
approach.
> How we're supposed to do world building here any more, I don't know.
Don't stop. If other people don't remind me about it regularly I
forget stuff.
> Helen
> (Of to write some words in the WIP)
I should, but I'm not going to. I feel the need to read...
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> The most powerful magicians (in my world) are those who have managed to
> locate and contact powerful, but good-natured and helpful spirits. But
> even they have their off-days, when they are feeling grumpy.
In my world it can be dangerous, but not usually for that reason. There
is, however, one special case, playing an important role in the plot,
which is close to yours--only close because the Salamander is closer to
a natural force than a spirit. For example:
---
Some hours later, where the road bent left to find its way through an
old lava flow, he stopped, stood for some minutes wrapped in his cloak,
eyes closed. Still there, but blocked. He turned off the road, scrambled
along the edge of the lava, uphill through the snow. Arrived at his
destination he let his mind sink into the stone, felt for fire, found
it. Unlimited fire, and nobody within miles to see it. For onceŠ .
He pointed with his right hand, the other resting on the rune that was
the lid of the box; water ran steaming away. Where there had been a bank
of unmarked snow was now bare rock, the cave mouth showing clear. The
first few feet were half choked with dirt and broken rock where part of
the roof had fallen in. His mind filled with fire he pointed again.
Froze.
Carefully, strand by strand, the mage pulled his mind free from what he
carried. Turning broken rock molten might clear the cave, but while the
Salamander could take no harm, his own body was flesh and blood. Hands
might be slower, but a great deal safer.
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <jf0dt2tf08b6gc8sc...@4ax.com>,
> > Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:13:59 -0800, David Friedman
> > > <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
> > > >Magic can also, of course, be used to hurt people; a reasonably powerful
> > > >fire mage, for instance, can kill anyone within (I'm guessing) a hundred
> > > >yards or so by burning some vital part of him. But then, a skilled
> > > >archer can kill at that range too, so I'm not sure that makes a big
> > > >difference.
> > >
> > > An archer needs a bow and arrow to kill at that range. What does a
> > > fire mage need?
> >
> > Nothing. But a modern person in our society can do it with sufficient
> > skill plus a handgun that can be pretty easily concealed, and that fact
> > doesn't seem to have drastic effects on the society.
>
> I'm not sure how drastic the effects are, but ISTM the major effect of
> handguns has been to make it much easier for weak, unskilled people to
> kill strong, trained people.
>
> I reckon, although unskilled, it wouldn't take very long to learn how to
> kill someone at 100 yards with a rifle. It (I'm guessing) would take
> much longer to learn how to do it as an archer.
Considerably longer. I've done archery, off and on and not very
seriously, for years, and I couldn't hit a man sized target at 100 yards.
> So I'd expect some effect on bodyguards and security. A king might feel
> no need for bodyguards approaching a few ordinary people. And crowd
> surveillance becomes less of a problem making speeches (I'm assuming you
> can't conceal a longbow in a pocket).
A friend of mine who does very serious and accurate recreation of
historical artifacts showed me, at one point, a pistol crossbow he had
made, based on a period original. To get any significant energy with
that short a travel you need a very stiff bow, so the thing cocks with a
threaded rod and a giant wing nut.
He told me that it was "an assassin's crossbow, designed to be hidden in
the long sleeves that were popular fifty years after it was made."
His own opinion was that it was intended as a rich kid's toy.
> Similarly in close-up combat. I doubt I could kill anyone with even
> elementary unarmed combat or martial arts training, even if I had a
> knife and they didn't, unless I caught them by surprise. I reckon any
> punk could kill an unarmed man from six feet with a handgun.
I expect any reasonably competent punk could kill a not particularly
competent victim with a club or knife pretty easily.
> Does that make a difference to how dangerous it is to wander around the
> wrong part of towns at night? To whether a criminal can survive as a
> loner, instead of part of a gang?
I don't think you are likely to have mages as muggers, given both the
rarity of mages and the fact that if you have the talent and the
training to use it you have entry to a relatively high status and
remunerative profession. Mugging people becomes a little more risky--as
I think I mentioned, I have a scene were a burglar stabs an inattentive
fire mage and dies almost immediately thereafter. But I expect mages
with talents suitable for killing people in that society are
considerably rarer than people carrying concealed firearms in ours.
Crowfoot
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
Yes; given a long enough period of very obvious demonstrations
of the non-working of magic, you would get, perhaps a disillusioned
population (among those close to the central events of the culture's
history, as with distance rumor and distortion will morph the "news"
to fit local belief) with a peppering of devotees searching persistently
for the "lost" secrets of doing the old magic *right* so that it works
again; that certainly describes the modern concept of medieval
alchemists and 19th C secret societies of "adepts".
SMC
David Friedman
Helen Hall <use...@delete.this.baradel.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <ddfr-48C671.1...@news.isp.giganews.com>, David
> Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes
> >I've been thinking a bit, in the context of _Salamander_, about the
> >general issue of making one's version of magic consistent with the rest
> >of the world, especially the human part. Long ago, reading the first of
> >the Paksenarion books, I was impressed by the fact that the author had
> >thought about the question: why would there be physicians in a world
> >where magic could be used to heal people, and wouldn't that world be
> >different in other ways as well? She solved the problem by making
> >healing magic very expensive, thus not an option for most people most of
> >the time.
> I don't know whether your world *would* have physicians. Just as
> ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
> until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
> schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
> poor will just have to heal naturally or die. They would probably try to
> make shift with home cures. Each village may have the equivalent of a
> "wise woman" or "cunning man", who would be the villagers'
> doctor/psychiatrist/counsellor, but the professional healers (whether
> magical or non-magical) are likely to only deal with the wealthy
> families who can afford them.
I think you are making too sharp a distinction between rich and poor.
Some healers may find healing a lot of middle income sorts more
profitable than healing a few rich people. And, while there might be a
few rich invalids or hypochondriacs with enough work for a full time
healer, I wouldn't expect that to be common.
My assumption was that the healer Duke Morgen has on staff isn't mainly
for him and his family, although of course they have priority on her
services. She's for servants, retainers, tenants, the large number of
people who are in some sense under Duke Morgen's protection. Which, of
course, can be viewed as a form of insurance under a different set of
institutions.
> Unless you have some sort of religious or social movement that feels
> that it's a good thing to bring medicine to the poor?
Not that I know of, although it's possible. One of my characters is a
very able healer who lives in a small village and presumably provides
her services to, at least, local villagers and anyone else from the area
who comes. But she has reasons to want to keep a low profile and no
great need for income; I expect she could make much more money in the
capital.
> Otherwise I could
> see healing being a scarce resource that would be exclusive to those who
> can pay for it.
One important feature of market systems is that, while they allocate
more to the wealthy, they don't simply allocate everything to the
wealthy, because buying one thing uses up money that you then can't use
for another--they aren't hierarchical in the lexicographic sense. I can
easily see a middle class merchant or a successful farmer outbidding a
much richer person for the services of a healer, when the former wants
the healer to save his life and the latter to cure an itch.
> >In my world there are magical healers, but they aren't very common. I'm
> >guessing that at most one person in a hundred is a mage of some sort,
> >perhaps substantially fewer than that. Different mages have different
> >talents, but things are complicated by the fact that the same effect can
> >sometimes be produced in different ways using different talents. As a
> >rough guess, I figure healers are something like one in a thousand to
> >one in ten thousand.
>
> How many doctors per head of population do we actually have in our world
> right now? One per every thousand or so is probably a far better ratio
> than in many third world countries today.
Judging by a little quick googling, typically more than one per thousand
in developed countries, considerably less in poor countries. But note
that one in a thousand was the high end of my estimate.
> Another point: why would non-magical healers have developed at all if
> magical healing is seen as the way things are done? Unless some of the
> village women's cures were found to work reliably. They would then be
> cheaper than calling in a professional healer, so may be adopted more
> widely.
Because magical healing depends on rare talents, making healers uncommon
enough so that there is a demand for alternative ways of dealing with
medical problems.
It occurs to me that, because at least some healers can, in effect, see
inside the patients' bodies, the general knowledge of anatomy and
related subjects ought to be better than in our past. So it's possible
that some non-magical physicians are working from texts created by
healers.
> For what it's worth, the way I've dealt with the problem is that the
> doctors in Baradel are Christians. The minority Christian population
> won't have anything to do with magical healing because they believe it
> comes from the Devil. (Or at least they're not supposed to allow anyone
> to perform magical healing on them. Some of them are rather more
> pragmatic when push comes to shove!) It's the Christian physicians who
> are researching anaesthetics, surgery and various drugs. A Beccian
> healer can just do it all with magic. But I have made the healing talent
> very rare in a population where only one in say ten thousand has any
> magical talent at all. I think this makes sense because a living
> organism is a very complex thing. Thus fiddling with it to make it
> better must take extremely fine control of the magical power.
>
> Helen
--
David Friedman
Helen Hall <use...@delete.this.baradel.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <o7es0s6kevqv$.2032r57h...@40tude.net>, Ric Locke
> <warl...@hyperusa.com> writes
> >On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:31:45 +0000, Helen Hall wrote:
> >
> >> I don't know whether your world *would* have physicians. Just as
> >> ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
> >> until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
> >> schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
> >> poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
> >
> >Helen, you're a good person, but this is the sort of thing that diverts
> >threads into politics, or runs people off who get tired of gritting
> >their teeth. You are also easily intelligent enough to reflect for a
> >moment and get an inkling of why.
> >
> Your comment has been noted. I will add "social history" to the long
> list of things that can no longer be mentioned on this group for fear of
> starting a flame war.
>
> How we're supposed to do world building here any more, I don't know.
Note that I, of course, disagree with Ric and agree with your (implied)
point. I think the effect of wealth distribution on societies is indeed
one interesting element in wealth building.
My two most relevant historical sources are probably Boswell's memoirs
and Casanova's memoirs. They are both a little more modern than what I
am imagining for my society's institutions, but not a lot. One of the
striking things about them is that class lines are a good deal fuzzier
than one might think from the usual pop-history view of the past.
Casanova's mother is an actress, yet he manages, by charm and talent, to
live a life in parts of which he is associating with the rich and
powerful on terms of near equality. Boswell is sufficiently high status
to be presented at court--his father is something close to the Scottish
equivalent of a Supreme Court Justice, and a well off land owner--but
during an extended stay in London he is poor enough to be living for a
while mostly on bread and cheese and such, having lent some money--he
didn't have very much to start with--to the actress he wants to have an
affair with.
So "rich" and "poor" greatly understates the complication of the real
economic and social structure. There are people who Boswell sees as
rich--he himself was almost always concerned about getting enough money
to live the sort of life appropriate to his class. And there were surely
people who saw Boswell as rich.
What I think is true, judging by a conversation years ago with a scholar
who specialized in historical mortality data, is that medical care good
enough to have a substantial effect on mortality was available sooner to
the upper class in England than to the rest of the population. It wasn't
that only the rich had access to physicians but that the rich were
likely to have access to the physicians on the cutting edge of current
knowledge, at a point when that mattered a good deal more than it now
does.
It turns out, by the way, that if you are studying historical mortality
there is much to be said for specializing in the English upper
class--because the data for their lives is so much better than for the
population in general.
Crowfoot
> "magic-as-asking-spirits" (I avoid "invoking" or "evoking" here, to
> avoid complications). This *can* be very dangerous.
That's pretty much the shamanic approach in most such
cultures: the shaman is revered because he dares to go and
ask the mighty ones, and is powerful enough (thanks to
the aid of more friendly beings, spirit helpers who furnish
him/her with songs, tokens, etc. for protection) to do this
without getting killed for doing so, at least according to the
literature I've read on the subject.
And speaking of the assumption of a magical mono-culture
even on the same continent (which is not uncommon in
fantasy fiction), where I live there are a number of
"magical" systems all thriving right alongside modern
high technology: Los Alamos and Sandia labs, side by
side with Hispanic brujas and brujos and curanderas in
the northern villages, Pueblo caciques who run the
spiritual lives of their towns (alongside, again, and partly
inter-mingled with a strong overlay of Catholicism), New
Agers of all kinds and degrees (astrologers, wiccans,
alternative healers of every stripe, dowsers, etc.), and
Heaven knows what else. And I doubt that this kind of
mix is rare in most of the world, except for backwaters
(intentional or accidental) like fundie Islamic areas, or
Amish country, or much of our heavily churchy South
and "Heartland" -- the places that young people with a
seeking turn of mind or other frowned-upon traits
either flee or are driven from.
It's hard to discuss this without assuming a certain
overlap of religious belief and the practice of "magical"
activities based on the general belief-system; although
often "magic" is a surviving remnant of a previously
core religion, like the shamanism in Korea or Indonesia
(and, for that matter, South America).
Even if you assume a magic that works, different
populations would probably have their own native ways
of approaching, regarding, and using magical powers
and beings; unless maybe the magical beings had started
out by imposing a single set of procedures and under-
standings on *everyone everywhere* right at the outset,
reenforced by occasional reminders over time (assuming
that the powers themselves do not change in their
desires re human interactions with them).
I ran into an interesting comment in a book by a British
woman traveling in the pre-World War I Ottoman
Middle East. She remarked that the base population of
Muslim Arabs never minded what various foreign
visitors did or believed, as they were accustomed to
being visited by men with of different cultures from
other nearby nations. They would shrug and say, "Oh,
that's just his way", meaning the custom or belief of
the stranger's home population. Hospitality imposed
a tolerance that has, sadly, been completely shredded
in modern times.
SMC
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
Equally in non-magical areas--proof is generally scarce on the ground.
But the failure of magical or non-magical methods to act as advertised
is evidence against them, and the more such evidence there is the less
likely people are to continue to believe in them.
In any case, whether or not it matters to belief it matters to what
happens. I'm the author, and I (usually) know whether the reason the
magical shirt didn't work was a technical error in the enchantment or
the fact that magic is bunk. Those different explanations imply
different predictions for what will happen and different stories.
Erol K. Bayburt
(Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
>> > An archer needs a bow and arrow to kill at that range. What does a
>> > fire mage need?
>>
>> Nothing. But a modern person in our society can do it with sufficient
>> skill plus a handgun that can be pretty easily concealed, and that fact
>> doesn't seem to have drastic effects on the society.
>
>I'm not sure how drastic the effects are, but ISTM the major effect of
>handguns has been to make it much easier for weak, unskilled people to
>kill strong, trained people.
"God made man. Col. Colt made men equal."
There's also the speculation that repeating handguns are part of what
gave the women's suffrage movement traction in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. That the possibility of a revolver in the purse slowly
shifted the perception of women from "childlike beings who need the
physical protection of males" to "big girls able to take care of
themselves" - and who were thus worth taking seriously.
Getting back to _Salamander_ I suspect that the discovery that "men's
magic" and "women's magic" are actually the same magic will likewise
eventually have subtle and profound changes in that society. It will
take decades for the idea to sink in all through society, and for the
changes to take place, but 100 years from the story-now people will
wonder at the strange and quaint ideas of their ancestors.
Nicola Browne
Oh, in my stories I like to retain sufficient ambiguiuty that belief
might be justified because I'm not entirely sure about what is true
in unfamiliar worlds.
I like to have more than one explanation for everything lying around
because that's life and it amuses me.
Gerry Quinn
> David Friedman schrieb:
> > So one has four possibilities:
> >
> > Magic doesn't exist
>
> Assuming you have a definition of 'magic' as a phenomenon which either
> exists or doesn't. To me, the statement is a bit like 'Homeopathy
> doesn't exist'; i.e. for me, the core question is not the existence of
> the thing, but whether it's useful/meaningful.
It seems clear that David is using the word in the sense of a physical
interaction - an extra force of nature, if you like.
A force of nature causes two susceptible interacting particles to
exchange momentum. Insofar as homeopathy exists, its effects appear to
be mediated via known forces such as electromagnetism and gravity -
whether these effects are come by way of the placebo effect or, as
homeopaths theorise, some kind of liquid memory. If the latter, either
it is a very unexpected effect of electromagnetism, or we don't fully
understand electromagnetism, or a hitherto unknown fundamental force is
involved.
The same analysis can be made for magic (assuming that in David's world
thoughts correspond to the movement of particles in the thinker's
brain).
- Gerry Quinn
David Friedman
Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Getting back to _Salamander_ I suspect that the discovery that "men's
> magic" and "women's magic" are actually the same magic will likewise
> eventually have subtle and profound changes in that society. It will
> take decades for the idea to sink in all through society, and for the
> changes to take place, but 100 years from the story-now people will
> wonder at the strange and quaint ideas of their ancestors.
Very possibly. It's pretty clear that things are changing, at least in
part due to the breakthrough in magical theory about fifty years
earlier. The fact that the new understanding eventually made it possible
to create new spells on something more than a very slow trial and error
basis was both convincing evidence and a powerful force for change.
Central to my plot is a new magical procedure with potentially very
unfortunate effects on the society. One of my protagonists invented it
and is now, with the assistance of a few other people, trying to
suppress it.
But I'm not sure how big the effect of the recognition that men's magic
and women's magic are really the same will be. After all, everyone
already knows that men and women can do many of the same things. There
are presumably both tailors and seamstresses, farming is done by men and
women, shops are run by both men and women ... . The change does open
one high status profession to women--but only a very few women.
My male protagonist's latest project is to try to convince his
colleagues that, having admitted female students, they need one or more
female tutors, since male tutors aren't competent to teach in the areas
of magic that have traditionally been seen as female. My guess is that,
in the short run, he will have to settle for the compromise of hiring a
healer, who can offer instruction in a semi-official way to any students
interested in learning from her.
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
> news:ddfr-1EE192.1...@news.isp.giganews.com
>
> > In article <63a3555941742c58bd...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
> > "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> >
> > > In any case, whether or not it matters to belief it matters to what
> > happens. I'm the author, and I (usually) know whether the reason the
> > magical shirt didn't work was a technical error in the enchantment or
> > the fact that magic is bunk. Those different explanations imply
> > different predictions for what will happen and different stories.
>
>
> Oh, in my stories I like to retain sufficient ambiguiuty that belief
> might be justified because I'm not entirely sure about what is true
> in unfamiliar worlds.
> I like to have more than one explanation for everything lying around
> because that's life and it amuses me.
> Nicky
I do some of that. In the current version of the scene were Yolen dies
I'm reasonably sure he was killed by the fire mage, but it's just barely
possible that the fire that startled his horse into going over the cliff
was natural. But not on the level of not knowing whether or not the
magic in my world works. For one thing, I suspect that the differences
in the effect on the society of magic that really worked and magic that
was only believed to work would be significantly different.
David Friedman
Crowfoot <page...@swcp.com> wrote:
> Even if you assume a magic that works, different
> populations would probably have their own native ways
> of approaching, regarding, and using magical powers
> and beings;
I agree, and it could be potentially interesting. My current WIR is set
entirely in one country, so the only (implicit) example is the
traditional distinction between "men's magic" and "women's magic," and I
don't know much about the latter. The body of magical theory that is
currently accepted, and works, grew out of men's magic and turned out to
explain women's magic as well. Since it is a system in which there are
multiple ways of describing the same magical reality (multiple systems
of basis vectors spanning the space, in modern terms), it's possible
that it generalizes both the traditional male and female systems.
Crowfoot
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> Crowfoot wrote:
>
> > Well -- depends on who "we" are.
>
> I think two things are getting confused here: the existence of magic,
> and belief in it.
>
> David sees our world as one in which magic doesn't exist -- no matter
> how many people believe in it.
Yes, that's one of the elements that makes this kind of discussion
a bit hazy sometimes.
> Note: I think you underestimate the percentage of people in American
> society who believe in magic.
And the number of people who don't actively believe in it, but
who are willing to be impressed by its reality/effectiveness in
the lives of some others and even to try a bit of it themselves
*without admitting* to any impairment of their own supposedly
scientific understanding of the world.
> They may call it nanotechnology,
> Objectivism, nutritional science, scientific socialism, futurology, or
> whatever -- but they're using the name of something non-magical as a
> label for magic. At least half of what political professionals believe
> about politics is magic, for example.
Hmm. That definition depends on whose ox is being gored, I think,
since there's lots you can't *prove* about aggregate human behavior
in a strictly scientific sense (with double blinds, repeatable results,
etc.). So *some* of that "magic" may in fact be scientifically sound \
-- only how do you *prove* which is or isn't, given that controlled
experiments with entire populations are impossible?
> Slight digression: "Dental healing" is one form of magic I find odd.
> If you have amalgam fillings, the dental healer will turn them into
> gold fillings -- not restore the teeth to full health.
Yes, and that's an example of what I meant, above. People who
laugh at voodoo will nonetheless urge upon you the (extremely
expensive) replacement of all your old fillings with gold, although
so far as I know, there's no substantiated evidence of any benefit
-- but, they will tell you with great enthusiasm, they had it done
and all their <x condition> has gone away (implied: as a result
of the procedure).
SMC
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> I seems to me quite clear that when there were a shortage of doctors
> most people didn't see one and that doctors wishing to make
> a living - tended to accept payment for their services from people
> who had something to pay them with.
> A magical skill wouldn't have to work the same way. Maybe those
> who possess it believe that they have to renounce worldly goods,
> or have to offer their services to those with the fewest resources,
> or those who need them most, or those most prepared to pay in
> some other way by singing a song or writing a poem, or
> cutting their hair, or pledging allegiance to a particular god or
> tending a particular forest etc..
In fact, I believe monasteries provided some medical services in the
Middle Ages. And one of the things missionaries were doing in the 19th
century was providing medical services to people as part of trying to
convert them to Christianity or some particular variety thereof.
In the parts of my world I have seen, however, mages seem more like
doctors or lawyers (and professors of law and medicine) in our society
than like monks or missionaries.
jam...@echeque.com
> Just as
> ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
> until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
> schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
> poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
Ah yes, everyone knows that before the good and wise progressives took
control, everything was utterly hellish, and only your benevolent and
wise intervention saved us.
So there is nothing political or provocative about mentioning your
benevolent rescue of us wicked people, while it is terribly
provocative, and outrageously offensive, to doubt it, and mighty
offensive to doubt your great benevolence.
David Friedman
jam...@echeque.com wrote:
> Helen Hall
> > Just as
> > ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
> > until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
> > schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
> > poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
>
> Ah yes, everyone knows that before the good and wise progressives took
> control, everything was utterly hellish, and only your benevolent and
> wise intervention saved us.
Note "or insurance schemes," which are, or at least can be, an entirely
free market approach to the system. I think Helen exaggerates the
situation in the past a good deal; there seems to have been a
considerable period in U.S. history where doctors were available to much
of the population despite the lack of either government health care or
private health insurance. But her description doesn't necessarily limit
progress to the policies recommended by "progressives."
David Friedman
Crowfoot <page...@swcp.com> wrote:
> Yes, and that's an example of what I meant, above. People who
> laugh at voodoo will nonetheless urge upon you the (extremely
> expensive) replacement of all your old fillings with gold, although
> so far as I know, there's no substantiated evidence of any benefit
> -- but, they will tell you with great enthusiasm, they had it done
> and all their <x condition> has gone away (implied: as a result
> of the procedure).
While the exact definition of what is or isn't magic is fuzzy, I don't
think one ought to regard all false beliefs as beliefs in magic. One
can, after all, have false beliefs in science as well. So far as I know,
Ptolemy's version of astronomy started out as science, although I gather
it later acquired religious incrustations.
Erol K. Bayburt
<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>> Another point: why would non-magical healers have developed at all if
>> magical healing is seen as the way things are done? Unless some of the
>> village women's cures were found to work reliably. They would then be
>> cheaper than calling in a professional healer, so may be adopted more
>> widely.
>
>Because magical healing depends on rare talents, making healers uncommon
>enough so that there is a demand for alternative ways of dealing with
>medical problems.
The obvious alternatives to getting a magical healer are "do nothing"
and "self treatment" (which may amount to "do nothing" depending on
what's wrong). A non-magical physician (or whatever he or she is
called) will need to be of *some* benefit over
do-nothing/self-treatment in order to be a viable alternative.
Another question: How easy would it be for a fraud to claim to be a
magical healer?
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <03e9af21d85cb8fd5e...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> > I seems to me quite clear that when there were a shortage of doctors
> > most people didn't see one and that doctors wishing to make
> > a living - tended to accept payment for their services from people
> > who had something to pay them with.
> > A magical skill wouldn't have to work the same way. Maybe those
> > who possess it believe that they have to renounce worldly goods,
> > or have to offer their services to those with the fewest resources,
> > or those who need them most, or those most prepared to pay in
> > some other way by singing a song or writing a poem, or
> > cutting their hair, or pledging allegiance to a particular god or
> > tending a particular forest etc..
>
> In fact, I believe monasteries provided some medical services in the
> Middle Ages. And one of the things missionaries were doing in the 19th
> century was providing medical services to people as part of trying to
> convert them to Christianity or some particular variety thereof.
>
> In the parts of my world I have seen, however, mages seem more like
> doctors or lawyers (and professors of law and medicine) in our society
> than like monks or missionaries.
In my WIP-1 [3], schools, universities, libraries, churches, monasteries
and hospitals are all "monasteries". Virtually all professionals in
"intellectual" professions are either wizards or priests[1], even if
they can't do magic (in which case they usally go into administrative or
clerical jobs). It's a very generic term, which doesn't tell you much
except that the guy (or woman) is not a carpenter or a baker etc.
Individual monasteries specialise, but if you need medical help beyond
what the local priest (who may be a woman) can provide, you go to or
call on the nearest monastery. I call them monasteries because they are
"live in" institutions, and married couples will live in them as well as
single monks. (They often move out when they have children, and move
back when their children grow up.) It's not compulsory to live in:
merely more convenient in a society without quick and easy transport.
[1] Female wizards are still called wizards. A female priest is a
priestess, but only if her gender matters. (You might say "Jack is
dating a priestess" to avoid misunderstanding.) Renegades, of either
sex, are called witches, although this is a matter of a particular
magical or religious[2] error rather than mere criminality.
[2] There's no dichotomy between magic and religion, merely a difference
of approach/emphasis. It's not possible for a sane person to be an
atheist, it's entirely possible to be non-religious, and to avoid any
kind of religious activity. The "deities" don't demand worship.
[3] I shall refer in future to WIP-n, since I seem incapable of working
on only one novel at once. For future reference:
WIP-1-1: To catch a dragon
WIP-1-2: The dragon caught (a sequel, only slightly in progress)
WIP-2a: Of Elves and Men
WIP-2b: Katya's Tale (WIP-2A and 2B are being merged into one)
WIP-3: Scorch marks. (Started in 2003, and which I've just resumed.)
Jonathan
Ric Locke
> In message <o7es0s6kevqv$.2032r57h...@40tude.net>, Ric Locke
> <warl...@hyperusa.com> writes
>>On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:31:45 +0000, Helen Hall wrote:
>>
>>> I don't know whether your world *would* have physicians. Just as
>>> ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
>>> until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
>>> schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
>>> poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
>>
>>Helen, you're a good person, but this is the sort of thing that diverts
>>threads into politics, or runs people off who get tired of gritting
>>their teeth. You are also easily intelligent enough to reflect for a
>>moment and get an inkling of why.
>>
> Your comment has been noted. I will add "social history" to the long
> list of things that can no longer be mentioned on this group for fear of
> starting a flame war.
>
> How we're supposed to do world building here any more, I don't know.
>
> Helen
> (Of to write some words in the WIP)
Evidently I was mistaken. Carry on.
Suzanne Blom
"Crowfoot" <page...@swcp.com> wrote in message
news:pagemail-DCF6C1...@iruka.swcp.com...
>
> Well -- depends on who "we" are. To many people all over the
> world, some sorts of magic are a cultural given, usually the very
> basic stuff like finding out who has cursed you so that you've
> fallen ill, figuring out what dead Grandma needs to satisfy her
> so her ghost won't come around making trouble, producing good
> luck procedures and objects or procedures for purifying a dwelling
> (new or old), insuring good crops and human fertility -- it's all
> over the place, once you move back a bit to take in the world of
> not-Europe and not-US; and it coexists with greater or lesser
> degrees of modern technology and medicine (as in the case of
> South American and Mongolian-area shamans, Tibet, most of
> Asia, especially once you get out of the cities).
>
> Our own (Western, I'm assuming) history is by no means free
> of magic, if you read accounts written at the time of events, not
> the re-interpretations of historians of the modern era. For that
> matter, there are great numbers of Westerners who now seem to
> believe in magic -- people who pay Feng Shui masters to come
> align the stuff in their houses, people who pray and make
> sacrifices to "Saints" in hopes of supernatural intervention -- I
> think it's very limiting to think of the West's modern history as
> *only* the history of the Enlightenment, plus the Industrial
> Revolution and Darwin etc. Most people of Darwin's time -- not
> most *intellectuals" but most *people* -- did not read Darwin.
>
> For that matter, many otherwise modern Americans put their
> iPods aside and go to revival meetings at which entirely magical
> healings are believed (by the participants) to take place .
> History may go the way of the guys with the biggest cannon, but
> to *most people* in that history -- who live their lives out of
> earshot of those cannon and often don't hear the "news" of a
> momentous battle until years later if ever -- magic is still very
> powerful.
>
> This may be changing as electronic communication bind us all
> tighter together and Western materialism trumps all (among
> the young, at least), but judging by what I saw last year in
> Thailand -- a place in which technology is galloping hand in
> hand with economics AND a teeming pantheon of gods, spirits,
> and powers of all kinds -- magic still rules much of the behavior
> of population at large. Moreso, I hear, in rural Indonesia,
> Korea, and for that matter, Japan, among other places.
>
> I think many writers who are interested in magic could benefit
> by reading less fantasy fiction and more reportage about magic
> as it survives in the world we live in; because it does, side by
> side with helicopters, sunglasses, and laptops, and you get a
> good idea of what effects magic (or the belief in it, which to the
> people involved is the same thing) has on social and economic
> life.
>
>> What I'm wondering about here is, is there some way for early magic
>> users to develope into tyrant mage-rulers? Why should nobles rule
>> (how did your world get the nobles in the first place), instead of
>> the mages?
>
> In traditional magic in the "real" world, the practice of magic is so
> consuming and so damned *dangerous* to the practitioner that
> "ruling" doesn't enter into it: just surviving the doing of your job
> while still remaining sufficiently linked to your community to
> be accepted/protected by it, does.
There is a fascinating scene in one anthropology book where the
anthropologist who has apprenticed herself to a local magic-worker realizes
the reason the guy sitting next to her is pale and sweaty and generally
looking scared half to death or sick is because she has been apprenticed
long enough that she _has to_ have magic powers, and he is terrified of her.
She also eventually realizes that the guy she's apprenticed to has taken on
such a dangerous occupation because, in his society, he has no choice.
Suzanne Blom
>
> I ran into an interesting comment in a book by a British
> woman traveling in the pre-World War I Ottoman
> Middle East. She remarked that the base population of
> Muslim Arabs never minded what various foreign
> visitors did or believed, as they were accustomed to
> being visited by men with of different cultures from
> other nearby nations. They would shrug and say, "Oh,
> that's just his way", meaning the custom or belief of
> the stranger's home population. Hospitality imposed
> a tolerance that has, sadly, been completely shredded
> in modern times.
>
Hockenberry has this assumption is blown out of the water. In one case, a
guy shouting "Death to Americans" decides to help him by pushing his
wheelchair. Hockenberry asks cautiously why he's helping if he wants all
Americans to die. The guy replies that what he really means is "Death to the
American Government" but that's too unwieldy to chant.
Jo Walton
> In article <jf0dt2tf08b6gc8sc...@4ax.com>,
>> >
>> >I figure healers are something like one in a thousand to
>> >one in ten thousand.
>>
>> "Physicians and surgeons held about 567,000 jobs in 2004" This works
>> out to 1 physician to a little over 500 population. So your rough
>> guess could well make magical healers equivalent to modern
>> specialists, with non-mage physicians doing most of the medical work.
>> OTOH, how much better is a healing mage vs a non-mage physician in
>> your world? A big difference would tend to give healing mages a high
>> status, and encourage people with marginal healing-mage talents to go
>> into that field.
>
> A good healer is much better--can, for instance, heal a wound in
> minutes. But they are probably rare.
>
> One of the points made at some length is that magic isn't very strong.
> So a good healer isn't someone who can heal everything wrong with a sick
> person, it's someone who can tell what the one crucial thing wrong is,
> fix that, and then let the rest heal itself. So for anything much beyond
> cuts, being a good healer requires both talent and training.
It seems to me that if this is the case you'd have ordinary doctors who
would deal with ordinary things and refer people to magical healers for
the things unfixable by ordinary methods -- or sometimes for diagnosis.
You mentioned that they can see inside people -- that's equivalent to the
invention of the x-ray, and would be hugely revolutionary for surgery. If
they can heal cuts -- if they can *only* heal cuts -- that would also make
surgery much more viable at a much lower tech level, because a healed
incision isn't going to become infected. What I think you'd have is
"hospitals" where magical and non-magical healers work together, perhaps
with a mundane surgeon being guided where to cut and what to remove by a
magical assistant who then closes the wound without sutures. I've been
thinking of things like appendicitis, but consider cancer!
--
Jo
I kissed a kif at Kefk
Erol K. Bayburt
<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>In article <1171738404.9...@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com>,
> jam...@echeque.com wrote:
>
>> Helen Hall
>> > Just as
>> > ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
>> > until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
>> > schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
>> > poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
>>
>> Ah yes, everyone knows that before the good and wise progressives took
>> control, everything was utterly hellish, and only your benevolent and
>> wise intervention saved us.
>
>Note "or insurance schemes," which are, or at least can be, an entirely
>free market approach to the system. I think Helen exaggerates the
>situation in the past a good deal; there seems to have been a
>considerable period in U.S. history where doctors were available to much
>of the population despite the lack of either government health care or
>private health insurance. But her description doesn't necessarily limit
>progress to the policies recommended by "progressives."
The big problem I have with Helen's post is that her "until the advent
of nationalized health care systems or insurance" was a *gratuitous*
political comment, unnecessary to her point. Her implication that
there is necessarily a binary class division between "rich" and "poor"
is equally political, but much less inflammatory here because it bears
on her point and isn't just a gratuitous aside.
Tim S
> I think the effect of wealth distribution on societies is indeed
> one interesting element in wealth building.
I didn't realise social history was so profitable ...
Tim
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <1171738404.9...@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com>,
> jam...@echeque.com wrote:
>
> > Helen Hall
> > > Just as
> > > ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
> > > until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
> > > schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
> > > poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
> >
> > Ah yes, everyone knows that before the good and wise progressives took
> > control, everything was utterly hellish, and only your benevolent and
> > wise intervention saved us.
>
> Note "or insurance schemes," which are, or at least can be, an entirely
> free market approach to the system. I think Helen exaggerates the
> situation in the past a good deal; there seems to have been a
> considerable period in U.S. history where doctors were available to much
> of the population despite the lack of either government health care or
> private health insurance. But her description doesn't necessarily limit
> progress to the policies recommended by "progressives."
I thought Helen was making an observation about English (or British)
history. There is an ambiguity whether "nationalised" applies to
insurance schemes, but ISTM unimportant. Whether a free market approach
would provide better access than a nationalised health care system is a
separate question, and not one that Helen was addressing (AIUI).
It might have been better to substitute "accessible" for "nationalised":
from my naive notions of UK history (which is relevant as a *reader* of
fiction) the high cost of access to doctors was due to their monopoly
and self-accreditation. (I.e. it was like a guild.)
AIUI, apothecaries were limited in what they were allowed to do, but
would have been the first port of call for poorer people. (What period
are we talking about anyway?)
I don't think she was talking about US history at all and certainly not
US politics. Reacting to her post as a political red rag seems
oversensistive to me.
Here's a test case: the Swiss have a high standard of living.
How many USians read that as a personal insult, or criticism of America?
From where I'm sitting, Ric's reaction is similar to that. Ok, so
Helen's post takes it for granted that *our* (the UK) health system is a
Good Thing. But that's what most people over here believe (right or
wrong). It's just what they assume. Complaining about it is to insist
that all discussion has to adopt one true world view (which is
different).
The bottom line, as I see it, is "the rich will be able to afford your
magical healers and the poor will just have to heal naturally or die."
This is based on (her understanding of) UK history. It's also what I
believed (I don't know if it is wrong or not).
David quite reasonably disagrees: "I think Helen exaggerates the
situation in the past a good deal" but bases his objection on *US*
history.
That sounds to me like a good opportunity for some interesting
world-building discussion. Suppose they are both right? What makes the
difference?
Jonathan
David Friedman
Jo Walton <j...@localhost.localdomain> wrote:
That might exist. But remember that the general technology is at a
pre-modern level, which restricts population density some and transport
a lot. So although there might be the sort of hospital you describe in a
large city, most of the population is much more dispersed and so likely
to have access to healers, if at all, on a much smaller scale or very
intermittently.
Your point about surgery is a good one. But note that it depends on the
presence of a healer who can heal cuts, and with that level of control
it might be possible to get the effect of surgery without an incision.
Destroying a tumor might be easier than cutting it out and then healing
the incision.
An argument in favor of hospitals is that different healers have
different talents and heal in different ways. So the mage who could do
the equivalent of surgery might be useless against contagious disease.
It's implied early on that plagues do occur; one motivation for my male
protagonist in developing the magical procedure he then tries to
suppress is to make enough magic available to one mage so that a plague
could be stopped before it spread too far. Pretty clearly, it can't be
done now--not because no healer can cure any disease but because it's
hard enough and suitable healers are rare enough that once the disease
starts to spread not enough can be done to stop it.
David Friedman
Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 09:47:48 -0800, David Friedman
> <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
> >> Another point: why would non-magical healers have developed at all if
> >> magical healing is seen as the way things are done? Unless some of the
> >> village women's cures were found to work reliably. They would then be
> >> cheaper than calling in a professional healer, so may be adopted more
> >> widely.
> >
> >Because magical healing depends on rare talents, making healers uncommon
> >enough so that there is a demand for alternative ways of dealing with
> >medical problems.
>
> The obvious alternatives to getting a magical healer are "do nothing"
> and "self treatment" (which may amount to "do nothing" depending on
> what's wrong). A non-magical physician (or whatever he or she is
> called) will need to be of *some* benefit over
> do-nothing/self-treatment in order to be a viable alternative.
I gather that until early in the 20th centuries, physicians couldn't
heal most things that were wrong with people, although there were a few
exceptions. Lewis Thomas, in _The Youngest Science_, describes his
father as telling him that for the most part all a doctor could do was
predict--tell the patient whether what was bothering him was likely to
kill him or would probably be over in a week.
> Another question: How easy would it be for a fraud to claim to be a
> magical healer?
An able mage could easily tell whether the fraud was a mage at all. In
the absence of an able mage, it would still be hard to pull off, since
some of the things healers do are fairly striking, such as healing a cut.
On the other hand, a poorly trained mage might get away with claiming to
be a competent healer for a fair while. She could do a few real things
that were visible, and would show as a mage to another mage.
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> David quite reasonably disagrees: "I think Helen exaggerates the
> situation in the past a good deal" but bases his objection on *US*
> history.
Actually, part of my disagreement--I'm not sure if in the post you are
quoting--was based on British (Boswell) and continental (Casanova)
history.
I think Ric had a legitimate point that bringing in the issue of
nationalized health care was an unnecessary temptation to political
argument; the fact that Helen's view is widely shared among Britons
doesn't strike me as relevant to that. But the more general point of her
post raised interesting questions.
David Friedman
Tim S <T...@timsilverman.demon.co.uk> wrote:
It's simple. You write the same novel twice, one in a version in which
the society is going to hell and is only saved by steeply progressive
taxation used to fund massive income redistribution, one in a version in
which the society is doing wonderfully and is almost destroyed by by
steeply progressive taxation used to fund massive income redistribution,
taking care to file off the necessary serial numbers so that you can
market it as two different books.
One of them is picked up by the political left, which orders a hundred
thousand copies to distribute and arranges for you to be paid ten
thousand dollars per lecture to lecture at campuses, the other is picked
up by the political right, which orders a hundred thousand copies to
distribute and arranges for you to be hired by the Heritage Institute at
a six figure salary.
Graham Woodland
> In message <o7es0s6kevqv$.2032r57h...@40tude.net>, Ric Locke
> <warl...@hyperusa.com> writes
>>On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:31:45 +0000, Helen Hall wrote:
>>
>>> I don't know whether your world *would* have physicians. Just as
>>> ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
>>> until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
>>> schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
>>> poor will just have to heal naturally or die.
>>
>>Helen, you're a good person, but this is the sort of thing that diverts
>>threads into politics, or runs people off who get tired of gritting
>>their teeth. You are also easily intelligent enough to reflect for a
>>moment and get an inkling of why.
>>
> Your comment has been noted. I will add "social history" to the long
> list of things that can no longer be mentioned on this group for fear of
> starting a flame war.
>
> How we're supposed to do world building here any more, I don't know.
>
> Helen
> (Of to write some words in the WIP)
>
Which is always a good thing to do... [Looks over shoulder at Muse
nervously.]
Here follows some magical medico-social rambling, which I don't think ought
to prove particularly flameworthy.
Keeping strictly to worldbuilding-relevant social history, I think your
claim is perceptibly too restrictive to be a good guide. After all, our
world, and even our country, *did* have physicians of diverse schools, even
in loci where health insurance of any kind was simply not a concept.
Medicine was active and varied way, way back, however limited general
access to it may have been. Now, *from this alone*, I'd expect a world
where magic is a rare talent to have mundane physicians too -- even if they
might be looked down on as jumped-up 'horse doctors', and perhaps be pretty
much that. Still beats nothing by a long chalk -- and I bet that poor
people would pay for their services, either in cash or kind. Consider the
value of someone as relatively limited as a competent manual bonesetter to
someone who earns their bread with their hands, for instance.
Actually, that's a strong worldbuilding possibility: even rich people aren't
likely to have routinely used magical healing for their herds or stables,
for instance, unless they were *very* rich and extravagant indeed. So
you'd still have horse-doctors and the like about, and it would be natural
for some of them to... extend their market.
If, as in our world, there are widespread traditions of human slave-trading,
we can even see strong reason to assume that human-specialised
'horse-doctors' could have emerged. Slavers, after all, pretty much by
definition regard their victims as essentially livestock, and it can be
assumed that where they bother with medicine it will be cheap,
rough-and-ready, and veterinary in spirit. This suggests a possible
origin, and associations, for mundane medicine that could give it a real
social stigma by comparison to the magical.
Then there's battlefield-surgeons and barbers and such. And herbalists and
other folk-medics. And snake-oil salesmen of both magical and mundane
kinds, just to confuse the picture, of course.
Feudal lords, or early industrialists, might well find it an extremely good
idea to keep a healer (mundane, magical, or both) about the place on
retainer -- in which case it would certainly pay them to offer their
services to their servants, rather than just maintain the physician in
idleness most of the time. If we are talking superior magical healing,
might that not have significant effects on the social order? I can see an
argument that hierarchies would be strengthened, social reforms slowed, and
independent livelihoods for those of modest means looking a lot less
attractive.[1] Of course, if the healing is really that much better than
in our world, craft gilds might counter by making that a benefit anyway.
(Does anyone know if medical services were ever a gild benefit in our own
late-mediaeval/ Renaissance eras?)
And might there not be charitable hospitals where healers (of any kind)
might have put in some time out of altruism, religious obligation, penance,
practice, or because they might get to try some 'cures' that they really
didn't want to risk pioneering on the rich and powerful?
Sure, it would suck to be poor in a world without modern healthcare, but
this is hardly news. Given the quality of a lot of what even the rich used
to pay to have dished out to them, the main difference with magical healing
would seem to be that *they* at least would be getting a much better deal
than anyone at all in a comparable era in our timeline. I think I've made
a fair argument above for the plausibility of these benefits being spread
around in other circles, some of them quite lowly -- and for the
consequences not being uniformly benign.
An even more interesting possibility to consider is that -- magic usually
being rather less than an exact science -- that premodern healing magic is
*at least as iffy* as premodern 'scientific' medicine. I'm not actually
sure I've seen that used, at least not seriously: more typically Healers
are either like modern medics or miracle-working saints, or some cross
between the two, and achieve results in the appropriate range.
And what if some diseases are not susceptible to magical cure -- either
because they are strongly magical themselves, or because of unpleasant
side-effects intrinsic to the particular magical operations that would be
needed? What, for that matter, if some diseases were inherently subject
*only* to magical cure - or had magical means of transmission? Either of
these circumstances could upset the applecart so completely that you could
probably tune things to get pretty much whatever medico-sociological
outcomes you wanted.
[1] Confession time for me: In my own world of Daea, the Western superpower
of Ambria both benefits and suffers from something like this, in both
medicine and agriculture. If you have to be incarnated as a completely
random inhabitant of some fantasy setting or other, Ambria about the reign
of Arien Openhand is one of the best bets you will find. But even for a
fantasy setting, it isn't what you might call very progressive...
--
Cheers,
Gray
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <1htp37m.1wgq6v91c5geqwN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid>,
> sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
>
> > David quite reasonably disagrees: "I think Helen exaggerates the
> > situation in the past a good deal" but bases his objection on *US*
> > history.
>
> Actually, part of my disagreement--I'm not sure if in the post you are
> quoting--was based on British (Boswell) and continental (Casanova)
> history.
>
> I think Ric had a legitimate point that bringing in the issue of
Where I disagree is that she "brought in the issue of". Mentioning a
fact, the reality of something, is not raising it as an issue, any more
than mentioning that it's the Chinese (lunar) new year tomorrow
introduces the issue of whether the moon is made of green cheese or not.
In the part of my post that you snipped, I agreed that she could have
worded her post differently. The first time round I resisted the urge to
follow up, but what I am objecting to here is a *requirement* to word
her post differently. What I am claiming is that it is *oversensitive*
to read into her post a political message.
Let a Brit talk about the NHS without treating it as propaganda. It's
here. It exists. People here (mostly) like it. Asking whether they
should, or whether some other system is better: *that* is politics (or
economics <g>).
> nationalized health care was an unnecessary temptation to political
> argument; the fact that Helen's view is widely shared among Britons
> doesn't strike me as relevant to that.
It's relevant because it renders the political content invisible (to
me). I would never have noticed it if Ric hadn't responded. And I don't
even share the assumption that it's a good thing.
Since my last post, Ric has said he was mistaken. Good for him: I agree
that he was, if not mistaken, overly sensitive to a non-issue.
Jonathan
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <er7nt8$t18$1$830f...@news.demon.co.uk>,
> Tim S <T...@timsilverman.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > David Friedman wrote:
> > > I think the effect of wealth distribution on societies is indeed
> > > one interesting element in wealth building.
> > _____________________________^^^^^^
> >
> > I didn't realise social history was so profitable ...
>
> It's simple. You write the same novel twice, one in a version in which
> the society is going to hell and is only saved by steeply progressive
> taxation used to fund massive income redistribution, one in a version in
> which the society is doing wonderfully and is almost destroyed by by
> steeply progressive taxation used to fund massive income redistribution,
> taking care to file off the necessary serial numbers so that you can
> market it as two different books.
>
> One of them is picked up by the political left, which orders a hundred
> thousand copies to distribute and arranges for you to be paid ten
> thousand dollars per lecture to lecture at campuses, the other is picked
> up by the political right, which orders a hundred thousand copies to
> distribute and arranges for you to be hired by the Heritage Institute at
> a six figure salary.
Which is more profitable $10K lectures, or six figure salary?
(I assume you'd like to do both, but if you had to choose ...?)
Jonathan
Crowfoot
> > consuming and so damned *dangerous* to the practitioner that
> > "ruling" doesn't enter into it: just surviving the doing of your job
> > while still remaining sufficiently linked to your community to
> > be accepted/protected by it, does.
>
> There is a fascinating scene in one anthropology book where the
> anthropologist who has apprenticed herself to a local magic-worker realizes
> the reason the guy sitting next to her is pale and sweaty and generally
> looking scared half to death or sick is because she has been apprenticed
> long enough that she _has to_ have magic powers, and he is terrified of her.
> She also eventually realizes that the guy she's apprenticed to has taken on
> such a dangerous occupation because, in his society, he has no choice.
This is a *very* common pattern in literature about shamanism.
The shaman is *called* to his or her profession by dreams or
omens or prophecy, and usually resists (because the conditions
that go along with it are onerous and it's commonly known to be
dangerous). So the poor candidate, usually still a pre-pubescent,
comes down with a terrible illness that nearly kills her but at
length recovers, and proceeds to knuckle under and fill the damn
post, starting off with the magical song that he has acquired in
the depths of her struggle with the disease (usually described as
some sort of fit with coma-like intervals). The more you resist,
the more sickness attacks you, until you give in.
Whereupon you get to live *outside* the village all by yourself
(you're probably believed to have taken a spirit wife or two as
part of your dealings with spirits, and not too many women
crave life with a powerful outcast who has scary and probably
jealous spirit wives dropping in). You wear all kinds of magical
(read: protective) tokens about your person, most of which are
made of dead animal parts, so you tend to smell pretty bad as
well.
If you're very successful, some of this abates, and you may live
a more normal life; on the other hand, you will also attract the
attention of rival magicians, and nobody wants to be anywhere
near you if the shaman across the river is shooting invisible
illness-and-accident arrows at you, so you may end up living
alone outside of town anyway. If you prosper too apparently
while people in your village aren't doing so well, you may be
suspected of turning your spirit alliances to witchcraft, in which
case your own people will go find another shaman to take you
down a peg, or maybe just murder you and replace you with a
younger, more biddable candidate whom they won't have to
pay so well. Etc.
For more background, there's a large literature by westerners
who walked in on the last manifestations of healthy and
respected shamanism in Central and Northern Asia, and of
course the (possibly fictional, in whole or in part) accounts by
Carlos Castaneda of his sojourns with "Don Juan" in Northern
Mexico. He may have made it all up, but he *was* a student
of the anthropology of the area, so we can assume that he
made use of at least some of the common beliefs and practices
he'd seen or read about, however colorfully exaggerated.
SMC
Crowfoot
"Suzanne Blom" <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
Ah, neat story! Thanks!
SMC
David Friedman
Crowfoot <page...@swcp.com> wrote:
> For more background, there's a large literature by westerners
> who walked in on the last manifestations of healthy and
> respected shamanism in Central and Northern Asia, and of
> course the (possibly fictional, in whole or in part) accounts by
> Carlos Castaneda of his sojourns with "Don Juan" in Northern
> Mexico. He may have made it all up, but he *was* a student
> of the anthropology of the area, so we can assume that he
> made use of at least some of the common beliefs and practices
> he'd seen or read about, however colorfully exaggerated.
There are other sources for information on Amerinds, of course. I think
there's a bit in _The Cheyenne Way_ and more in the relevant chapters of
_The Law of Primitive Man_ by Hoebel.
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
Depends on what six figures for how long, and how many lectures. The
lectures fit my lifestyle better; I don't want to have to live in D.C.
Jonathan L Cunningham
> And what if some diseases are not susceptible to magical cure -- either
> because they are strongly magical themselves, or because of unpleasant
> side-effects intrinsic to the particular magical operations that would be
> needed? What, for that matter, if some diseases were inherently subject
> *only* to magical cure - or had magical means of transmission?
Interesting points.
It depends a *lot* on how magic works, though.
Is demonic possession an example of a magical disease?
If all magic is done by "psychic powers" then would magical diseases be
mostly like auto-immune diseases? Something people do to themselves?
In a magic-as-technology framework, what would cause a magical disease?
Jonathan
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> Let a Brit talk about the NHS without treating it as propaganda. It's
> here. It exists. People here (mostly) like it. Asking whether they
> should, or whether some other system is better: *that* is politics (or
> economics
Except that the claim that only the rich had access to health care until
the NHS came in is more than the observation that the NHS existed; it's
an argument about whether it ought to exist. That's less clear if you
interpret her reference to "insurance" as referring to private
insurance, but I'm not at all sure that was her meaning.
To see the point, imagine we switch sides, and replace her comment with
something about how nationalizing health care produced long waiting
lines, with some people dying before they got care. That also is an
observation about the NHS--how true a one I don't know, but certainly an
argument that gets made on the other side of the controversy.
I've been googling around for data on medical care in 19th c. Britain.
So far the best figure I have found is:
"At the turn of the century the GMC register held 35,650 names
altogether, including 6580 in military and imperial service."
(GMC=General Medical Council)
That's about one doctor per thousand of population--a bit worse if you
don't include the military and imperial. For 1998 the figure was 1.7. I
find it hard to believe that those figures are consistent with the idea
that between the two dates the market for medical services increased
from only the rich to the entire population.
Of course, to be fair, although there was no NHS in 1900 there were
hospitals funded by local governments; I don't know what fraction of
physicians worked in them.
Graham Woodland
> Graham Woodland <gr...@quilpole.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> And what if some diseases are not susceptible to magical cure -- either
>> because they are strongly magical themselves, or because of unpleasant
>> side-effects intrinsic to the particular magical operations that would be
>> needed? What, for that matter, if some diseases were inherently subject
>> *only* to magical cure - or had magical means of transmission?
>
> Interesting points.
>
> It depends a *lot* on how magic works, though.
>
> Is demonic possession an example of a magical disease?
>
Debatable. Demons are generally considered to be sapient spirits, so I'd
consider it something more like hostile attack. If however the demon, once
ensconced, can fork copies of itself and spread plaguewise through the
population, I think people would so consider it. (c.f. Eric Frank
Russell's SFnal take on the theme, _Three to Conquer_).
> If all magic is done by "psychic powers" then would magical diseases be
> mostly like auto-immune diseases? Something people do to themselves?
>
I think so. Tawn, the protagonist of my novella _Eyebright_, suffers from
magical powers that behave remarkably like a severe auto-immune syndrome.
Being magical and founded in her own mind, they tend to have a ghastly
surrealistic aptness. The heroic healer Kandakay Kaoring makes a guest
appearance in this story and apparently cures her, though she is not wholly
correct about the cause of the problem. I've never got round to telling
the story in which it's finally identified and resolved, though Tawn
ultimately becomes a Very Important Person in that history, and I'm
distinctly fond of her.
> In a magic-as-technology framework, what would cause a magical disease?
>
Hocus-pocus-as-pathology? In a word, come up with a magical metaphor for
the functioning of a healthy mind and body, and then suitable metaphors
like 'blocked channels' or 'clouded auras' or 'psychic contamination from
the Plane of Negative Vibrations'. For the sake of narrative dignity,
however, please avoid magical systems in which it will be appropriate to
cast things like the Spell of the Spiritual Suppository...
--
Cheers,
Gray
David Friedman
Graham Woodland <gr...@quilpole.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Then there's battlefield-surgeons and barbers and such. And herbalists and
> other folk-medics. And snake-oil salesmen of both magical and mundane
> kinds, just to confuse the picture, of course.
One point worth noting is that, if the ratio of healers to troops in an
army is on the rough order of one to a thousand, you are going to want
quite a lot of part time non-magical healers to deal with the aftermath
of a battle.
> Feudal lords, or early industrialists, might well find it an extremely good
> idea to keep a healer (mundane, magical, or both) about the place on
> retainer -- in which case it would certainly pay them to offer their
> services to their servants, rather than just maintain the physician in
> idleness most of the time.
That, in fact, is my assumption about one of the two healers who
actually gets mentioned in the WIR>
> If we are talking superior magical healing,
> might that not have significant effects on the social order? I can see an
> argument that hierarchies would be strengthened, social reforms slowed, and
> independent livelihoods for those of modest means looking a lot less
> attractive.[1]
I don't think so. After all, the healer is a cost to the nobleman and a
benefit to the servant so, in effect, payment in kind. The independently
employed should be able to buy similar benefits at a similar cost. There
might be some economy of scale issues, but it's hard to see why the
feudal lord providing healing for his people would be at a large
advantage over the alternative of a healer selling services to lots of
self-employed individuals.
> Of course, if the healing is really that much better than
> in our world, craft gilds might counter by making that a benefit anyway.
> (Does anyone know if medical services were ever a gild benefit in our own
> late-mediaeval/ Renaissance eras?)
Why does it have to be through a guild? It seems to me that your view
may be distorted by the odd systems for providing medical care at
present--insurance paid in the U.S., government paid in various other
countries. Why not assume that healing is sold just as other services
are to the individual purchaser, with perhaps some element of insurance
in the terms of the deal between healer and patient?
>
> And might there not be charitable hospitals where healers (of any kind)
> might have put in some time out of altruism, religious obligation, penance,
> practice, or because they might get to try some 'cures' that they really
> didn't want to risk pioneering on the rich and powerful?
Sounds plausible. My protagonist and a colleague use one of the
colleague's students in an experiment, although not one involving
healing magic. The protagonist is worried about possible consequences
for the student; the colleague isn't.
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
This raises a different, but also interesting issue. If we assume magic
exists, how much do we change our assumptions about the nature of the
world? Are many living creatures the product of some clever magician
rather than Darwinian evolution, for instance?
Along similar lines, I very faintly hint in the WIR that the Salamander
may be what keeps the sun going. I have no idea how big the sun is or
how far away or whether the sun goes around the earth or vice versa.
Brian M. Scott
<gr...@quilpole.demon.co.uk> wrote in
<news:er7u1k$qro$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> For the sake of narrative dignity, however, please avoid
> magical systems in which it will be appropriate to cast
> things like the Spell of the Spiritual Suppository...
Might be fun to make it a supposititious spell.
Brian
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <1htp656.tgn0bf1dc2hxhN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid>,
> sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
>
> > Let a Brit talk about the NHS without treating it as propaganda. It's
> > here. It exists. People here (mostly) like it. Asking whether they
> > should, or whether some other system is better: *that* is politics (or
> > economics
>
> Except that the claim that only the rich had access to health care until
> the NHS came in is more than the observation that the NHS existed; it's
> an argument about whether it ought to exist.
No. That's almost one of the earliest conclusions in ethics: you can't
go from what is, to what ought to be. Deontic axioms need to be added
separately.
In any case, even with an axiom that more people "ought" to have access
to health care, it still doesn't follow.
Analogy: "green light has a longer wavelength than blue" says nothing
about red light. Similarly, saying that the NHS benefited anyone says
nothing about whether some alternative system might be even better.
> I've been googling around for data on medical care in 19th c. Britain.
> So far the best figure I have found is:
>
> "At the turn of the century the GMC register held 35,650 names
> altogether, including 6580 in military and imperial service."
Something I came across while googling about something else today:
: Earnings of Barristers and Physicians: A "rising barrister" in 1850
: could have an annual income of £5000. The 2002 relative value of these
: earnings was £351,251 via the CPI, and £478,552 according to the GDP
: deflator. The barrister's earnings relative to average earnings was
: certainly greater in 1850 than in 2002; for the 2002 relative value
: using average earnings was £3,072,330. The barrister's income relative
: to the total economy loomed larger in 1850 than in 2002: the
: per-capita-GDP relative value was £4,255,383; and the GDP relative
: value £9,153,773. In comparison, "a doctor with a fairly fashionable
: practice" might earn £1000-£2000 in 1850 versus the £5000 of the
: barrister. Relative values for a physician's income would
: correspondingly be 20-40 percent of those of the barrister.
So the GDP relative value of a physician's income would be around £1M or
more per annum. This is considerably more than present day physician's
salaries[*] (for "a doctor with a fairly fashionable practice").
I don't think the difference in earnings is insignificant.
The site was www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/index.php
if you are interested.
Jonathan
[*] And not many barristers earn £10M a year either!
Ric Locke
I have a WNIP in which magical ability is congenital, with pubertal onset.
One of the reasons it's no longer in progress is that I realized I needed
to do worldbuilding 'way beyond "generic pseudomedieval" to make it work,
and at the moment I don't have the chops. But in that one, there are lots
of animals (and monsters) which are the result of magic rather than Darwin
(or God). Many of them used to be other things, including people. Consider,
for instance, the effect of conferring strong magical ability on a thirteen
or fourteen year old... most such modifications wouldn't work; the monster
would not survive. But just by chance some of them would.
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <1htp656.tgn0bf1dc2hxhN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid>,
> > sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> >
> > > Let a Brit talk about the NHS without treating it as propaganda. It's
> > > here. It exists. People here (mostly) like it. Asking whether they
> > > should, or whether some other system is better: *that* is politics (or
> > > economics
> >
> > Except that the claim that only the rich had access to health care until
> > the NHS came in is more than the observation that the NHS existed; it's
> > an argument about whether it ought to exist.
>
> No. That's almost one of the earliest conclusions in ethics: you can't
> go from what is, to what ought to be. Deontic axioms need to be added
> separately.
As David Hume famously observed. But given the existence of shared
normative views, positive assertions lead to normative conclusions. And
in practice, many arguments about what ought to be take the form of
disputes about positive questions, because each side is making positive
claims that, if true, imply the normative conclusion given either side's
normative beliefs.
Do you mean the per-capita GDP relative? I can't see that the GDP
relative figure is relevant to anything. I would have thought the
average earnings figure was the most relevant of the ones you gave.
And I'm not sure that the earnings of doctors at the top of the scale
tell us much about the cost of medical care for people with average
incomes.
Suzanne Blom
society in question, it was widowers who were believed to have magic power
with all its attendent inconveniences.
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <1htpbp0.1jlgngi1tm2pn4N%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid>,
> sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> > Something I came across while googling about something else today:
> >
> > : Earnings of Barristers and Physicians: A "rising barrister" in 1850
> > : could have an annual income of £5000. The 2002 relative value of these
> > : earnings was £351,251 via the CPI, and £478,552 according to the GDP
> > : deflator. The barrister's earnings relative to average earnings was
> > : certainly greater in 1850 than in 2002; for the 2002 relative value
> > : using average earnings was £3,072,330. The barrister's income relative
> > : to the total economy loomed larger in 1850 than in 2002: the
> > : per-capita-GDP relative value was £4,255,383; and the GDP relative
> > : value £9,153,773. In comparison, "a doctor with a fairly fashionable
> > : practice" might earn £1000-£2000 in 1850 versus the £5000 of the
> > : barrister. Relative values for a physician's income would
> > : correspondingly be 20-40 percent of those of the barrister.
> >
> > So the GDP relative value of a physician's income would be around £1M or
> > more per annum. This is considerably more than present day physician's
> > salaries[*] (for "a doctor with a fairly fashionable practice").
>
> Do you mean the per-capita GDP relative? I can't see that the GDP
> relative figure is relevant to anything. I would have thought the
> average earnings figure was the most relevant of the ones you gave.
Yes, the per-capita figure makes more sense. I just quoted the largest
figure from the extract without thinking about it: my excuse is that I
included the whole extract, so laziness is partially excusable.
The per-capita figure still makes my point.
Probably the most relevant figure is the "relative to average earnings"
figure. Except that "average earnings" doesn't tell us a lot, particular
if a small percentage of people have very high earnings. More useful
would be "relative to median earnings". Or "relative to 40th percentile
earnings" etc. :-).
> And I'm not sure that the earnings of doctors at the top of the scale
> tell us much about the cost of medical care for people with average
> incomes.
I don't think these *are* the top of the scale. A "rising" barrister is
presumably not top of his scale. A "fairly fashionable practice" is
presumably not top of the medical scale.
I read the extract as being typical, something that doctors and
barristers could reasonably aspire to (i.e. probably above the median,
but not exceptional).
Anyway, the conclusion I drew was that, even if doctors are 0.1% of the
population and that is a similar figure to now, if their incomes are
that high, I conclude (am I obviously wrong?) that they get their income
by spending more time on relatively few *very* rich people, rather than
spreading their time over a larger number of poor people.
This doesn't tell us the costs of medical care for average people: it
does suggest that they didn't buy their medical care from accredited
doctors.
These conclusions are consistent with my (limited) knowledge of actual
history, but I can't say more than that, except that it suggests we
should extend our enquiries beyond doctors, to other kinds of medical
practitioner. (I've already mentioned pharmacists [as apothecaries].)
Jonathan
Suzanne Blom
"Erol K. Bayburt" <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:qkmet2hilk95kacgf...@4ax.com...
not political, &, in fact, is rather like saying the sky is blue---Her
assumptions, understandings, &, in a real--ie social--sense, are different
than yours. Much of what any group believes is invisible to them while at
the same time glaringly obvious to others: Fish meet water.
David Friedman
"Suzanne Blom" <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
> > The big problem I have with Helen's post is that her "until the advent
> > of nationalized health care systems or insurance" was a *gratuitous*
> > political comment, unnecessary to her point. Her implication that
> > there is necessarily a binary class division between "rich" and "poor"
> > is equally political, but much less inflammatory here because it bears
> > on her point and isn't just a gratuitous aside.
> >
> & that is where the misunderstandings creep in. To her, that statement is
> not political, &, in fact, is rather like saying the sky is blue---Her
> assumptions, understandings, &, in a real--ie social--sense, are different
> than yours. Much of what any group believes is invisible to them while at
> the same time glaringly obvious to others: Fish meet water.
Which then brings up an obvious issue in a group like this. Suppose what
you regard as obviously true I regard as probably, perhaps demonstrably,
false. That probably applies to quite a lot of the historical beliefs
people hold, including many here.
By not responding I at least weakly signal that I too think it is
obviously true--silence signifies assent. By responding I am quite
likely to set off a political argument, since factual beliefs are
frequently linked to political beliefs, pretty much across the spectrum.
I suppose I could say "Note that I don't think any of that is true" and
leave it at that, but it seems uninformative and at least as combative
as actually responding to the factual claims.
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> > And I'm not sure that the earnings of doctors at the top of the scale
> > tell us much about the cost of medical care for people with average
> > incomes.
>
> I don't think these *are* the top of the scale. A "rising" barrister is
> presumably not top of his scale. A "fairly fashionable practice" is
> presumably not top of the medical scale.
Note that what it says is "a 'rising barrister' in 1850 *could have* an
annual income of £5000" (emphasis mine). That doesn't imply that it is
an average. Similarly "might earn" could mean the normal range, or it
could be the high part of the range, selected to make a point. One would
have to check the source to see.
My impression is that "fashionable practice" for physicians was
considerably better than most did--the objective they aspired to. But
that's an impression from reading fiction, not real data.
> I read the extract as being typical, something that doctors and
> barristers could reasonably aspire to (i.e. probably above the median,
> but not exceptional).
>
> Anyway, the conclusion I drew was that, even if doctors are 0.1% of the
> population and that is a similar figure to now, if their incomes are
> that high, I conclude (am I obviously wrong?) that they get their income
> by spending more time on relatively few *very* rich people, rather than
> spreading their time over a larger number of poor people.
That doesn't follow at all. Presumably, both then and now, doctors chose
how to spend their time largely, although not entirely, on the basis of
what paid best. You could just as easily argue that it shows that
doctors then had lots more patients, hence provided services further
down the income scale--there's an obvious tradeoff between number of
patients and payment per patient.
For what it's worth, another webbed source gives the typical income of
"Middle-class (doctors, lawyers, clerks)" as £300-800 in Victorian
England. http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/VictorianEngland.htm
That looks quite a lot lower than the figures you were quoting.
> This doesn't tell us the costs of medical care for average people: it
> does suggest that they didn't buy their medical care from accredited
> doctors.
Or they bought much less medical care--less doctor's time per year--than
modern people. Given how much less doctors could do then, quite aside
from other issues, that doesn't seem surprising. The number of doctors
per capita was a bit over half the modern figure.
> These conclusions are consistent with my (limited) knowledge of actual
> history, but I can't say more than that, except that it suggests we
> should extend our enquiries beyond doctors, to other kinds of medical
> practitioner. (I've already mentioned pharmacists [as apothecaries].)
--
Jonathan L Cunningham
> In article <12tf65p...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Suzanne Blom" <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
>
> > > The big problem I have with Helen's post is that her "until the advent
> > > of nationalized health care systems or insurance" was a *gratuitous*
> > > political comment, unnecessary to her point. Her implication that
> > > there is necessarily a binary class division between "rich" and "poor"
> > > is equally political, but much less inflammatory here because it bears
> > > on her point and isn't just a gratuitous aside.
> > >
> > & that is where the misunderstandings creep in. To her, that statement is
> > not political, &, in fact, is rather like saying the sky is blue---Her
> > assumptions, understandings, &, in a real--ie social--sense, are different
> > than yours. Much of what any group believes is invisible to them while at
> > the same time glaringly obvious to others: Fish meet water.
>
> Which then brings up an obvious issue in a group like this. Suppose what
> you regard as obviously true I regard as probably, perhaps demonstrably,
> false. That probably applies to quite a lot of the historical beliefs
> people hold, including many here.
>
> By not responding I at least weakly signal that I too think it is
> obviously true--silence signifies assent. By responding I am quite
All that is necessary to solve the problem is to adopt the convention
that silence weakly signals dissent. I.e. if you don't follow up to a
post, either you disagree or you are uninterested.
Then, it is only necessary to comment on something you disagree with in
a post to which you wish to respond to other parts for positive reasons.
In Real Life, this is quite common: make an unpopular comment, and there
will be an uneasy silence or people will change the subject. They do
*not* feel it necessary to verbally dissent. Silence does *not* signal
assent. (Silence can also signal lack of comprehension.)
It's not difficult.
(Actually, it's extraordinarily difficult in newsgroups. I wonder why?)
Jonathan
Dan Goodman
> In article <45d713c2$0$44189$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net>,
> "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
> > Crowfoot wrote:
> >
> > > Well -- depends on who "we" are.
> >
> > I think two things are getting confused here: the existence of
> > magic, and belief in it.
> >
> > David sees our world as one in which magic doesn't exist -- no
> > matter how many people believe in it.
>
> Yes, that's one of the elements that makes this kind of discussion
> a bit hazy sometimes.
>
> > Note: I think you underestimate the percentage of people in
> > American society who believe in magic.
>
> And the number of people who don't actively believe in it, but
> who are willing to be impressed by its reality/effectiveness in
> the lives of some others and even to try a bit of it themselves
> *without admitting* to any impairment of their own supposedly
> scientific understanding of the world.
>
> > They may call it nanotechnology,
> > Objectivism, nutritional science, scientific socialism, futurology,
> > or whatever -- but they're using the name of something non-magical
> > as a label for magic. At least half of what political
> > professionals believe about politics is magic, for example.
>
> Hmm. That definition depends on whose ox is being gored, I think,
> since there's lots you can't prove about aggregate human behavior
> in a strictly scientific sense (with double blinds, repeatable
> results, etc.). So some of that "magic" may in fact be
> scientifically sound \ -- only how do you prove which is or isn't,
> given that controlled experiments with entire populations are
> impossible?
Well, let's take nutrition. If there's a diet which is claimed to be
scientifically proven to reduce weight, and none of the people who try
it lose weight, but they all still endorse it, it's likely the diet
doesn't work.
On the other hand, when I first heard about calorie restricted diets as
a means of prolonging life, I didn't believe it. But the evidence says
it works. (Though oddly enough, the side-effects include being
constantly hungry.)
There's some evidence that certain oracles work better than the best
thinking of the oracle's users (the poison oracle, for example). The
theory used to explain this in non-magical terms is that sometimes
random choice works better. (Presumably, it's easier to use what's
thought of as an oracle than what's thought of as random choice.) This
probably wouldn't apply to oracles which require interpretation,
however.
> > Slight digression: "Dental healing" is one form of magic I find
> > odd. If you have amalgam fillings, the dental healer will turn
> > them into gold fillings -- not restore the teeth to full health.
>
> Yes, and that's an example of what I meant, above. People who
> laugh at voodoo will nonetheless urge upon you the (extremely
> expensive) replacement of all your old fillings with gold, although
> so far as I know, there's no substantiated evidence of any benefit
> -- but, they will tell you with great enthusiasm, they had it done
> and all their <x condition> has gone away (implied: as a result
> of the procedure).
I think there's a misunderstanding here. What happens in dental is
that a preacher performs the minor miracle of turning the old fillings
into gold. Not a dentist replacing the fillings.
In some cases, people are certain this has been done -- but dental
records show that the original fillings were gold.
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
future http://dangoodman.livejournal.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Marilee J. Layman
<Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
>The big problem I have with Helen's post is that her "until the advent
>of nationalized health care systems or insurance" was a *gratuitous*
>political comment, unnecessary to her point.
No, it's not. Do you know where she lives?
--
Marilee J. Layman
http://mjlayman.livejournal.com/
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> In Real Life, this is quite common: make an unpopular comment, and there
> will be an uneasy silence or people will change the subject. They do
> *not* feel it necessary to verbally dissent. Silence does *not* signal
> assent. (Silence can also signal lack of comprehension.)
>
> It's not difficult.
>
> (Actually, it's extraordinarily difficult in newsgroups. I wonder why?)
>
Make a generally accept comment and you also are likely to get silence.
Perhaps the difference is that, in realspace, there are non-verbal
signals to distinguish "I'm saying nothing because what you said is
obviously true" from "I'm saying nothing because I don't enjoy arguing
with idiots like you."
Dan Goodman
> This raises a different, but also interesting issue. If we assume
> magic exists, how much do we change our assumptions about the nature
> of the world? Are many living creatures the product of some clever
> magician rather than Darwinian evolution, for instance?
There've been stories in which what we think is scientifically-based
technology is really magic. And others in which what's considered
magic turns out to be science-based technology.
So far, I haven't seen any in which both are the case.
David Friedman
Marilee J. Layman <mar...@mjlayman.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 14:00:56 -0600, Erol K. Bayburt
> <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >The big problem I have with Helen's post is that her "until the advent
> >of nationalized health care systems or insurance" was a *gratuitous*
> >political comment, unnecessary to her point.
>
> No, it's not. Do you know where she lives?
I don't think that's relevant. She certainly doesn't live in Esland, the
current name of the fictional country where my WIR is set, which is the
subject of her:
"Just as
ordinary doctors were beyond the pocket of most people in our world
until the advent of nationalised health care systems or insurance
schemes, the rich will be able to afford your magical healers and the
poor will just have to heal naturally or die."
If the first part of her statement were something peculiar about British
history, it wouldn't have that implication for my fictional world.
And it isn't clear that her claim is true even for Britain; unless she
happens to be an historian of the period or unusually well read in the
work of those that are, she is (like most of us most of the time) simply
passing on the conventional beliefs of those around her.
At a slight tangent, it's worth noting that it is still a question of
debate to what degree, if any, medical care increased life expectancy
prior to the 20th century.
Dan Goodman
> > The approach I use in some of my own writing is
> > "magic-as-asking-spirits" (I avoid "invoking" or "evoking" here, to
> > avoid complications). This can be very dangerous.
>
> That's pretty much the shamanic approach in most such
> cultures: the shaman is revered because he dares to go and
> ask the mighty ones, and is powerful enough (thanks to
> the aid of more friendly beings, spirit helpers who furnish
> him/her with songs, tokens, etc. for protection) to do this
> without getting killed for doing so, at least according to the
> literature I've read on the subject.
>
> And speaking of the assumption of a magical mono-culture
> even on the same continent (which is not uncommon in
> fantasy fiction), where I live there are a number of
> "magical" systems all thriving right alongside modern
> high technology: Los Alamos and Sandia labs, side by
> side with Hispanic brujas and brujos and curanderas in
> the northern villages, Pueblo caciques who run the
> spiritual lives of their towns (alongside, again, and partly
> inter-mingled with a strong overlay of Catholicism), New
> Agers of all kinds and degrees (astrologers, wiccans,
> alternative healers of every stripe, dowsers, etc.), and
> Heaven knows what else. And I doubt that this kind of
> mix is rare in most of the world, except for backwaters
> (intentional or accidental) like fundie Islamic areas, or
> Amish country, or much of our heavily churchy South
> and "Heartland" -- the places that young people with a
> seeking turn of mind or other frowned-upon traits
> either flee or are driven from.
For the Amish country, this at any rate wasn't entirely true in the
past; see this book:
Pow-Wows or The Long-Lost Friend
John George Hohman's 1820 German-American magical receipt-book: its
continuing influence on Appalachian and African-American herb and root
doctors, ...
www.luckymojo.com/powwows.html - 30k - Cached - Similar pages
JOHN GEORGE HOHMAN'S POW-WOWS; OR, LONG LOST FRIEND
It appears under the titles Albertus Magnus, and also Der lange
verborgene Freund (The long lost friend in German). Hohman also has his
name on two works ...
www.locksley.com/llf/ - 141k - Cached - Similar pages
For the South, remember that there are churches which go in for things
that look rather like magic, and which are frowned upon by more
respectable denominations.
> It's hard to discuss this without assuming a certain
> overlap of religious belief and the practice of "magical"
> activities based on the general belief-system; although
> often "magic" is a surviving remnant of a previously
> core religion, like the shamanism in Korea or Indonesia
> (and, for that matter, South America).
>
> Even if you assume a magic that works, different
> populations would probably have their own native ways
> of approaching, regarding, and using magical powers
> and beings; unless maybe the magical beings had started
> out by imposing a single set of procedures and under-
> standings on *everyone everywhere* right at the outset,
> reenforced by occasional reminders over time (assuming
> that the powers themselves do not change in their
> desires re human interactions with them).
>
> I ran into an interesting comment in a book by a British
> woman traveling in the pre-World War I Ottoman
> Middle East. She remarked that the base population of
> Muslim Arabs never minded what various foreign
> visitors did or believed, as they were accustomed to
> being visited by men with of different cultures from
> other nearby nations. They would shrug and say, "Oh,
> that's just his way", meaning the custom or belief of
> the stranger's home population. Hospitality imposed
> a tolerance that has, sadly, been completely shredded
> in modern times.
>
> SMC
Dan Goodman
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:45:45 +0000, sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid
> (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
>
> >> > An archer needs a bow and arrow to kill at that range. What does
> a >> > fire mage need?
> >>
> >> Nothing. But a modern person in our society can do it with
> sufficient >> skill plus a handgun that can be pretty easily
> concealed, and that fact >> doesn't seem to have drastic effects on
> the society.
> >
> > I'm not sure how drastic the effects are, but ISTM the major effect
> > of handguns has been to make it much easier for weak, unskilled
> > people to kill strong, trained people.
>
> "God made man. Col. Colt made men equal."
>
> There's also the speculation that repeating handguns are part of what
> gave the women's suffrage movement traction in the late 19th and early
> 20th centuries. That the possibility of a revolver in the purse slowly
> shifted the perception of women from "childlike beings who need the
> physical protection of males" to "big girls able to take care of
> themselves" - and who were thus worth taking seriously.
If so, there were other parts:
Never go walking out without a hatpin,
Not even to a very classy joint.
For if a fellow sees you have a hatpin,
He's very much more apt to get the point.
Cyli
<warric...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:37:35 +0000, Helen Hall wrote:
>>
>> How we're supposed to do world building here any more, I don't know.
>>
>> Helen
>> (Of to write some words in the WIP)
>
>Evidently I was mistaken. Carry on.
>
>Regards,
>Ric
Good decision, gracefully done.
--
r.bc: vixen
Minnow goddess, Speaker to squirrels, willow watcher.
Almost entirely harmless. Really.
Jonathan L Cunningham
> Crowfoot wrote:
Fun! I assume this demonstrates that the magic also alters dental
records?
We had a thread about alternate pasts (cf alternate futures) recently.
Jonathan
Jonathan L Cunningham
> For what it's worth, another webbed source gives the typical income of
> "Middle-class (doctors, lawyers, clerks)" as £300-800 in Victorian
> England. http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/VictorianEngland.htm
>
> That looks quite a lot lower than the figures you were quoting.
It does. The figures I was quoting didn't include clerks.
Judging from _A Christmas Carol_ and Bob Cratchit's poverty, I'd hazard
a guess that clerks weren't as well paid as doctors or lawyers. If so,
that could bring the average down, particularly if clerks outnumbered
doctors.
Of course, I have no idea whether Dickens was writing about a typical
case or not. I doubt that Christmas ghosts were all that commonplace.
Jonathan
Gerry Quinn
page...@swcp.com says...
> I ran into an interesting comment in a book by a British
> woman traveling in the pre-World War I Ottoman
> Middle East. She remarked that the base population of
> Muslim Arabs never minded what various foreign
> visitors did or believed, as they were accustomed to
> being visited by men with of different cultures from
> other nearby nations. They would shrug and say, "Oh,
> that's just his way", meaning the custom or belief of
> the stranger's home population. Hospitality imposed
> a tolerance that has, sadly, been completely shredded
> in modern times.
It is still the norm in the West, although in recent times
circumstances have caused it to become questioned.
- Gerry Quinn
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
It didn't say "average." I took it that, in the range given, the bottom
figures were likely to be clerks and the top figures moderately
successful lawyers. That still gives about a factor of six difference
from your lawyer figure, which I suspect is for winners in a high risk
lottery. At least, that's what Adam Smith says about the profession,
writing about seventy years earlier.
James Nicoll
Jonathan L Cunningham <sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>It does. The figures I was quoting didn't include clerks.
>
>Judging from _A Christmas Carol_ and Bob Cratchit's poverty, I'd hazard
>a guess that clerks weren't as well paid as doctors or lawyers. If so,
>that could bring the average down, particularly if clerks outnumbered
>doctors.
>
>Of course, I have no idea whether Dickens was writing about a typical
>case or not.
As I recall from past discussions online, Cratchit was underpaid
by the standards of the time for what he did and Dickens' audience would
have understood that. I wonder if I can find the discussion on google?
(checks)
Nope.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Gerry Quinn
page...@swcp.com says...
> This is a *very* common pattern in literature about shamanism.
To what extent should we believe the literature? Your only named cite
is the ludicrous fraud Carlos Casteneda.
- Gerry Quinn
David Friedman
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> In article <1htpkcj.po47ts6y1ppwN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid>,
> Jonathan L Cunningham <sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
> >It does. The figures I was quoting didn't include clerks.
> >
> >Judging from _A Christmas Carol_ and Bob Cratchit's poverty, I'd hazard
> >a guess that clerks weren't as well paid as doctors or lawyers. If so,
> >that could bring the average down, particularly if clerks outnumbered
> >doctors.
> >
> >Of course, I have no idea whether Dickens was writing about a typical
> >case or not.
>
> As I recall from past discussions online, Cratchit was underpaid
> by the standards of the time for what he did and Dickens' audience would
> have understood that. I wonder if I can find the discussion on google?
My impression is that Dickens didn't limit himself to even marginally
realistic depictions, that he exaggerated for effect as authors often
do. But I admit that the impression may be based on the portrait that
Trollope gives of a character who I suspect is supposed to be Dickens.
But I would expect clerks to represent the bottom of the range of those
professions. On the other hand, their income might be more predictable
than that of attorneys, some of whom might end up losing money rather
than making it.
Zeborah
I can add another unnamed cite. A biography I read somewhere of a
modern-day Korean shaman/mudang followed the pattern SMC describes very
closely. It was written as a biography, rather than having any apparent
academic or political bias; everything else about it fit what else I
know about Korean culture; moreover IIRC it was a book loaned to me by a
flatmate when I lived in Korea, so quite likely published there and
unlikely to have distorted the facts in ways the average Korean could
immediately spot.
Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
rasfc FAQ: http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Zeborah
> The big problem I have with Helen's post is that her "until the advent
> of nationalized health care systems or insurance" was a *gratuitous*
> political comment, unnecessary to her point.
I'm curious: did those who read the phrase as being political read it
as "of nationalized health care systems or [nationalized] insurance" or
as "of nationalized health care systems or [of] insurance"?
>Her implication that
> there is necessarily a binary class division between "rich" and "poor"
> is equally political, but much less inflammatory here because it bears
> on her point and isn't just a gratuitous aside.
I read those as two points on opposite ends of a scale, rather than as
two mutually exclusive groups which together add to the sum total of the
population.
It also seems unlikely to me that Helen would call "rich vs poor" a
_class_ distinction; but that's beside anyone's point.
Dan Goodman
So far as I know, no one has brought up that explanation yet.
David Friedman
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > The big problem I have with Helen's post is that her "until the advent
> > of nationalized health care systems or insurance" was a *gratuitous*
> > political comment, unnecessary to her point.
>
> I'm curious: did those who read the phrase as being political read it
> as "of nationalized health care systems or [nationalized] insurance" or
> as "of nationalized health care systems or [of] insurance"?
My reaction was that grammatically it could be either, but after
thinking about it I decided the original author probably intended the
former--that she was thinking about systems in which the government pays
for privately produced medical care via some sort of national insurance
scheme.
Crowfoot
> that a preacher performs the minor miracle of turning the old fillings
> into gold. Not a dentist replacing the fillings.
WHAT? You're right, *that* one I'd never heard of before. Good
grief!
SMC
Crowfoot
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
Sounds like something useful for people dealing with magical
healers in their stories. Thanks for the reference.
SMC
Dan Goodman
> > I think there's a misunderstanding here. What happens in dental is
> > that a preacher performs the minor miracle of turning the old
> > fillings into gold. Not a dentist replacing the fillings.
>
> WHAT? You're right, that one I'd never heard of before. Good
> grief!
I've heard about it because some of the practicioners have been moving
beyond certain segments of American Protestantism via ads in New Agey
publications.
Tangent: I wish I'd saved a glowing review of a book about the
marvelously spiritual Neanderthal religion.
Dan Goodman
Welcome. I first learned of it in a fantasy story by Manly Wade
Wellman.
Crowfoot
Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
Your characterization is questionable, as no one has proven his
veracity one way or the other. But in any case, what I had in mind
as a counterbalance was work like "Aboriginal Siberia", Czaplicka,
1914; "Shamanism, a Reader", ed. Graham Harvey, 2003; "The
Shaman: Voyages of the Soul", Piers Vitebsky, 2001; and lots
more. Vitebsky is particularly interesting, as he has spent many
years with/studying Siberian reindeer herders and their beliefs
and practices, including the effects of Soviet domination for many
years over both.
At any rate, I've done more reading in the anthropology and
ethnology, historical and modern, than in Casteneda and other
more New Age wannabees, and would of course recommend the
same to others (even . As to what you can believe, readings
in Vine De Loria's book on Native American shamanism (I can't
give you a title -- I returned the book to the library, but it's a
work published posthumously I believe) make it clear that many
of the early accounts were written by extremely skeptical
observers or entirely condemnatory missionaries -- but I don't
think that renders their accounts unusable. Still, *all* the
literature is questionable, since none of it (that I know of) is
written or edited by a shaman himself or herself (De Loria
was Native American but didn't represent himself to be a
shaman, only an editor gathering reports by others).
And even then -- would such an account be more credible
than those by outsiders? Keeping in mind, for example, that
Aleister (sp?) Crowley wrote deliberate lies into his books
on magic so as to exclude and miss-lead the uninitiated . . .
there are no disinterested parties in these matters.
SMC
Tim S
> silence signifies assent.
No it doesn't.
Tim
James A. Donald
> Your comment has been noted. I will add "social
> history" to the long list of things that can no longer
> be mentioned on this group for fear of starting a
> flame war.
What you consider "history" is not in fact history, but
strident angry rhetoric.
I have been flamed for saying that the Roman Catholic
Church repressed science, and scientists during the
period 1277 to 1648, and flamed for saying that Tito
murdered enormous numbers of people. I was greatly
surprised that such propositions were considered
controversial.
You should surely know that the proposition that the
poor where dreadfully oppressed before some well
intentioned government meddling is likely to be
controversial.
We frequently depict social institutions and societies
based on our past - how else can we invent a society
significantly different from our own? If one delusively
believes that our past is hatred, oppression, and class
war, one cannot depict a believable past society filled
with likeable people.
Consider for example the Wild West, as depicted by the
people that lived it. Our mythical west is, I
discovered, based on the stories told by the real
pioneers - and these stories do not depict a society of
oppression, racism, class war, and social injustice.
--
----------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
http://www.jim.com/ James A. Donald
James A. Donald
> & that is where the misunderstandings creep in. To
> her, that statement is not political, &, in fact, is
> rather like saying the sky is blue---Her assumptions,
> understandings, &, in a real--ie social--sense, are
> different than yours.
Quite so. But I don't think that excuses it. One
should expect that the evil exploitative capitalist
oppressors of the poor such as James A. Donald will get
ticked off when their glaringly obvious sins are
mentioned - indeed the more obvious it is that I am a
wicked sinner, the more likely I am to get ticked off.
James A. Donald
> Let a Brit talk about the NHS without treating it as
> propaganda. It's here. It exists. People here (mostly)
> like it. Asking whether they should, or whether some
> other system is better: *that* is politics (or
> economics
What she said about that NHS was not that it exists, but
that it was a huge success that remedied an intolerably
wicked situation.
Gerry Quinn
jam...@echeque.com says...
> I have been flamed for saying that the Roman Catholic
> Church repressed science, and scientists during the
> period 1277 to 1648,
If I recall correctly, what you said in fact was that an incipient
industrial revolution in the thirteenth century was flat-out suppressed
by the Church.
A different proposition than the unarguable observation that the Church
repressed some scientists (and supported others).
- Gerry Quinn