The Wizard's political problem

[Yagon]

Imagine you are a wizard in a world where magic is real but follows rigorous arcane rules and requires study and resources to master and develop. The more it develops, the more it takes to develop further, yet its powers grow at an even faster rate. It is forbidden for the masses to possess city destroying spells, as a precaution.

To work together at scale, the wizard must live in a society that provides food, clothing, etc. The Wizards powers are not great enough yet that it can arbitrarily rearrange matter around itself without invoking others. They must still eat, their magic is not quite yet enough that they can rearrange the planets in the sky into great black sails that eat sunlight and shit usable transmittable storable power that is distributed to the organelles of any human cell in the solar system by briefly puncturing spacetime or used to arrange matter into human and/or AI designed artisan meals to your particular taste.

But you are close. You and the others . Another few generations, perhaps, but how many generations has it been? Since the first to jam a stick under a log to get a tasty grub, and found a good stick for that, and kept it, and showed the others....how long?

But you've been warning them for a while now about the black burning and the coming droughts. You've told them and shown them, with the work of lifetimes of your colleagues around the world, that the magic has limits and we are taking more from the world than it can give. The air is smelling bad. The water is going bad. The animals are dying and not coming back at a faster rate than has been observed in a very long time, and those times were dark as mass extinctions can be.

The Kings were put in charge because they were good at killing, but they are bad leaders. They are short sighted. They want to be King, and they will see the Kingdom burn to nothing before it goes to any but their line. They will not listen to your warnings. They hold their swords to the world's throats, saying "Serve or we all die".

The wizards, being pragmatic, have served. They authored the city destroying spells. The spear that kills hundreds from hundreds of miles away, guided by magic eyes in the sky. The self-weilding swords are at working prototype.

Your colleagues across the world have their own Kings, and the insanity is spreading.

Do you continue to serve? Or do something else?

I would begin quietly talking to the other wizards and ask how everybody feels. That's what I would do.

[Uxupox]

rules? I have magic brah. I'll summon satan if i can and rule as his herald.

[Yagon]

rules? I have magic brah. I'll summon satan if i can and rule as his herald.

So you would effectively use your magic to seize power.

What would you do then, once in power?

Seperately, what if to seize power you need the collaboration of your global colleague wizards around the world? (Imagine for our example that the more powerful expressions of your magic requires others). It emerges that the unsolved political problem of people becomes the equally unsolved political problem of their ruler. How to take power must be solved (which requires politics), how to remain in power must be solved. What are your solutions? (You may assume your magic is not great enough to absorb the other wizards or anything like that, the political problem must be solved before your magic is that strong, and getting their requires the others).

[The New California Republic]

[Yagon]

(Image)

I would have felt gay in my childhood in, my homophobia saturated childhood, to say this, but I want that belt with the feathers on the end.

[The New California Republic]

(Image)

I would have felt gay in my childhood in, my homophobia saturated childhood, to say this, but I want that belt with the feathers on the end.

I'd prefer to have The Scepter of Communism that he is holding...

[Uxupox]

rules? I have magic brah. I'll summon satan if i can and rule as his herald.

So you would effectively use your magic to seize power.

What would you do then, once in power?

Seperately, what if to seize power you need the collaboration of your global colleague wizards around the world? (Imagine for our example that the more powerful expressions of your magic requires others). It emerges that the unsolved political problem of people becomes the equally unsolved political problem of their ruler. How to take power must be solved (which requires politics), how to remain in power must be solved. What are your solutions? (You may assume your magic is not great enough to absorb the other wizards or anything like that, the political problem must be solved before your magic is that strong, and getting their requires the others).

Only two things would be the goal. Maintain power by eliminating all other mages and maintain a status quo among the populace. Things such as education will be forcibly discouraged, hierarchies will be established in an absolute manner and those that give dissenters to my regime will be richly rewarded. It's all about perpetuating an indefinite "dark age".

[Yagon]

So you would effectively use your magic to seize power.

What would you do then, once in power?

Seperately, what if to seize power you need the collaboration of your global colleague wizards around the world? (Imagine for our example that the more powerful expressions of your magic requires others). It emerges that the unsolved political problem of people becomes the equally unsolved political problem of their ruler. How to take power must be solved (which requires politics), how to remain in power must be solved. What are your solutions? (You may assume your magic is not great enough to absorb the other wizards or anything like that, the political problem must be solved before your magic is that strong, and getting their requires the others).

Only two things would be the goal. Maintain power by eliminating all other mages and maintain a status quo among the populace. Things such as education will be forcibly discouraged, hierarchies will be established in an absolute manner and those that give dissenters to my regime will be richly rewarded. It's all about perpetuating an indefinite "dark age".

So you behave as the Kings did. Same result. Thank you for your input.

[Yagon]

I would have felt gay in my childhood in, my homophobia saturated childhood, to say this, but I want that belt with the feathers on the end.

I'd prefer to have The Scepter of Communism that he is holding...

An Eastern European math professor I once had was invited to come work in America and quickly accepted the offer and rapid discrete travel accommodations. He had been descended from an educated aristocracy that did not enjoy the Iron Curtain.

On the wall of his office in America was an icon of the Eastern Orthodox Mary, and a larger glossy framed portrait of Ronald Reagan. Whenever he entered his office, he would make a religious gesticulation towards them, and I often wondered if he found Reagan more holy.

He despised Communism. He believed, from his life experience, that he would not be able to do his work and live prosperously under Communism.

But he saw only Communism as practiced in the mid 20th century Eastern Europe.

The Lenin Wizard...he is from somewhen else? Where did he go wrong?

[Multiversal Venn-Copard]

I swiftly realize that the world I'm in is a poorly constructed metaphor for a different world that lacks magic and needs purely technological solutions to its own problems. I set about gathering wizards to use magic responsibly to create knowledge-gathering spells, and construct nonmagical items and processes to first undo the damage and then replace existing magical infrastructure (making us obsolete but the world just as good), while regretting that the other world cannot simply stop using its own problem-causing methods and switch to something else. That world used technology for evil, and it must learn to use it for good as well.

[Senkaku]

sounds like my world is a thinly veiled analogy to the real one lol

Is this like a proposal for some sort of revolt of the scientists/weapons researchers or something? Seems dumb and impractical

[The New California Republic]

The Lenin Wizard...he is from somewhen else? Where did he go wrong?

Wizard Lenin did nothing wrong.

[The Two Jerseys]

I would have felt gay in my childhood in, my homophobia saturated childhood, to say this, but I want that belt with the feathers on the end.

I'd prefer to have The Scepter of Communism that he is holding...

Shouldn't the head of the Scepter of Communism be a hammer and sickle design?

[Yagon]

I swiftly realize that the world I'm in is a poorly constructed metaphor for a different world that lacks magic and needs purely technological solutions to its own problems. I set about gathering wizards to use magic responsibly to create knowledge-gathering spells, and construct nonmagical items and processes to first undo the damage and then replace existing magical infrastructure (making us obsolete but the world just as good), while regretting that the other world cannot simply stop using its own problem-causing methods and switch to something else. That world used technology for evil, and it must learn to use it for good as well.

Since you clearly state the metaphor, it was constructed well enough to communicate the idea, all it needed to do, but I understand its important to present one's self as superior when presenting input. People do it.

How do you gather the wizards? A more careful examination of the metaphor might see that question was already there, but the metaphor also reveals some of the obstacles to simply "setting about gathering the wizards". They each have their own kings and large scale global cooperation may be required. Will you have them all join a facebook group? And even if you could magically (or perhaps technologically, it depends on how obvious a metaphor needs to be for someone to see the details, it varies by person) confer with all of them surreptitiously, how do you solve the political problem of uniting and coordinating them (which you should probably consider before skipping to the obvious steps of reversing and repairing the broader problem)?

In the metaphor, that problem can be seen to someone who is looking to understand, that things should be made simple but not simpler than they are, as a wizard once said.

So with the problem stated more easily for you, how will you gather the wizards? And once you do, how will you get them to agree?

Do you see, some problems are fractcal, address a problem of organization, face another of organization. Wizards like to feel smart and important, like we all do, and sometimes they will examine ideas to simply say "So easy, so poorly done", but they don't really see what they were looking at. If it's so easy, cast the spell. Unite the wizards and form a plan they would work together to actuate. Do so in a world currently controlled by people who will seek to prevent you, and will respond lethally.

Everything's easy if you're responding not to understand and solve, but to posture.

So, how do you unite and organize the wizards? How do you contact them, and what plant to present to them that they will get behind?

If you look carefully, at my poor metaphor or at the real world, it's an important thing to have overlooked. Do you see why?

[The New California Republic]

I'd prefer to have The Scepter of Communism that he is holding...

Shouldn't the head of the Scepter of Communism be a hammer and sickle design?

it's cut into the crystal, but it's too small to see from that photograph.

[Yagon]

sounds like my world is a thinly veiled analogy to the real one lol

Is this like a proposal for some sort of revolt of the scientists/weapons researchers or something? Seems dumb and impractical

One inclined to science might view that as truncated, because it omits "because _____________".

Why is it dumb? (Also, not all wizards make weapons, some make other things. Increasingly, civilization is dependent on the things they make, understand, and maintain. I wonder if that becomes important somewhere....)

As to it being impractical, Kelvin (an accomplished scientist) said heavier than air flight would never work. Going to the moon was, at one point, impractical.

Figuring out a way for humans to coexist productively and peacefully in a way that doesn't destroy the environment and scorch the earth seems extremely practical in its intent. It's methodology would have to be something unprecedented.

Something that to our ancestors would see almost....like magic.

[Yagon]

The Lenin Wizard...he is from somewhen else? Where did he go wrong?

Wizard Lenin did nothing wrong.

What percentage of scientists and engineers would respond favorably to a call to global communism? I believe in many places that call exists.

Where would you say on Earth now is the best example of Lenin's Communism?

[The New California Republic]

Wizard Lenin did nothing wrong.

What percentage of scientists and engineers would respond favorably to a call to global communism? I believe in many places that call exists.

It depends, probably not many at the moment.

Where would you say on Earth now is the best example of Lenin's Wizard Communism?

Fixed.

Hogwarts.

[Unstoppable Empire of Doom]

Imagine you are a wizard in a world where magic is real but follows rigorous arcane rules and requires study and resources to master and develop. The more it develops, the more it takes to develop further, yet its powers grow at an even faster rate. It is forbidden for the masses to possess city destroying spells, as a precaution.

To work together at scale, the wizard must live in a society that provides food, clothing, etc. The Wizards powers are not great enough yet that it can arbitrarily rearrange matter around itself without invoking others. They must still eat, their magic is not quite yet enough that they can rearrange the planets in the sky into great black sails that eat sunlight and shit usable transmittable storable power that is distributed to the organelles of any human cell in the solar system by briefly puncturing spacetime or used to arrange matter into human and/or AI designed artisan meals to your particular taste.

But you are close. You and the others . Another few generations, perhaps, but how many generations has it been? Since the first to jam a stick under a log to get a tasty grub, and found a good stick for that, and kept it, and showed the others....how long?

But you've been warning them for a while now about the black burning and the coming droughts. You've told them and shown them, with the work of lifetimes of your colleagues around the world, that the magic has limits and we are taking more from the world than it can give. The air is smelling bad. The water is going bad. The animals are dying and not coming back at a faster rate than has been observed in a very long time, and those times were dark as mass extinctions can be.

The Kings were put in charge because they were good at killing, but they are bad leaders. They are short sighted. They want to be King, and they will see the Kingdom burn to nothing before it goes to any but their line. They will not listen to your warnings. They hold their swords to the world's throats, saying "Serve or we all die".

The wizards, being pragmatic, have served. They authored the city destroying spells. The spear that kills hundreds from hundreds of miles away, guided by magic eyes in the sky. The self-weilding swords are at working prototype.

Your colleagues across the world have their own Kings, and the insanity is spreading.

Do you continue to serve? Or do something else?

I would begin quietly talking to the other wizards and ask how everybody feels. That's what I would do.

Attempt to use magic to transcend mortality. To kill the goddess of magic and replace her with myself. That shall be my folly and my name shall be Karsus.

[Infected Mushroom]

I would raise an army, collect powerful artifacts and followers, and then march against the Crown. Declare myself a Wizard Queen. Kill thousands. Kings would fall. Then eventually I will be struck down/imprisoned/executed... but not before I have shown the world the power of magic and the costs of Ignorance.

[Ethel mermania]

if i substitute scientists for wizzards, and catastrophic global warming for the black burning. Do i understand the issue right?

[Rectification Government]

I would have used my magic to literally flex on all the libtards in the world.

[Yagon]

What percentage of scientists and engineers would respond favorably to a call to global communism? I believe in many places that call exists.

It depends, probably not many at the moment.

Where would you say on Earth now is the best example of Lenin's Wizard Communism?

Fixed.

Hogwarts.

Physics Department at Oxford in a transdimensional train station in Deutsch's office?

[Yagon]

Attempt to use magic to transcend mortality. To kill the goddess of magic and replace her with myself. That shall be my folly and my name shall be Karsus.

I find a dashing confidence in that you have already picked out a name.

[Reploid Productions]

libtards

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