Aggression in the Grand Design

I posited a scenario on Twitter to demonstrate a point I don’t particularly enjoy. “The Grand Design” is what I call the specific, localized Logos of Reality as we experience it. Said otherwise, it’s the settings on this specific save file of a Sims game. Magic within Reality is part of the Grand Design, a defiance incorporated into the functioning of the overall Logos. I would argue that magic is much older than this Reality and is part of its construction so that’s why the Design cannot properly account for magic as it’d like, but I obviously have a bit of a bias here. If you haven’t read my book, I essentially think the Design exists to prolong the End of the Universe.

However, the Design is not an active participant in shaping the Ends along the way. Its primary concern is ensuring that the most possible Ends occur before the inevitable collapse of Reality. It wants to maximize the Potential of things. That also means limiting them: think about Japanese kudzu, the plant devouring much of the American South now. The biodiversity that survived the Ice Age is now collapsing as a landscaping plant grown without any natural barriers to its spread. The Design’s controls against the concentration of magic are similar: the question of our particular iteration is focused on the Many. One of the many practical outcomes of the Design’s operation is the “defensive bonus” that comes with being attacked magically. Its function is largely to slow aggressive expansion: it won’t equal the scales, but it does give the defender a slight increase to the amount of magic normally allowed. It also affords temporary privileges and allows you to do things that might normally have greater backlash. Unironically, the Design favors those who can prove their complaint.

Unfortunately, the Design is truly an agnostic, ambivalent thing. It does not care whether the choice is total collapse, self-destruction, becoming the worst possible version of yourself, or wasting everything. As long as the possibility is resolved by the Will of One in the Many, the Design considers it “satisfactory.” Magicians run afoul of the Design for a variety of reasons: the relevant one here that we tend to be drawn toward Event Horizons (Events) within the Design. These are big questions unresolved, but being drawn toward something does not mean it is yours to decide. It’s a lesson I still struggle with and that most of us do. After all, the impulse toward magic is ultimately derived from a meddlesome Nature. Magicians will often alter those Events and while sometimes resolving them, we also often make things into much bigger deals than they would otherwise be. Stars stir up space dust and sometimes that sends asteroids that end millions of species.

So with that lengthy context set, let’s return to the scenario: 

There were a few quick replies that all brought up sensible, thoughtful points. Some pushed for more clarity, others took the suggested position while acknowledging the baited question; as of writing this, none gave the answer I would. In my estimation, as wrong and wicked as the abuser may be, it is not the intercessor’s place to intervene. However just one’s casus belli, it is still ultimately a reason for war. While writing this, others have come with a bit more of a complex solution: what about helping that person help themselves? If they work the magic together. A better solution but still ultimately missing the point. “You” are the aggressor and the abuser is your victim, the defender, the one who gets the boost in this scenario. However righteous your purpose and however Good the outcomes possible, it is through an act of aggression – your Willful violence – that you have joined this conflict and named that which must be destroyed to create the future you desire. Whether the friend participates or entirely hates the changes you have created, it is you who must bear the consequence.

What is my favorite part in this question, entirely unintended I must admit, is that everyone revealed a second point worth highlighting here: just because you’re aggressive doesn’t mean you’re bad. Everything that exists infringes upon something else. We all eat to live, the literal atoms that make our bodies can’t simultaneously make up someone else’s. We are limited and to continue existing means consuming something else’s existence. While the Grand Design absolutely punishes aggressors in the long run and defenders always get their immediate boost, if you really are invoking the right powers and have as just a cause as I would say you might, that little boost won’t matter. But your magics will always fail as long as you pretend you are not the aggressor, the one turning this into a cosmic conflict. You have drawn the Event Horizon and now a question of Destiny has manifested from Fate.

This is what magic does.

So what would I do? Depends. The best answer is to circumvent the conflict entirely, at least with magic. Perhaps you must recognize that you are not capable of helping your friend. What if instead of overtly allying yourself against the abuser, be it by magic or other means, you ally yourself against the greater problem. Without saying much of his story, it was very early on in a friendship I hold very dear that I recognized a friend was in a very abusive relationship. The dynamic was not one of overt violence or the like, but one that built an emotional reality that legitimized instability and necessitated his constant subjugation. Instead of casting a spell to banish the abusive girlfriend or the like, I reflected instead on what I heard: this woman, whatever her own issues, was not the first woman like this in his life. There was a pattern and wise magicians know that patterns tend to recur if not fundamentally changed.

On a night unexpected, we sat to play some violent video games and got to talking about our feelings, as nerdy fellas tend to do. Being the wicked witch I am, I took my chance: instead of the obvious line, I drew one that would change the pattern. Rather than conflict and strife, I wove a comforting nest. Instead of readying him for war or a confrontation, I ask a question I knew the answer to and then used magic to force him to tell the truth instead of lie like was his instinct. I took away his choice and made myself responsible for what would happen. Instead of forcing someone to leave an abusive relationship before they’re ready, before putting a flashpoint to a tense situation, before forcing myself into the center of a story that was never about me to begin with, I inserted myself somewhere I felt certain I could contain the consequences of my magic. Heartbreak, betrayal, a feeling of lacking, the ugly lies that come from being far more brilliant than your surroundings: those are things my Nature can dispel easily.

For all my protesting, I am a cosmic cinnamon roll. I ugly cried first and then I heard a cry like none I hope to hear again: a lifetime of anguish expelled. I drank up like a grand forest takes up the Skies’ long-pouring torrents. I retold the story of The Tempest and encouraged him to rage louder and louder. The bigger the storm this burgeoning sorcerer summoned, the greater the chance for the patterns of his life to change. As he howled with the great winds of mountaintops and their far-away valleys, I made myself as the great firs that root in rocky peaks and damp silt all the same. And as even the greatest of storms does, the tempest passed and the clear skies in its wake allowed for a new pattern to emerge. Destruction gave way to Creation. I worked no magic that made me an aggressor but against that part of my friend which would have destroyed himself. Instead of attacking the one who was hurting him in the immediate, I forced him to fight the part of himself that built this cycle in the first place.

That is the best solution, although not viable within the question asked as you’ve already taken action. So, why is this the best approach in scenarios like this?

Well, in my version, instead of a big blow-up with this girlfriend, some temporary changes, and then a return to business as usual as soon as I or someone else wasn’t filling that void, some time passed. The relationship continued, they had talks, and perhaps things even improved. He certainly felt that way and the sources of his deeper wounds were also being tended. The magic I had worked had done what I had hoped and the friendship between us was powerful enough that the change I wanted would come. I need only be patient and steady, to recognize my role in the Design is not his savior, not his hero, but his friend and one who helped kill a part of him. 

When the blow up with the girlfriend came and he asked me to help him end things, I helped him formulate the plan, gave him the space to do it, and stood firmly and silently as the confrontation exploded. She cleverly tried to drag me into things, accusing me of having instigated this and turned him against her. The gay friend trying to manipulate the straight man – a fun narrative that is thrown around an awful lot. It is my Nature to respond to insult with severe injury, but thankfully, I learned my lesson in that magical interaction too. He did not need anyone to fight for him. I was his muscle here and so I said as much: “it’s his place and he asked me to be here. Until he says otherwise, I’m going to stay.” 

I am very happy to say that my friend knows more and deeper love today than he ever thought was possible with people he thought love could never exist between. He has gone on to do greater magic than I imagined possible because instead of making his fight our fight, making his win into our win, and leaving his pattern as his pattern, I used magic to change the Circumstances that kept him from changing the situation himself. I meddled, I aggressed, and I took responsibility for it. I got what I wanted – a healthier, happier friend – and that led to what I ultimately hoped it would: an end to that abusive relationship and all like it.

My point here isn’t to warn you against aggression, only to ensure you really understand the battlelines you’re drawing. Are there other fronts you can fight on? Is there a possibility that you might be bringing nuclear bombs to a fist-fight? Are you willing to take on all the outcomes of this or are you planning to duck out as soon as the heroic bit comes to a close? If your friend ends up kidnapped and killed after you cast a spell to wrong the abuser, can you accept you caused their death as well like you would have accepted credit for enacting karma? Sometimes, our lot in life is not a happy one. Do not be so quick to play the Judge. Few of us, even a powerful clairvoyant like myself, can truly see the scope of Event Horizons. That’s why I named them that: only those inside can actually see what’s going on. From the outside, we only see its effects on everything else.