Have you ever seen a magician at work? Either performing some street magic or at a show?
How is it that in the 21st century, magicians are still fooling people?
Magic may be one of the most fascinating subjects to explore throughout human history. It has accompanied us for many thousands of years (if not all the way back to the beginning).
We can explain things now—especially the magic that has separated itself from religious or spiritual contexts. Yet, even with all of the knowledge of neuroscience and cognition, we’re still fooled by a good trick.
The job, according to magician, Chris Ramsay, is to create a safe environment for the audience to have a transformative experience. It has to be “safe” because the magician is asking the audience to suspend their belief. They’re going to perceive things that seem to break the rules of the natural world.
The Rules
The more I create systems in code, the more sensitive I am to the other kinds of systems there are in the real world.
Ultimately, systems are just a collection of decisions. There is no magic to it…well, maybe a little magic.
Some systems are held together by an ephemeral substance we call “trust.” In fact, many of our social systems are completely reliant on trust, so much so that we can forget that the system is quite fragile—until someone breaks it.
Whether it’s a crime or even a betrayal, the breaking of a trust-based system is shocking and confusing. We can be utterly stunned as we watch something that seemed solid and sturdy burn to the ground and crumble into dust.
We may ask ourselves: how could we have been fooled? What did we miss?
Just like the magic show, we came to our system with a set of rules that seemed so intuitive or so untouchable as to not even be present in our minds. The breaking of trust can feel like deep deception.
We may attempt to puzzle out what happened: looking at all the pieces, scrutinizing every word, trying to retain everything we saw. The problem is that to discover the trick behind the magic or the betrayal lurking behind the system is a problem of attention.
The Methods
If you want to deceive someone, one of the easiest ways is to distract them from what you are really doing.
As Chris Ramsay would say, “The bigger motion covers the smaller one.”
We see this in social systems all of the time. Corruption sneaks in behind favors and friendships and shared beliefs. Complacency casts shadows over the areas where change is happening so that we simply can’t perceive it—especially in contrast to the shining thing in the spotlight.
Reasonable minds have posited that the recent U.S. election was about democracy, but the masses thought it was about the economy or abortion or other inflammatory topics that are easier and more accessible to argue about.
The methods of deception are many and varied. Every single one of us has been, is currently, and will be deceived about something—even many things.
The Reveal
If magic is deception, how can the magic show really be about having a transformative experience as Ramsay insists?
First, we have to remove a common trap that modern audiences fall into: thinking they know how the trick is done. The moment we think we’ve got it figured out is the moment we stop perceiving information. We may stop listening, looking, or even stop being present in the moment.
We may be so focused on proving that the magician is using wires that we don’t notice the smoke and mirrors. We may even be playing into the deception of the trick itself—we’re supposed to think it’s wires.
The best experiences I’ve had with magic are the times I’ve allowed myself to suspend belief, to stop explaining and to start listening. The art behind the magic is ideally designed to cause us to question, rather than to answer.
While a magic show is still entertainment, and the real-world deception is devastating, the ideal outcome is to be transformed by the experience. Hopefully once the deception in our social systems is revealed, we are able to make changes and improvements. Hopefully we stay in a mindset of curiosity, rather than become hardened in stubbornness or trauma.
Transformation can be a relief or an invitation for more pain. Take your time. Update your beliefs when better information is found.
We can’t eradicate deception, but we can change ourselves.