A world without magic

Are you scared that this is it and you aren’t anything beyond your body?

Is that really such a bad thing? What are the implications of such a reality? For one thing life becomes a whole lot more valuable, doesn’t it? You only have a limited time so why would you want to spend it in displeasure?

What is so special about magic anyway?

Is there anything wrong with everything being a product of nature and measurable by science? Would this make ours a cold world?

I guess it’s easy to lose sight of the scale of things; how large things are and how miniscule and intricate they are at the same time. Who has any need of the supernatural with all of that?!

Does art have a place in a Universe where science rules all? Will it be limited to the purely aesthetic in the (maybe distant?) future?

What I mean is: will self-expression become obsolete if and when there is harmony in the world? Will there be anything to express when there is no religion, crime, conflict or inequality and we are all happy?

Belief

Richard Dawkins calls the extolling of the virtues of blind faith to children a form of abuse. I can understand how a child who is completely trusting may be duped and abused but I still think trust and belief are important things that need to be fostered in young children.

There is no afterlife awaiting us so the rewards must be here in the short life that each of us has. If you are trusting and then suffer because of it then that can’t be practical because once something has happened it is part of history.

A child’s mind is still forming so it is important to nurture it properly. Imagine a young child too small to have something explained to them like you’d explain something to an adult; you reward them with a treat when they’re good and punish them if they are not, right?

Is the same not true of belief? I think that teaching children through the medium of festive fairy tales that believing without seeing is very important.

The Matrix highlighted the point that you cannot even trust your own senses to be truthful to you. When I was ill I didn’t even trust that my own parents were my real parents! Trust (or belief) is a big thing in each of our lives so it is important to mould the brain of a maturing infant so that he or she can believe.

I thought that it was wrong to lie to anyone, least of all the most trusting. Master Oogway tells us that yesterday is history and I think that this is a good point. When you’re a child you become lost in the magic so it doesn’t matter how you feel once you are an adult; the important thing is that you found a measure of pleasure in the moment.

And belief has an important part to play in that. And hopefully when you make it to adulthood you will have the wisdom to see that you weren’t being duped, you were being loved.

But what if you reach adulthood and you have a very – maybe overly – trusting brain? You may be easily swindled or worse – where is the good in that? Can you teach children that believing without seeing is good but at the same time teach them to question the world around them?