...fighting Evil most of the time, and the Lone Power is not only told but shown to manifest in many small slow cruelties and the process of entropy. The Lone Power is shown to tempt everyone, not just bad people, into cruelty in the name of good ends. Everyone in...
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...the Universe has to deal with that, everyone has their problems. There isn't a designated victim class and a designated evil class. There isn't a threshold of suffering below which we say someone has it "better" and stop sympathizing with their pain. Wizards are...Show this thread -
...to protect everyone, always, and the idea that anyone doesn't deserve protection from entropy is obviously the Lone Power's lie. Entropy will never be cast out of the universe. There will never be a revolutionary epoch where the work of wizardry ends. It just goes...Show this thread -
...on making things better, building and healing, day by day.
Sometimes there are apocalypses to prevent. The people who prevent them aren't famous and don't get banquets, they're just told "Well done." The older wiser wizards are less powerful...Show this thread -
...because that's how magic works, but they know more and are more experienced and it's okay for them to be in charge. When you're young, you're strong, but that doesn't make you not stupid. It is not your destiny to overthrow the old corrupt order...Show this thread -
...and grab all the status and end up being in charge.
This is what a mentally healthy empowerment fantasy looks like.
Contrast any other power fantasy.
Compare the normal operation of a healthy scientific field.
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PS: These tweets are about literature and psychology. You would be unwise to draw inferences from them about questions of fact, in science or elsewhere. Reality did not give you a wizard's power. It may not hand you a wizard's problem. But you can still have a wizard's morals.
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Do you have an earlier thread explaining what this book is or why we should be interested in it?
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Not EY, but he's mentioned them a few times at various places in his writing. It's a YA series that's been running about thirty years, and its centered statement of morality, the Wizard's Oath, is a beautiful affirmation of humanist values:http://www.youngwizards.com/the-wizards-oath/ …
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@dduane, who should really see this insightful thread :)Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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There's a reason this series is one of the first books I read to my daughter. A little dated in parts, but its core message about understanding and knowledge stand out among fantasy as something to emulate.
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I have not thought about these books (I only ever read the first two) in years, but I remember enjoying them a great deal. It sounds like I should revisit them as an adult.
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Loved the down-to-earth nature of that series more generally when I read it as a child. The most mundane facets of everyday life were inherently intertwined with magic, rather than it being separate or an escape from them.
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I've been thinking about what makes Diane Duane's Wizard's Oath so much more of an ideal for good people than other kinds of magic in fiction. I hypothesize that her wizards are not only told but shown to have the business of going around healing and fixing rather than...