ABSTRACT
Along with giving a brief summary of the ideas discussed in the book, this concluding chapter raises the issues that were omitted or only touched upon in the previous chapters: what is magical reality? What domains of modern life does magical reality penetrate? Why is magical reality important for many people today? What psychological consequences does engagement with magical reality entail? In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, religion, witchcraft, astrology and alchemy were the main ‘wormholes’ that gave people access to magical reality. In the time of the Renaissance, art and literature joined the club. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, new ways of contacting magical reality emerged – cinema, the spiritualist movement and parapsychology. Finally, at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, there appeared interactive computer games and the Internet. Psychological studies have shown that in modern people the belief in magical reality didn’t vanish, but descended into the subconscious. This hidden belief permeates many domains of modern life – economics, politics, medicine, morality, education, entertainment and theories of modern physics and astronomy. Why do children become addicted to computer games? Why do rational people, when faced with choices in economics, often follow the laws of magic rather than common logic? How does it happen that educated people voluntarily follow political ideas that they consciously know go against their own interests? What psychological mechanisms underlie the placebo effect and homeopathic medicine? From where do suicidal terrorists take their courage to commit actions of self-destruction? Why do some people make moral choices that sacrifice their own interests even when not under surveillance? How come some scientists call the work of the brain magical? How is it possible that in the beginning the whole universe was smaller than a grain of sand? What do ‘chemistry’ and falling in love have in common? The answers to these and other questions are hidden in the subconscious belief of modern people in the supernatural. The rapid advance of interactive electronic devices makes the imaginary world of the supernatural easily accessible and the effects of the magical world on a variety of the domains of modern life expand with increasing velocity.
