Magical Thinking
Day #14, Hilma af Klint and the Imaginary Possible
How much easier it would be to let go of what is not working if we could imagine and perhaps catch a glimpse of another way if we believed another way was possible.
This desire to create a better world is often met with derision, called utopian, and generally looked down upon as naive — in a form of “magical thinking.”
Somehow this impulse to believe that we can create something better is naive.
Meanwhile apocalyptic stories of the future fed to us through movies and TV offer a Hollywood lone hero who kills whatever threatens him or his family. This ethos of kill or be killed and loyalty to the leader who can supposedly offer you the best protection is treated as somehow more realistic?
These cynical stories that assume that destruction of people and the planet is inevitable, that no one can be truly trusted, that humans will always return to some version of tribal warfare, is our likely future?
In these apocalyptic monster movies stories, we are told that we cannot trust ourselves to do better, we cannot trust that benevolence is real, that the only way we will survive is by anticipate the disaster that threatens to destroy us and finding some version of a powerful patriarch savior who will protect us, but only if we pledge our power to them and find an enemy we can feel superior to.
To move in a different direction, I needed stories that sparked my imagination of a world I wanted to embrace, not one I wanted to hide from.
What makes thinking “magical” is the belief that our ideas, words and actions can change reality.
To cast a spell is to speak words aloud with intention to affect what exists in the world, and to make one’s wishes manifest.
. “Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s inner, personal experience and the external physical world.”
We often get lost in our stories and believe they are the only way things are or have ever been.
But we also have the power to create better stories and to make these visions real.
I wanted to believe that in vision and in words I could create a better life for myself. Otherwise I’d recreate the life that I had before.
I wanted to believe in magic.
