Think about what happens
when someone buys a lottery ticket. Some people call state lotteries a tax on
the stupid, because the odds of winning are so miniscule. But that perspective
fails to take some fundamental truths about the human experience into account,
as if all things of value must follow a dollar sign. Compulsive gamblers aside,
when a reasonably intelligent person who understands the odds buys a lottery
ticket, not only do they buy that exceedingly slim chance of winning an obscene
amount of money, but fantasizing about that obscenity buys countless moments of
pleasurable mental activity: fantasizing about what to buy, who to buy, who to
tell to fuck off, etc.
The effects of a few
moments like that are potentially life-changing. Suppose one runs the winning
scenario and then unexpectedly starts fantasizing about leaving their spouse
for example… well, you get the idea.
If someone gains a
sense of personal meaning in what are otherwise unrelated events, the events
become related for that person, by virtue of their sense of meaning at the very
least. The value of such an experience could potentially alter ones life
trajectory, irrevocably. When something like that happens, and rest assured it
most certainly does, what does it matter that the events have no externally
valid relationship?
The above discussion
applies to the average person. It’s part and parcel of being human. But how is
the magician to regard these dynamics? What, it seems, should set the magician apart from the average person is that the average person develops
their cognitive constructs, which ultimately determine perception and
behavioral response biases, passively from the chance events of the life they
are living, whereas the magician takes a much more active role in shaping those
cognitive constructs.
As
such, magicians cannot afford to allow the whims of fate to push them around.
