Light that Knows No Boundaries Throughout the night, my neighbors’ lights blare from their house, spilling into backyards, trespassing into bedrooms, streaming into space. Light respects no boundaries. I can curse and cajole to my heart’s content, yet nothing will turn the glare aside except a wall or a shield. Even eyelids are not enough to protect us from the artificial glow that blights the world. So much brighter than any flame or distant star, the glare we have created confuses birds, leads turtles astray, and disrupts the hormones of every mammal, including ourselves. None of this matters when our fear of demons and criminals is used against us to…
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Ownership, Complacency, and Giving Up Privilege
Change Is Coming The United States, along with many countries in the world, is in turmoil. Tension has been festering for decades, but because of the pandemic, a widening income gap, black and brown deaths at the hands of police, a broken healthcare system, and inequities caused by global warming, social unrest has erupted. Across the political spectrum, people feel threatened. Rebellion is a time-honored American tradition. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence declares “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of” the ability of its citizens to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the people have the right “to alter or to abolish it.” [1] Is this…
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On Faith and Privilege
Wealth and Piety Being poor doesn’t guarantee a strong nor an honest faith, but something in a precarious existence opens us up to religious devotion. The opposite can also be true. When we have prestige and wealth, we depend less on others, whether they are human or divine. Although the well-off and privileged may feel less need for a god who loves and holds them, many wealthy people attend religious services. This doesn’t prove they’re believers, of course. We go to churches, synagogues, and temples for many reasons, not all to do with faith. Still, the rich can be as pious as anyone else. They may pray and feel relief…
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Privilege and Entitlement in Kat Howard’s “Unseen World”
The Privilege of Magic Only some people can perform magic. Like any privilege to which we are born, whether it be masculinity, whiteness, wealth, heterosexuality, or attractiveness, the ability to weave a spell and make it stick is not good or bad in and of itself, except that society does make it so. Therefore, most of us end up confusing an accident of birth with entitlement. Kat Howard explores this tension between privilege and entitlement in her novel, An Unkindness of Magicians. The magic community, called the Unseen World, is divided into houses. Every twenty years or so the houses hold the Turning to determine which of them will rule…