He’s Just Had Coffee

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change\ The courage to change the things I can\ And the wisdom to know the difference - Reinhold Niebuhr

I coulda sworn that was Saint Francis, but lengthy web research has proven me wrong. Turns out it’s widely used in A.A. groups to exemplify the mindset needed to live in the world. What’s struck me recently is that it exemplifies two basic attitudes to coping with the world - magick and religion. The former about changing the world by the exercise of will, the latter about acceptance of the will of The Divine or submission (islam in Arabic).

Both of these attitudes have a bunch of institutions which have grown up around them trying to claim their attitude is complete and correct. It seems to me that magicians tend to believe that magick is the correct attitude at all times, religious people tend to believe that religion is the correct attitude at all times. But I’ve found it hard to adopt either complete view, I think Rev. Niebuhr’s prayer sums up the situation a little more accurately.

If you accept this basic polarity as a descriptive position, it’s possible to see science as not actually opposing either magick or religion but being a technique by which either attitude can be expressed. Engineering is a technique of magick, Meditation is fundamentally a technique of religion, althought lots of magickal writers advocate it.

Anyhoo - it’s a not a thesis or anything, just something that occured to me fairly clearly yesterday that I thought I’d pass on. Magick/Religion, Hackers/Users, Those who cook and those who buy McDonald’s, the polarity between the two attitudes plays out all over the place. There’s always stuff in our environment which is beyond our control, but there’s a tremendous amount we can affect, influence and change if we gain the right knowledge.

Might be worth a ponder, I reckon.