Thought Piece - Oh, Oh: It's Magic.

Buber, in discussion of the primitive world as “magic,” stated, “The boundaries of his world are drawn by his [the primitive man’s] bodily experiences to which the visits of the dead belong quite ‘naturally.’ Any assumption that the non-sensible exists must strike him [the primitive man] as nonsense” (1970). I believe this is immediately apparent if you consider the perception of “magic” in popular Western culture. For example, consider the ways in which a child’s view of a magician and an adult’s view of the same magician may differ wildly. As an adult, we often attempt to discover the “tricks” of the magician or “illusionist”; we look for flaws in their acts and attempt to force reality back into their unreal illusions. Children, on the other hand, often meet these acts with awe and wonder. The difference between these perceptions of magic, then, is that while adults search for how this is unreal (based on his/her own experiences and knowledge of the world), the child searches for how the magician was able to do it. Over Christmas break this year, I showed some of my family, including members older and younger, a simple card trick. My sister, who is three years older than I am, met my “magic” with obvious skepticism, countering each of my facetious explanations of “It’s magic” with “No it’s not; How’d you do it?” Meanwhile, my young cousin could only respond with, “That’s awesome! Do it again!” This transformation, from believing in the possibility of the unreal to attempting to disprove anything seen as nonsensical, is indicative of the same sort of “otherness” principle that Buber suggested is the difference between the I-It relationship and the I-Thou relationship. Similarly, individuals engaged in actual dialogue must embrace the otherness in order to embrace the I-Thou relationship.