Artisans and Magicians in our Midst
Popular science fiction / fantasy writers like Robin Hobb, Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton connect with millions of people across the globe. The elements of swordfighting and magic wielding heros and heroines overcoming Evil to get to home, love and joy are expressions of desires in our own lives.
Reality is tough too! We have all around us real life heros. There are shops where men and women struggle daily to take raw materials, earth, air, fire and water, and through educated methods of ancient knowledge and traditions craft magical things!
A silicon microchip is just a piece of rock with magic inside. As any electronic tech can tell you, once the smoke comes out it don't work no more. Any sufficiently developed technology is magic to the uninitiated. A strike anywhere match beats flint and steel any day.
Wizards and sorcerers are often repelled by society and government because of fear. In our restrictive regulatory environment, local zoning controls and land use restrictions have caused much of the creative and basic small industry to be driven out, literally miles out. Only the robber barons who are "too big to fail" and government picked winners have the industrial zoned land in town, within walking or easy transit distance, where they can hammer, forge, etch, paint, weld, saw, burn and experiment.
Too Big to Fail vs. the small business owner The three or four employee concern that does not have a billion dollar budget is unable, as in the brief past, to go into the garage or barn, set up a workshop and make the innovative effort to create the next breakthrough to employ hundreds or thousands of others. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison had space to try and fail. They now need bailouts because of the fact their competition was restrained and they were artificially propped up by government regulation. Evolution follows the better ideas or system. The dinosaurs die out or hide in the deeps. The Soviets followed Lamarck with theidea that if you just kept cutting off the tails of mice they would soon have babies with no tails.
America is the business leader America has not been dictated to become the leader in advancing technology, medicine, engineering and almost every human endeavor. It was the freedom from oppression the rest of the world experienced that allowed dreams and art to be expressed.
People don't change, Governements do Human nature has not changed. From prehistoric times, communities gathered together to overcome the elements. Technology is flint knives (also silicon) and cloth. Writing, shoes, stirrups, plows and matches were magic! The Renaissance was the result of a lifting of a religious / governmental ban on knowledge. Aristotle, Ptolomey and Euclid were heretical! The Solar system did not conform to the government's idea of World Order.
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