Before people were "literate" and could read and write it was all oral (giggity). Knowledge was passed down from parent to child, elder to contemporary, master to novice. Someone who had been there and done that. As times changed, knowledge became easier to come by. You no longer had to prove yourself to receive these trade secrets.Technology has helped people find jobs and hobbies they never would have found in the aforementioned archaic system.
As we have progressed through the ages, trade has also been a way to garner favor. Scratch my back and I will teach you something. Sometimes it's tit for tat with a skill but more often than not, in today's society, it's monetary in nature. In the last few decades, this is how a lot of magic knowledge has been spread across the globe. From books and videos to magic shops both online and brick and mortar. You can learn how to do some cool stuff to pick up gals, amuse friends and sometimes even jump start a career for some of your hard earned cash. Seems fair right?
Why did I regale you all of this? Well it's because today I saw a video that made me want to punch babies (more than usual).
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| Yah good luck with that kid... |
We are living in a world of amateurs teaching amateurs and I'm not sure how I feel about.
That sounds like a modern version of the Masked Magician.
ReplyDeleteIt may boil down to self esteem; if it's low enough you become willing to accept attention in any form. Sometimes it's difficult to tell if somebody is interested in you, or only in something you pass along. The way to be certain, of course, is to only pass along something you've created. And if nobody likes what you create, you either need to rethink what you make, or rethink whether you need the attention.
Occasionally in magic you find a barrier to learning along the lines of "I won't teach you unless you can prove you're serious about magic" (not to be confused with "once you're competent with Sleight X, then you'll be ready for Sleight Y"). A lot of fandoms have this as well. "Oh, you like comic books, huh? Well if you can't tell me what issue of Amazing Fantasy had the first appearance of Spider-Man, you're not worth my time." Sometimes people want a sense of power, and setting themselves up as an arbitrary gatekeeper is a very easy way to get that.
[Sidebar: here's a ridiculous note from a magic shop that will only sell to verified magicians, but won't define what that means: https://www.magicnook.com/verified.htm ]
There's the argument that by and large the general public JUST DOESN'T CARE about magic secrets, so anyone expressing any interest at all should be allowed in. But that ignores the people who are like "look at me I know a secret aren't I special I can tell you if you love me please please why don't you love me?!" They are damaging to magic, not because they share secrets but because magic becomes associated with their desperate neediness. Magic is about sharing wonder, not exchanging secrets for attention.
How do I feel knowledge should be shared? General knowledge, of course, should be totally free (I don't want anybody to jump through hoops in order to learn about scientific method, for example). But with trade secrets, and specifically magic... I agree there should be some barrier. But what that is I can't really define. I wouldn't want to discourage someone just because they don't fit some silly rule. I think books are great, because they take effort and weed out most of the bad people. But then you have someone like Jon Armstrong whose dyslexia makes the effort of books an unreasonable barrier for me to demand. So, while I mocked that store for not defining their verification requirements, I'm kind of in the same boat. However I do feel I'm being far less of a jerk about it.
"We are living in a world of amateurs teaching amateurs and I'm not sure how I feel about."
ReplyDeleteI know how I feel about it: it stinks.
"The worst part is, it's not even THEIR secrets to give away. It's other people's knowledge they are offering to divulge. Information they are selling and the perpetrator has likely not even paid for themselves. They didn't earn this knowledge through hard work or trade and yet are willing to offer it up freely for a fleeting moment of "fame" and a few button presses."
Yes. It's madness. You can't even try to reason with them. They have no understanding of ethics . They can't even grasp what you're saying . They don't understand that what they are doing is stealing .
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Chris, I agree that the guys who run MagicNook (Jim Gerrish and "Prof. Spellbinder") are aggravating for requiring someone to verify themselves as a magician before they will allow them to purchase any of their material , but then not providing any consistent standard for what constitutes verification . However, in principle , I think this idea of having some sort of verification process to weed out the idly curious (the "secret hoarders" I call them) is a good idea. Unfortunately the asinine way that MagicNook has done it gives the whole idea a black eye.