How and why is magic irrational?

[Triplicate]

My quest for a magic system, take 2.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=21353

One of my principal worldbuilding projects (even if I've mostly set it aside for several years) is a gonzo adventure setting. It's meant to make all sorts of stuff make sense that usually doesn't when I see it in fiction. Because it's an alternate Earth intentionally convergent with our own, its map won't be much different. The whole point is to justify certain tropes.

The planned "present" for the setting, the point in which I intended to set stories, is some point in the relatively near future. In some aspects, technology advanced faster than in our world.
Magic exists and always has. There has never been a Masquerade because it doesn't make sense. Yet societies nearly identical to those of our Earth developed. Magic did not become a science or an industry. Why?
Magic is not just spells cast by wizards. In fact, it's more likely to appear in other things; artifacts, places and creatures.

At one point, I said I wanted magic to be marginalized. I thought more about that and realized how perfectly that describes what I expect.

(You may notice that these descriptions are written from the perspective of a white westerner. I can't help that. It's based on pulp and comic tropes. I don't want to be racist, but I do view this world more from the perspective of a (white western) inhabitant than from an abstract top-down view.)

Most of what I want from magic can be summarized as "Science is logical and rational; magic is not."

I decided to repurpose my old "Magic has declined" assumption. That's no longer an objective view of the world, but a common perspective of the people who live in it (in western countries, at least).

Fitting trope expectations, the shaman of some indigenous group is likely to be a real magician. Why? Or more accurately, why isn't there anyone equivalent in European(-influenced) cultures?

(Note that I've so far ignored or avoided directly addressing the relation between the world's religions and how magic functions.)

Because there isn't. I'm not being tautological. It's that there isn't in real life, and this type of story relies on the world converging to real-world outcomes in many ways.

It's not that any color of human is any less magically inclined. There are many people in Western societies who are attuned to magic and capable of using it. It's that they're marginalized.
This arose when I thought "Who else do I expect to be a magician?"

We all know Hitler was, or at least interested. (Again, comic book conventions.) I expect Dali was; he'd been places and seen things most humans never would.
Someone with prophetic abilities isn't necessarily rich or powerful from their use. He might just be the old hobo who predicts the outcome of the hero's exploits and says afterward, "Told you so."

I realized "marginalized" is exactly the right term for the common factor here. These are people who are, or might be regarded as, crazy. They don't hold 'ordinary' jobs. Then I put it together:
In Western societies, there are still many people who know magic to some extent. They're scattered in various positions because "magician" isn't a job description anymore. For a long time, the medieval church repressed magic. Then science was developed, and it couldn't understand magic. So by modern times, there was no place left in Western societies for magicians.
We're long past burning witches. The likeliest reaction to a magician is "Why don't you do something useful?" Most people simply don't get magic.

Magic users are, in general, not rational people. For some reason, it must be irrational to place your trust in magic, even though it demonstratably works.

Magic is a disruptive force, something on the fringe. It resists institutionalization because institutions resist it. People in power are more likely to be rational, and getting a group of people to agree on something can produce decisions more rational than any individual member.

The best example I have: Soldiers sometimes carried charms to ward against bullets. Some of those worked. Yet armies generally did not issue lucky charms as equipment. Why? Maybe they can't be mass-produced for whatever reason, but more fundamentally... Strategists and administrators tend more than anyone else to be rational, so war plans don't rely on magic. Only if someone extremely irrational happens to get in power (see above) might you see a nation relying on magic strategically. And even then, remember what the tendencies of Nazi occultists in fiction are: single big artifacts or rituals, not mass-produced magic.

It's all starting to come together, but the most important piece is missing. To make a world that justifies these conventions of magic, I have to answer "Why is magic irrational?" My worry is that this reduces to "Magic only works if you believe", one of my most hated tropes. Yet I know I want one's personality and worldview to limit magic. I don't think of it solely or even primarily as "You can't use magic if you don't believe" but "You won't use magic if you don't understand". The goal and expectation is that thinking, or learning to think, in a way that makes one a good scientist, or a good businessperson, or a good leader impedes one's ability to understand and use magic. The issue might not be magic but human nature, and that's what I'm worried about. I'm concerned the stories I take inspiration from operate on some faulty assumptions about human nature. In this case, that most people are highly rational and have a need to understand things. (It's less strange than the old comic book assumption that good is default and evil an aberration...)

[ajcsiv]

I would argue that the reasons of magic being irrational could be presented as any of the below reasons:

1. Magic is the embodiment of chaos. It might respond to the butterfly effect, it might occasionally warp its own purpose at random, permanently or otherwise. Regardless, it's chaos theory in action.
2. Magic is not so much irrational as it is unreliable. Power ebbs and flows, sometimes it might be great at its job and sometimes it isn't, and humanity has found no way to predict it, therefore rational men do not rely on it. In addition, maybe it messes with electrics, or magnetism, or things like that making it less and less desired as technology develops.
3. Magic is powered by people, but people change. If you enchant an object while feeling a particular emotion, it will be strongest when feeling that specific emotion. If you were in love when you cast it, you have to be feeling a surge of love of equivalent feeling when you want it to work. Feeling less love, love for a different person, or even more love than when you created it all result in the magic functioning less. Not feeling love at all makes it even worse. Take this one step further and say that it is reliant on the original caster's emotions and NOT the person wielding it. Also means enchantments don't work after the caster dies and the user may not realise it.
4. Occasionally magic summons demons. It's old but useful.
5. Magic works differently for everyone who uses it. It might be reliable for that one person, but it also makes it impossible to teach from one person to another. All magic is an exploration and sometimes just the act of exploring it can be disastrous. See 4.

[TimPaul]

Why is magic irrational.

The simple explaination is that it's a force that manifests it's self based on each person's indiviutaltiy and their skill with it. I'll explain using drawing and creating as a metaphor, because it's what I do for a living, and understand how it works.

I am an illustrator. Illustration and drawing are not the same thing. I'm also a drawer. Drawing is how an illustrator thinks. It's how I work out my thought process to create an illustration.

I get a lot of people saying they wish they could draw. When in fact, just about anyone can learn to draw. Drawing is a skill, but to do so, it takes the right frame of mind. There is also no gene or DNA code that they have been able to find that says, this person can draw, this person can't. The idea of innate talent that make some people better than others at drawing, painting, being creative is false.

You become better by practice and developing skills and ability and accumulating knowledge of color, light, composition, technique and manipulation of materials. And that drawing, works more like muscle memory. When you start doing physical activity, your bodies muscles quickly adapt to doing that motion, and over time, you get better at it, and it gets easy. Part of that getting better, is being conscious about observing what you are doing, and adjusting along the way, for greater performance.

For example, growing up, we had to practice writing our letters and numbers. Row after row of the alphabet, until we could write automatically, without having to think about how to draw each letter.

So, it's not that people can't draw, it's that they don't know how to or don't want to.

Now as kids, we all drew and created all the time. And when we drew pink skys, and purple puppies and faces on the sun, and dancing bugs, no one said, that's wrong. We filled the page, and gave no consideration to things like perspective or up and down, or space. It was ok to take a walk on the sun, fly, or be in space without a space suit.

And as we grew up, some people loose interest in drawing. A lot of times it's because we start to get corrected as adults. We are told, the sun doesn't have a face. Real dogs don't look like that, you can't fly. And while not everyone that drew as a kid entertained ideas of becoming an artist, we do consider it something for kids to do, if you aren't a professional artist.

So once we hit high school, most people stop drawing for the pleasure of it. You can still draw, you've just learned, through many influences and reasons, it's not acceptable.

Those that do stick with creating images, and become good at it, develop their unique style and individual expression in visual images. We might not even understand why we connect to a piece, we just know that we do. And the really dedicated artists, make truly great art. But each artists is different and unique, no two following the same rules, or getting the same results. The art is a accumulation of knowledge, practice, skills, ability, passion, personal interest and a unique decision process all coming together for a unique expression.


So too can magic be along those lines. It's not a genetic ability to do it, and it's not even a case of you believe or not. It's a case of, you stuck with it, when others left it to the side, for whatever reason. They found easier or more satisfying ways to achieve their goals in life.

Where one person uses magic, someone else decides that the way of the warrior or the thief is the way. Some people don't really have a choice, because of the circumstances of their life. They are the child of a farmer, and are raised to be a farmer, whether they want to be or not. And not knowing anything else, accept it. Some, because they are discouraged, because it's not proper for an serious adult.

So while magic is there, and anyone can use it, it's not the easiest thing to master and use to achieve your goals. There is no great force that calls to only the special few. And for those that do go that route, it's expressed in a way that is an extension of them, rather than some scientific formula or process. Since it's something that you shape internally and set out into the world, it naturally picks up aspects of your personality, both conscious and subconscious. It's influenced by the emotions you are experiencing at the time.

Where as science is all external. You learn a formula, and you repeat it each time for the same outcome.

[Expendable]

I read an interesting definition of Magic once: "Magic is the use of little-known natural forces to direct a change in the conscious universe." Perhaps it's not magic itself that is irrational, merely those who use or misuse it?

What is a spell, anyway? Is it not a series of instructions directing what it is to be done? Much like a recipe or a program? If you make a mistake with a recipe, you don't get what you wanted. If you make a mistake with a program, either nothing happens or you get an unexpected result.

Perhaps it is the same with magic - get the spell wrong, either nothing happens or everything goes crazy because forces that were suppose to be directed towards your goal are instead bouncing around off of everything else.

Casting circles may be like circuit diagrams. Magic amulets, wands, and staves are ways of harnessing and focusing some of those forces? Stone circles and altars may act as energy concentrators or batteries.

Perhaps when you change how you look at magic, it may stop looking irrational to you?