thought

[permetaform]

I've seen many stories where the source of magic is tied to inner purity, ie. Healers have White Magic and thus are Pacifist and Good whereas Mages have Black Magic and Destory stuff and are Evil.

Well, see, that don't much make sense to me completely. It might be too much reading of the Devil's Fairytales (or some such title along those lines) where a painter was brilliant and nice and painted these eeeeeevil pictures. So Hell really really wanted the painter to go to hell so he could work for them; and they set about corrupting him. Well, what do you know? The painter became corrupt and wretched and mean but could only paint these highly religious pictures, so in the end the painter went to Hell and his latter paintings were admired in Heaven.

Along those lines, why aren't there more stories where, to be able to produce Good Magic you become mean-spirited? Like, by creating light, you become not-light to offset the balance? Conversely, by creating dark magic, you become more not-dark?

Comments

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

oooo, awesome thought there.

And I guess it's the simplicity thing. Inner purity is straightforward, easy to understand and nonthreatening (the recent spate of fluffified pagan-magic romance novels greatly amuse me with that). Doing it the way you suggest is all fraught with irony and complications and heaviness.

By the way, Ambrose Bierce wrote a couple of things that work along those lines, and I think Roald Dahl did, too (of all people! But he's got a slew of lesser-known ghost stories for adults that are awesome). Folklore and traditional ghost stories tend to work more like that, too. I'm thinking of the pan-culture subgenre where various tricksters cheat the Devil/Death not because they're pure, but because they're just so damn clever.

[permetaform]

oooo, good thoughts! will have to look up bierce, and I remember loving Dahl when I was little, extremely alot, which might speak for aspects of character formation. ::wry grin::

One thought that lierdumoa brought up: western culture tends to view world-dichotomy as good v. evil, where good has to prevail. eastern culture tends to view world-dichotomy as yin v. yang, where there has to be balance of the two at once.

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

eastern culture tends to view world-dichotomy as yin v. yang, where there has to be balance of the two at once

Eh, if you go to Taoism. I think classical Buddhism says that neither good nor evil really exists, but are both illusions created by the senses to deceive us. Confucianism (which isn't really a religion, methinks) definitely believes that good should strive to improve itself, and in doing so, constantly improve the world around itself till everything's good.

I'm actually not sure which has the stronger influence in terms of the common people. The more I learn about the philosophy behind the Asian three, the more I realize that it doesn't really match up with how it's practiced in everyday life by most people.

[permetaform]

::nods:: there is that. And like, waaaay too many people (and entire cultures) misinterpret Buddhism's "desire nothing" aspect and it makes me CRINGE LIKE WHOA.

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

Buddhism's "desire nothing" aspect

Erk. It's funny how even a religion based on moderation can be distorted, isn't it?

[permetaform]

::sprofle:: to say the least.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

The Devil's Storybook. Natalie Babbitt. As I recall, the main painted evil pictures and then made loving sculptures out of clay.

A friend of mine made a story idea where a person comes from a parallel dimension tied to the one they go to. The dimensions are in an inverse relationship, and in order to improve things in the place they came from, the person has to do bad things in the dimension they find themselves in.

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

The dimensions are in an inverse relationship, and in order to improve things in the place they came from, the person has to do bad things in the dimension they find themselves in.

Hmm. FMA works a little bit like this...

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

FMA?

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

Fullmetal Alchemist.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Aaahhh.

[permetaform]

ahhh! you're right I think! I will go back and correct it!

And yeah, if one day you find yourself getting into anime, I wouldn't be surprised if you like Full Metal Alchemist. It has great world-building too, which I think you'd like.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Good vs. Evil = Western ideology
Yin & Yang / Chaos & Order = Eastern ideology

Good and Evil aren't supposed to balance out according to Western ideology. Evil is inherently imbalanced/wrong/abomination.

Biblical conceptualization -- evil is a choice, not an inherent part of the soul. Evil is denying God, going against the inherently good nature God gave you. Evil is unnatural.

That's probably why.

[franzeska]

Which one would be chaos? I've generally seen them both associated with parts of the natural order.

[permetaform]

::nods:: yes. that chaos and order are in balance. yin and yang are in balance.

compare/contrast to western ideology where good is supposed to prevail.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I've generally seen them both associated with parts of the natural order.

Exactly! Chaos would be neither good nor evil. I wasn't equating good/evil with order-chaos, but rather trying to show how the good/evil concept comes from a completely different school of thought than chaos-order or yin-yang concepts.

permetaform was asking why there aren't more stories where good and evil balance out a person. I was saying that it's probably because the concept of good/evil comes from Western ideology. Western ideologies don't believe in balance the way Eastern ideologies do.

[franzeska]

Yes, and I'm saying that yin/yang can represent many relationships, but I've never heard of it representing chaos/order. Yin is normally something feminine/dark/passive and in some sense orderly, while yang is normally something masculine/bright/active and in some sense orderly. Where are you getting the chaos thing from?

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Chaos-order is out of ancient greek mythology, or at least, that's the main place I've seen it, but I'm sure it's rooted in other religions as well. You also have, like, Hinduism and the whole life-death cycle -- the idea of destructive forces balancing out with creative forces.

I didn't mean to imply that yin-yang and chaos-order are the same thing, just that they come from similar schools of thought -- they both revolve around the idea that the universe (people, the gods, the weather, whatevs) is made up of opposing forces that balance each other out -- Western ideology, namely Judaism and its offspring, have a very different concept of the universe, one which doesn't revolve around finding balance so much as striving for perfection.

[permetaform]

!

[franzeska]

I wrote part of a (rather juvenile) fantasy novel at some point where magic triggered melanin formation. I thought I was so clever.

[permetaform]

huh! would you have it around still?

[franzeska]

Yes and no. There isn't very much of it, and I never really got around to explaining myself, alas. (It languishes with all my other "Look, I'm going to be a real writer some day!" projects.)

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Well, what do you mean by Good Magic? Helping people? If so, then those who help people with their magic (i. e. Healers) are of course going to be seen as performing Good Magic. By the same token, those destroying people with their magic are going to be seen as performing Evil Magic. Whether those perceptions are absolute truths in the abstract is another question, but not necessarily a useful one (at least not to the characters involved in the books).

Some interesting things have been done along the lines of, doing this bit of magic here helps out this person or group of people, but it depletes another person or group of people, or the planet, or the gods. Most books I've read, even the bad ones, seem to push the idea that magic itself is neither good nor bad, it's what you do with it (one reason I find Mad King George's stated views on the Force migraine-inducing). I do suspect the good vs. evil divide that arises in the use has a lot to do with how many philosophies, religions, and civilizations of this world are based on this idea of two opposites. Naturally, that carries over into our art, of which literature is a part.

Your last paragraph would seem to indicate you separate people's natures from their actions. To a degree, I share that approach, in that a person's motivations for doing something may not be pure (pure good or pure evil), but who is deciding this person is good and this person evil? Who is perceiving their natures? Most of us only have other people's actions and words by which to judge them, in the real world. In literature, we get people filtered through the viewpoint character(s), or the uninvolved narrator. Sometimes we're left to draw our own conclusions, other times we're given very clear indications of what conclusions we are expected to draw, usually the same ones the viewpoint character is drawing. This doesn't mean there's no room for the character to be wrong, or for us to be wrong, but it's something to be considered when looking at "good" and "evil" in fiction.

Another thing is complexity in characterization. This character saves kittens and gives to charity and loves his family and volunteers at a hospital and goes home, reads names from the phonebook, and uses his magic to kill the people with those names. Is he evil? What's his reason for killing? What's his reason for saving kittens and giving to charity? This guy kicks puppies and gets into drunken fights every night and shoplifts regularly and can't open his mouth without insulting someone, and when he goes home, he reads names from the phonebook and casts protective circles so the other guy can't kill those people. Is he good? What's his reason for protecting people? Why is he kicking puppies and getting drunk and fighting? I've actually read a number of specfic stories and novels along these lines. So yeah, there's a fair bit of simplistic good vs. evil work out there, but the questions you're asking have been addressed, often at length.

[permetaform]

What I was thinking of specifically is that by, say, performing a healing act (or anything that "grows") the one using the magic gets an equivalent urge to destroy something. A small act of growth causes a small urge to destroy. A big act of healing causes a big urge to hurt.

So it's less a fact of debatable/questionable morality of good v. evil I'm looking for, than an actual *twisting* of one's personality due to one's magic use, as in magic use *directly* affecting mental state and/or spiritual state, to the opposite effect of one's using magic.

I would love book recs of stuff that explores this! ::bounces:: It's tricksy stuff but I'm not sure that I happened upon it in any appreciable form.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

What you're talking about here sounds less like twisting to me and more like a certain kind of balance. You're not likely to find much of that in works based on the more popular Western mythologies, but I'm pretty sure I have read such things. More often, though, such a balance comes out as the energy needed to do the magic is actually drained from elsewhere, be it the caster or the caster's assistant or the land or spirit realm or what-have-you. Just as one example, the mages in Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry use "anchors," people who are bound to them magically and who act as their strength and source of power. Use of magic drains that person, much like physical labor wears you out.

[permetaform]

More often, though, such a balance comes out as the energy needed to do the magic is actually drained from elsewhere, be it the caster or the caster's assistant or the land or spirit realm or what-have-you. Just as one example, the mages in Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry use "anchors," people who are bound to them magically and who act as their strength and source of power. Use of magic drains that person, much like physical labor wears you out.

::nods:: yeah, I've read alot of stories like that, though I'm curious to see if there's actually more stories where, say, healing causes the equal and opposite reaction of wishing for destruction in the healer themselves.

[fancyfox.livejournal.com]

I started to think Willow from Buffy but that's erm. Different, I suppose. Darth Vader? I dunno. I tired. But this is interesting. Equivalent trade is such a binding concept.

[permetaform]

::nods:: yeah. And like, actually that the more you use one type of magic, the less inclined you are to actually *use* it. It's like an emotional/mental/traumatic yoyo, 'cause the more you Heal, the more you'd want to hurt people, and vice versa.

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

what about, say, someone mean-tempered and self-important and egotistical who ultimately works for the good of everyone?

like, oh RODNEY. omg.

okay, sorry, your icon made me think of that, with its sheppardy awesomeness. because sheppard makes me think of mckay. yes.

[permetaform]

HEEE! Actually, I realized belatedly, that if you take the magic aspect of it away that it's sorta like SGA!

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

it totally is. yet another reason why sga is awesome! or, i don't know, crack-filled or something.

[permetaform]

yup!