Many people believe they can fix the human body using magic of some sort. Many also claim to magically fix emotional or psychological problems or to fix other animals or even plants.
Yet there are many things nobody seems to claim they have magic to fix. Why is there no magic economics or magic organisation theory? Why do faith healers not come forward to fix the recession, or to strengthen failing businesses? Why no magic international trade? Or magic phone repairs?
And why do so many more people look for healers to fix their bodies than to fix their operating systems?
You might say there is no uncertainty in how a computer works in which to imagine a ‘god of the gaps’. But most people don’t know much more about how their computer works than how their body does.
Another possibility is that since magic doesn’t actually do anything, it’s hard to get away with claiming to fix something less subjective than the wellbeing of a body or mind. But it’s not obviously easier to pin down the exact wellbeing of a business is than it is a body.
Perhaps humans are especially easy things to practice magic on because they get better from most things pretty reliably on their own, but without any exact time schedule. And what’s more they experience placebo effects and feel better just from getting attention. But then shouldn’t there be more office management magic for instance? People get better at what they are doing naturally, and the *hawthorne effect seems to make them get even better if you do something to them.
The pattern seems to be something like ‘living things vs. non-living things’. Some people claim to be able to heal dead people, but they are talking about the living part of them which is supposedly off somewhere else. However a company is a living thing. It’s not a single organism, but it is a group of them.
Why is most purported magical fixing directed at individual creatures, mostly human?
Missing magic
Image by ArcheiaMuriel via Flickr
Many people believe they can fix the human body using magic of some sort. Many also claim to magically fix emotional or psychological problems or to fix other animals or even plants.
Yet there are many things nobody seems to claim they have magic to fix. Why is there no magic economics or magic organisation theory? Why do faith healers not come forward to fix the recession, or to strengthen failing businesses? Why no magic international trade? Or magic phone repairs?
And why do so many more people look for healers to fix their bodies than to fix their operating systems?
You might say there is no uncertainty in how a computer works in which to imagine a ‘god of the gaps’. But most people don’t know much more about how their computer works than how their body does.
Another possibility is that since magic doesn’t actually do anything, it’s hard to get away with claiming to fix something less subjective than the wellbeing of a body or mind. But it’s not obviously easier to pin down the exact wellbeing of a business is than it is a body.
Perhaps humans are especially easy things to practice magic on because they get better from most things pretty reliably on their own, but without any exact time schedule. And what’s more they experience placebo effects and feel better just from getting attention. But then shouldn’t there be more office management magic for instance? People get better at what they are doing naturally, and the *hawthorne effect seems to make them get even better if you do something to them.
The pattern seems to be something like ‘living things vs. non-living things’. Some people claim to be able to heal dead people, but they are talking about the living part of them which is supposedly off somewhere else. However a company is a living thing. It’s not a single organism, but it is a group of them.
Why is most purported magical fixing directed at individual creatures, mostly human?