THE MAGIC OF BEING FOOLED
(and being rewarded for it)
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Did you know there are only 6 magic tricks in the entire world? Yes, only six.
All illusion, prestidigitation, legerdemain and sleight-of-hand combined merely juggle and recycle these six elements.
“What are they?”You may well ask.
Briefly, they are:
1.Disappearance
2.Production (something out of nothing)
3. Transformation (one thing becomes another thing.)
4. Motive Power (objects with the ability to move on their own.)
5. Natural Law Violation (levitation, going through a wall, etc.)
6.Transposition (two objects change places)
Yes, all magic combines one or many of these six elements. Beyond that there is only the performance.
The magician is really the agency which makes the magic appear to be genuine.
The MAGICIAN is who really makes the magic APPEAR to be GENUINE.
It is a skilled, practiced performance of effortless spontaneity which brings magic alive.
You are fooled. Why?
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There is a Science to brain chemistry which tells us:
Your brain REWARDS you when your expectations are defeated by something unexpected! Why?
The human brain squirts an intoxicating substance each time you LEARN something. This is evolution at its best and worst. Most of the time a learning experience will make you more fit to survive. (That's a good thing, by the way!)
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/how-we-fool-ourselves-over-and-over-10-06-19/)
Yet,when you are fooled you are rewarded too.
Did you know that? Why?
Because you are confronted with the opposite of what you expected and you survived the experience.
This is reason enough to be REWARDED by the squirt of brain-heroin which pleases your brain so much!
Being fooled is the strange equivalent of a LEARNING process and is PRO survival.
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Is it?
In the wild it is. Being fooled by a camouflaged predator can render you dead or half-eaten. Yet, detecting the camouflage and seeing how you were fooled (if you survive) is a learning experience worth being rewarded for. Now do you understand?
What about magic?
Each time you are amazed, fooled, exhilarated and excited by the UNEXPLAINABLE---you are rewarded by a thrilling brain-buzz which becomes an end in itself.
That's why you might love horror movies, working crossword puzzles, and figuring out how a magician does his tricks.
But, hold on!
Remember I told you the real magic was the PERFORMANCE skill of the Magician? It is. The implicit pact of audience v. performer makes that skill work; the pact between you as the audience and the close attention you pay to the words and movements of the magician onstage.
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Here comes an assertion. Be alert and test my thesis:
This is the same setup which also occurs between the BELIEVER and the RELIGIOUS MYSTIC.
The BELIEVER may at first be skeptical, just as the person who sits watching the magician perform "knows" it is all a trick, and not a true demonstration of the miraculous. Yet, the desire to be fooled is implicit in devoting attention and following the words and movements which follow.
A Magician uses misdirection. He tells you where to look and where not to look. It is the art of misdirection combined with the concealment of the ‘fooling’ element setting you up to be fooled.
You use your intelligence to predict what is real and how things work. You have a built in the sensibility of how things will go. The smarter you are the better you are able to overcome obstacles by predicting problem areas and devising a way around them without self-harm.
However!
The magician relies on defying the natural by an arsenal of contrivances which appear natural and ordinary, yet concealing their 6 elements.
Here again is the “why”:
1. The audience wants to be fooled while fighting it by trying to use everyday logic to discover the trick.
2. The trick is designed to take advantage of the expectations and thwart them by built-in defeats through misdirection.
A magic illusion is really an artful lie.
It is artful and designed to work through the hidden mechanism. A coin is just a coin. Right? Wrong! In a magic act, the coin is not just a coin; it is a specially manufactured coin with a device built in.
A card is just a playing card, right? Wrong! It is part of a special deck with hidden aspects the magician can use to achieve his aims.
In other words, your everyday intelligence is NOT AWARE of the artifice that hides the concealed mechanism of a trick.
You do not have the BASIC vocabulary of the 6 elements to inform your observations.
Once you know these 6 elements and how they are used, almost every trick will easily be deductible rationally.
Inside knowledge means Magic becomes commonplace at that point.
Why—because it is so mundane. It is contrived and ordinary. It all comes down to the skill of the performance.
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Religion is a kind of magic trick.
Various skilled magicians through the centuries have used those 6 elements to fool the audience of seemingly skeptical believers by taking advantage of hidden properties which defy expectation.
At the earliest stages of human history, priests, shaman and magi (from which we get the word "magic") were skilled performers. They gained special status from their level of mastery at duping awed witnesses to their hokum.
Magicians were variously called Prophets, Miracle Workers and Demi-gods. Yet, they used the selfsame 6 elements with skill to achieve their effects and rely on the pact to work their magic.
The rest of humanity relied on the STORIES told about these exploits for their vicarious thrills. STORIES exaggerated the exploits into momentous achievements at the hands of a super powerful God instead of contrived magic.
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Magic was divided into Good and Evil magic. God was behind the Good and Satan was the cause of the Evil.
Every religious performance of the miraculous begins with elements of the six.
Muhammed is said to have been ILLITERATE, and yet he produced perfect Arabic verses. Concealment is in the misdirection. Was Muhammed in fact illiterate? How would any of us know this for certain? Should we merely accept this premise?
Joseph Smith had plates of gold which he translated using a seer stone. (Yes, a rock with a hole in it!) By sticking the stone in a hat and burying his face in it! He "translated" from behind a curtain, no less! We are told that a great many witnesses actually "saw" these gold plates. Should we accept all this as given? The remaining examples of the original words of Joseph Smith are in awful rural English with grammatical errors and run-on sentences, yet; the modern Book of Mormon scriptures have been artfully "adjusted" and represented in such a way, so that you'd never know that at all! Transformation!
Moses went up on a mountain and nobody was allowed to come near. He returned with tablets of stone actually written by the finger of God himself!
Oh—but wait! Those miraculously produced tablets were broken, (by Moses) and Moses had to replace them by carving some himself! This isn't suspicious behavior, is it? Transposition.
Charles Taze Russell was specially chosen by God to be his mouthpiece by allowing Russell to interpret scripture using Pyramid measurements to know in advance when Jesus would return. There are millions of people today who subscribe to the religion Russell started because they believe this! Or, do they? The story has changed many times and the trick goes on.
Remember the implicit pact?
The audience wishes to be fooled.
Brains are rewarded each time they participate!
That is a reveal!
Every element of religious belief is rewarded when you allow yourself to be fooled!
1975 was my last "reward". By overcoming that reveal I and millions of others got the largest reward of a lifetime.
Fool me once; shame on you.
Fool me twice; shame on me.
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What do you take away from this discussion? Have you been rewarded by being fooled?
Is it time to re-examine the process by which you were persuaded unduly through crafty, practiced deception?
Has your mind actually been changed by your misperceptions of these tricks played by expert manipulators?
Only you can answer this for yourself.
It all starts with AWARENESS of the elements—the basics—which you can identify, learn, and be alert to misdirection corrupting your power of observation and nullifying your rational decisions through mind control.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE ME—you only have to become skeptical enough to investigate!
A mind is a terrible thing to waste—especially your own!