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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1096601" data-attributes="member: 7240">Well, now that people are becoming cantankerous and argumentative, I think I'll throw in the opinion I've been harbouring all along. I see people re-inventing Lincoln's hat and Gandhi's walking stick as magic items as a logical function of the ideology of ENWorld. Whenever Teflon Billy and I make generalizations about groups of people (no matter how grounded in reality these might be), the chorus is always, "No. That can't be true. Everyone must be the same."I think the ease with which people come up with objects to associate with real historical figures is the compatibility of this notion with the ENWorld political ideology. Lincoln can't have been any better or worse than anyone else; it must have been his hat. Gandhi can't have been any better or worse than anyone else; it must have been his stick. If Billy the Kid was supernaturally fast, this speed came not from him having a God-given endowment of magical speed but him luckily running across an artifact that anyone could have found.Now, I'm not suggesting that ENWorlders actually believe such assertions but I think the ease with which many can slip into this thinking is a function of the anti-specialness ideology the boards generally reflect. In other words, when we are asked to invent myths about the real world, it is no surprise that the myths we create are consistent with the general ideology of our community. Thus, when ENWorlders create myths derived from human history, it is no wonder that they de-emphasize human agency, choice and inherent talent/distinctiveness.Anyway, here was my standard for why some objects made the cut and some didn't: objects that made the cut as "magical objects" were those objects whose legends/history actually called them magical/mystical; those I didn't include were those objects whose legends/history didn't identify them as such. I don't think it's a chronological thing -- most Mormon magic items were invented in the 19th century, the century which gave us Lincoln and Billy the Kid. My rule for listing magical objects is pretty darn simple: if the myth of the object claims it's magical, it's in; if the myth doesn't, it's out.There is no shortage of items in the world that call themselves magical/mystical; I don't see why we need to invent magical/mystical stories of objects which, in effect, actually undermine the myths from which they are derived. There are powerful myths about the greatness of Gandhi and Lincoln; if we want to add to these myths, the least we can do is come up with stories that do not undermine these myths. Gandhi's myth is that of the selfless, anti-materialistic ascetic; telling a story that invests power in an object he possessed detracts from the themes of personal heroism and anti-materialism around which the Gandhi myth is based.</blockquote>

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