Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs
But that seems to imply a radically different construction of what "mages" are doing. And what I'm trying to do is work out this paradigm more fully. Without denying the validity of the Hermetic paradigm that the Traditions rely on! If reality is subjective, then it's entirely possible for both paradigms to be "true," for local values of truth. But a technocrat who wants to explain why certain people can set things on fire by staring at them would not think of it as a result of spirits, or magic; they would need to come up with some other explanation, which would then be true in technocratic areas of the world, if they persuaded the Masses to accept it. (And of course, radical new ideas would be vulgar as hell until the Masses did accept them!)
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It seems to me that in technocratic reality people don't set fire to things by training for years and then staring at them (the exclusionary, aristocratic paradigm); they set fire to things by picking up a cigarette lighter or a microwave emitter or a laser and pointing it at them (the universal, socialist paradigm). My understanding of the Technocracy, which admittedly was formed in the early Mage days and may be outdated, is that they want
everyone to be able to share in the power.
Of course as a human organisation they're intrinsically broken and reserve some of the neat stuff for themselves rather than giving it to everybody. ("They're not ready yet.")