The internet has definitely stolen a lot of the magic from the world. Foreign places aren’t mysterious anymore. I’ve seen a million videos and pictures of every place I want to visit already, and I talk to the people who live there every day. The Burmuda Triangle isn’t something mysterious anymore, The Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, UFOs, everything, it’s all pretty much disproven now. Even ancient Chinese medicine has been peer reviewed and either proven or disproven. Where’s the magic that existed before the internet? I guess in the quantum realm, but that doesn’t have the same type of mystery.
The only people claiming UFOs are disproven are feds or patsies.
Two eyewitness and a whistleblower testifying seeing nonhuman craft under oath to Congress:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?529499-1/hearing-unidentified-aerial-phenomena
If UFOs are so disproven, why is congress trying to declassify projects involving them? And why is the Military Industrial Complex pushing back and claiming that they need to be able to patent reverse-engineered technology?
I’m not saying believe me, I’m saying that if you take a serious honest look at the phenomenon it’s very plain that there’s something there
Open your mind, and you’ll see it again. Below organisms lay organs, tissues, cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and even before you hit the quantum it all works together spectacularly, in ways that nobody really understands.
e.g. is there a cure for Alzheimer’s, or “cancer”, or death? Can we grow new limbs, either from the patient’s own cells or at least off the rack generically? We’ve convinced ourselves that just bc we have a good enough microscope to view the book of life (DNA, plus some other stuff like mitochondria and centrioles) that we “understand” it, but we do not, I promise you, or else we would have all of those aforementioned things.
But don’t take my word for it: pick one of those places you mentioned and visit it - I mean actually go there. You will see what even the locals who have lived right next to it for their entire lives do not. Or start reading a Wikipedia page for something you have always been interested in but never taken the time to learn about, and you’ll see that you may never want to stop… The mystery is nowhere close to being gone, we’ve just told ourselves that it is.
Your third paragraph hits on something I had to realize in my “how to enjoy existence” journey. Put simply, don’t discount meatspace. Sometimes your brain needs those experiences even if you think you don’t. Plus with any current or near future technology, consuming media about a place is not the same as being there. There is no comparison vs the data throughput of all of your senses, even before you get to the social/cultural aspect and being able to interact.
I’m in the US and have coworkers in Europe along with the ones local to me. We talk almost every day, and interacting with them led me to learn a bit on my own about their area, culture, etc.
I’ve also gotten to visit a couple times over the past couple years, and yeah like I said there’s no comparison. You get a lot of the vibe for a place in all that extraneous data your senses are always generating. Just seeing how the people carry themselves, and the different ways various mundane everyday stuff is done, it all incrementally builds into a more cohesive experience.
The rules for magic and the rules of existence in most fictional universes are significantly more defined (and, arguably, more solid) than the rules for science and existence in this world.
Even the brush off of “Its magic. I don’t have to explain it,” at least indicates that SOMEONE understands the effect and its relative existence.
If you find 5 people who say that they fully understand a single branch of science then I’d bet all of my money in my pocket that you found them in a padded recovery room sans shoe laces.
I always like the comparisons to how magical our world would seem to someone in an alternate reality where transistors or maybe even electricity wasn’t a thing.
Like you can dumb it down to really magical sounding things like calling a cpu “runes etched in sand”.
this makes me think of the meme about time traveling an awing everyone and they ask but what is electricity to the average joe guy
Thats not what quantum mechanics shows at all.
What is being described is the pop-sci version quantum mechanics.
That version has people believing in multiverses and wormholes and other nonsense that is not falsifiable like magic and has no evidence like magic but people believe in it because people desperately want magic to be real.
Wow, this is the first time I’ve disagreed with an Existential Comics take
The woo doctor says there’s fairies in the garden and unicorns in the forest, and never shows them to me. The biologist says there’s birds the size of your thumb that flap their wings so fast they become a buzzy blur, and there’s huge winged creatures that fly through the ocean called “Manta rays.” He shows me pictures and specimens of both.
The woo doctor says my fever is caused by a lack of yellow bile, eat this dandelion it’s yellow. The physician says my fever is caused by an infection of tiny creatures inside my body, look you can see them if you look at this snot sample under a microscope. We have a chemical that kills these organisms called antibiotics, eat those and you’ll get better.
The woo doctor says the dot in the sky he thinks of as the god of time has traveled into the crab part of the sky so I probably shouldn’t make any big decisions this week. The astronomer looked through a bunch of old records, noticed a pattern, and predicted the next appearance of a comet down to the finest detail, years in advance.
The woo doctor says things that can burn are full of a substance called phlogiston, which is released by fire into the air, which can only hold so much phlogiston. The chemist says it’s hydrocarbons or carbohydrates combusting into carbon dioxide and water vapor, and proves it by burning a variety of things and condensing water from the vapors that emerge. He’s built way better lamps and is starting to build these powerful engines based on his techniques.
The woo doctor tells fun stories sometimes I guess. The scientist has all the actual cool stuff.
The woo doctor says there’s fairies in the garden and unicorns in the forest, and never shows them to me. The biologist says there’s birds the size of your thumb that flap their wings so fast they become a buzzy blur, and there’s huge winged creatures that fly through the ocean called “Manta rays.” He shows me pictures and specimens of both.
This sounds so much like a writing prompt.
