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You need to understand the scope of surveillance, its primitive basis: Magical Combat should be differentiated from psychic attack,
with which a large proportion of 'fringe' occultists concern themselves
with, and is largely a product of self-delusion and varying degrees of
megalomania. True magical combat has its own rules and boundaries,
which are known to the skilled, while the trainee must quickly learn
them if trauma is to be avoided. Caught up in a situation which s/he
finds incomprehensible and alien, the trainee only knows confusion
and terror. Stripped of the smug self-assurance of "it can't happen to
me" s/he learns to perceive the environment with clarity, to give attention
to the rhythms and pulses of the world. Truly, Death is a great teacher.
If you can reach forwards and see the moment of your 'death', then that
moment will give you a glimpse of your potential.[0]
Look at this from a naturalistic framework. Jesus, for instance, may have simply been a very eccentric man who behaved linguistically and personally in ways that were revolutionary. He probably induced too many magic mushrooms, or some atypical neurological condition set him extremely intuitively in line with a mystical tradition — nevertheless, these are historical implementation details of this Universe. Not uniquely interesting either way you describe it.Now imagine that these features of a society become more widespread — where you have {J1, J2, J3, ...}, then imposters, {I1, I2, I3, ...}, and then of course randoms, {R1, R2, R3, ...}. This is an oversimplified model, but it captures the problem well enough. Surveillance becomes a psychological management strategy that naturally emerges given the task of ruling out true adepts (altruistics) and delusionists (potentials who cannot manage their own psychic powers). "Psychic powers" does not amount to some belief in the supernatural. If I mention the word "chair", this will not sit with you as mental residue (surely, contextual and relational analysis apply, but on the whole it will not) — but if you take recourse to JL Austin's "How to Do Things With Words" — you will certainly need to shake off words like "preapopstaticontinentalism". The first point is that a speaker has produced the word, then it comes that decision procedure of whether or not it has literal meaning. The brain has to do work — which is the basis of "psychic forces" (reducible to behaviors of neurological substrata). — [0]: http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/apikindx.html |
Also, I erect a Tower of Iron Will around the party. (rolls d20)