From the email list…
Self-delusion.
It’s a valuable survival mechanism.
Years ago I read a book I highly recommend called…
“The Hidden Brain.”
It was all about your subconscious running your life.
The author has since turned it into an NPR podcast and I highly recommend it.
Just this week I delved into a book called…
“Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief.”
I’m constantly checking my own thinking.
It’s important also to understand why people believe what they believe.
It helps you understand both yourself and others more effectively.
As a result of my voracious reading habits, I am well acquainted with the many biases we all suffer from.
It is why I continue to follow the latest scientific developments…
and check my own beliefs against the evolving landscape.
Long before I became a magician I was well aware of these kinds of thinking problems.
Then when I began to study magic, the reality of how easily deceptive everything is…
was crystal clear.
Therefore, it is important to scrutinize these things instead of just take everything at face value.
This also leads to understanding instead of just knowing.
A clear distinction.
As time moves forward, and we become better and more equipped as a species to scrutinize…
and test our ideas and beliefs…
old beliefs fall by the wayside…
often in a dramatic burst of destruction…
where it is obvious to a wide swath of people…
the old beliefs were simple fairy tales.
A good example of this is in the martial arts.
Growing up I took judo.
For about a year or so.
Never really cared for it.
I’m sure it toughened me up somewhat though and was a replacement of sorts for my father…
pulling me out of hockey.
He didn’t care for “hockey parents.”
I was a fan of Bruce Lee as well and watched all his films.
This probably spurred my love for film more than my love for martial arts…
yet it was pretty clear there were all these different martial arts…
some “mainstreams” and some on the fringe.
Many of them had an almost religious-like quality to them.
You’d see ads in the back of comic books for these weird systems.
A lot of it tied in spiritual beliefs and mysticism.
I wasn’t super immersed…
but I knew of these almost “Jedi-like” claims and stories…
of almost supernatural ability and secret mythic techniques.
Very hush-hush, inner-circle shit.
And then when I was about 19…
The Ultimate Fighting Championship emerged.
My father purchased the very first event…
UFC 1…
via pay-per-view…
and some of my high school buddies and I along with my father…
watched this event with anticipation.
They marketed it as the battle of all the martial arts.
To see which one was the BEST.
Which one worked in the real world.
In a real fight.
At least a fight with very few restrictions.
The evolution of that event and the world of MMA since did one thing spectacularly…
more than only entertain or horrify (depending on your persuasion)…
it laid waste to all the mysticism and fringe beliefs in the martial arts world.
At least to anyone who pays any actual attention.
It demolished many, many martial arts practices as simple fairy tales.
It snatched the rug out from all the pretenders.
It was one of the quickest and most decisive “scientific” battles of ideologies in the history of mankind…
in my opinion.
Belief change is hard though.
Our frail human minds are wired to believe in weird, outlandish, and often destructive things as a mechanism
of self-preservation.
whether it’s physically, or to preserve the way we think about ourselves…
often to shield us from reality – even to our own detriment.
Just this morning while combing over some reaction punditry to the latest Star Wars trailer…
I stumbled across a guy talking about the martial art he is pursuing and it was exactly…
the same mysticism and fairy tales eradicated, brutally…
with kicks, punches, armbars, and chokeholds…
with UFC 1 decades ago.
Yet, there he is…
unfazed.
Which always brings me back to one of my favorite quotes (paraphrasing)…
“To those who understand no explanation is necessary. To those who don’t, no explanation is possible.”
which kind are YOU?
To better magic,
Dartagnan
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