Consensus around the world

[Crowley]

Me and my player's have been thinking a lot about this.
For example here in chile. People KNOWS theres weird shit, specially in the south of chile. Even those who wont admit believing in such are Careful when it comes to deal with that. We have the idea of "I dont belive in this shit...but, im not going to risk myself either."

SO i was wondering.. how does the consensus operates in different parts of the worlds, like Middle East, Asia or Haiti even?

[Aya Tari]

What weird stuff is in the south of Chile? I am curious because my mother spent her childhood in Santiago and loves Chile.

[Saikou]

Me and my player's have been thinking a lot about this.
For example here in chile. People KNOWS theres weird shit, specially in the south of chile. Even those who wont admit believing in such are Careful when it comes to deal with that. We have the idea of "I dont belive in this shit...but, im not going to risk myself either."

SO i was wondering.. how does the consensus operates in different parts of the worlds, like Middle East, Asia or Haiti even?

I believe the consensus that the Core Books typically describe is very USA and Western Europe centric.
Any corners of the world where ancient remedies are believed to work, will actually work as advertised, and the scientific paradigm will be less effective.

If you mean that people believe there are real monsters in the South of Chilie, then perhaps these are places where Bygons are still able to roam the land safe from disbelief.

[Ramnesis]

Generally, that kind of superstition (for lack of a better word) doesn't so much change the world as loosen the paradigm so that mages and other strange things can get away with more. Life works the same way, but more could go bump in the night. More is possible because people believe more is possible, but the world doesn't drastically change without specifically different beliefs.

[Crowley]

What weird stuff is in the south of Chile? I am curious because my mother spent her childhood in Santiago and loves Chile.

ask her about Los Brujos del Sur . or the Warlocks of the south

[Karlgust]

Well, here in Brazil, my grandfather have always swore that he captured a freaking WEREWOLF once... He would always say the most insane bullshits anyway. He lived like a native, in the woods, living as a hunter, and had many histories, the headless donkey for example (it's a local folklore here in Brazil, it's indeed a donkey without a head, with fire in the place of it's head, a terrible Bygone who will persecute you to the end of Earth if it finds you... The only way to escape is hiding your teeth and nails). He would also say many ghost histories too. Nowadays, the tales of the Chupacabra (or Chupa-cabra, "sheep-sucker" if you will), about some sort of "nosferatu" monsters of heinous aparence that sucks the blood of livestook, those tales are all very popular in the last 20 years, all over latin America, from México to Brazil, a rare thing to happen, because the Latin America is so diverse that this tale of the chupacabra may well be the only thing common to all the region.

Be that as it may, the urban areas of São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, or any other médium sized city, are no more prone to such tales than any place in Berlin or New York. This kind of histories AND people that will believe them are almost exclusively in the rural areas. So, no, I would say it is only for the most distant parts of the world that the technocratic Consensus truly doesn't have it's grasp.

[Karlgust]

Religion however, is another thing altogheter... People in the 3th world are much more prone to be religious than in Europe (and even if USA is deply religious, a country like Brazil will be much more). The vast majority of people here in Brazil believe in Jesus Christ as God, a good amount believe in angels and miracles, and that prayers can help getting the favors of God. There are also a great many deal of other religions - for example, in Brazil we have Espiritismo, kind of a mix between christianism and Eastern superstitions - the figure of Jesus is present, but reencarnation is a thing, the "Espíritas" (followers of this faith) believe that you'll keep been born again to learn something, to be able to evolve spiritually, until you are able to reach a "higher state".

Another VERY common belief here are the african religions, mostly Umbanda and Candomblé. And yes, it is a politeistic cult - Oghum, that is the warrior king of the gods if I'm not mistaken, Yemanjá, the Goddess of the oceans and Waters, Exu, that last one is considered a bad omen, a mischievous entity that people avoid, but that may be sought out by those seeking to do dark Magic or wanting to cause harm to others. Exu is almost seen as a demon sometimes, but he is actually just a dangerous being without moral guidance (but not absolutely evil, just without human empathy).

What's more interesting, people will mix all those faiths toghether. My girlfriend, for example, believe that the spirits of the dead watch over us, and that people reencarnate, like in the Espiritismo religion. She is also an Umbandista, so she makes offerings (mostly of flowers) to Yemanjá every new year, giving them to the oceans, she asks Oghum for projection and will shit her paints if someone say thatthey will make a spell to send Exu on her. She also asked the virgin Mary to protect our son, and believe in Jesus as her savior.

So... Yeah, many people still believe in spells, and they act accordinly to it too. I now forbade my girl to keep giving money to charlatans that exploited her beliefs before, but other than that, we don't have any problems, even if she knows I'm an skeptical atheist. I find it a little strange someone believing in invisible beings and witchcraft, because I have always been an atheist all my life, from an atheist family (religion is something I simply cannot grasp, I just can't understand how people believe all that), but we have no problems with that me and her.
But, that's something I Wonder, in the scenario of Mage, my country have many people that do believe in spirits and Spells. Would a Verbena be free to cast away in the streets here? Well, turning into a dragon on the Street, probably not... But, giving the bad eye to someone, perhaps...

[Muad'Dib]

In Romania priests, when baptizing a child, spit behind themselves to ward evil charms away. A teacher of Romanian said to me that in Romania Protestantism and local beliefs were integrated together, unlike in many other countries.

In Poland I'd say belief in dark powers of the devil is common - while people would, I assume, be unwilling to admit existence of actual horns and forked tail demons, priests speak about the influence of Satan in, say, RPG games and certain music genres or bands. And of course people go to diviners and read horoscopes.

[Kammerer]

Me and my player's have been thinking a lot about this.
For example here in chile. People KNOWS theres weird shit, specially in the south of chile. Even those who wont admit believing in such are Careful when it comes to deal with that. We have the idea of "I dont belive in this shit...but, im not going to risk myself either."

SO i was wondering.. how does the consensus operates in different parts of the worlds, like Middle East, Asia or Haiti even?

The best answer is "don't think about it". Mage's premise is broken. The whole "people don't believe in magic and science won" thing. That's bizarro world. It just doesn't reflect our reality, where science is fighting an uphill battle against superstition, religions, pseudoscience, etc. and is getting any traction only because science actually works, and works regardless of what you believe in. There is absolutely no proof that homeopathy works and all clinical studies were negative, and yet people believe in it. This year Russian Academy of Sciences began fighting to get homeopathy recognized as pseudoscience and pull all homeopathic medicine from the shelves, and there is no guarantee that they'll win.

[Muad'Dib]

The best answer is "don't think about it". Mage's premise is broken. The whole "people don't believe in magic and science won" thing. That's bizarro world. It just doesn't reflect our reality, where science is fighting an uphill battle against superstition, religions, pseudoscience, etc. and is getting any traction only because science actually works, and works regardless of what you believe in. There is absolutely no proof that homeopathy works and all clinical studies were negative, and yet people believe in it. This year Russian Academy of Sciences began fighting to get homeopathy recognized as pseudoscience and pull all homeopathic medicine from the shelves, and there is no guarantee that they'll win.

And yet, as far as I'm aware of, you will get laughed at (or at best treated as an amusing slight nutcase) if you bring up the idea of magic and supernatural beings (especially supernatural beings - it seems to me that many people can somehow accept concepts like fate, laws of attraction, karma, or curses, but would sneer at the idea of an unicorn) in public common ground - like talk shows, the news, the most read magazines, the vast majority of universities. This might not be the case outside Europe and North America, though.
Also I think many people who swear by homeopathy when it comes to cold or minor illnesses (or alleviating chronic pains) will rush to a modern medicine doctor when they get pneumonia or stomach ulcers. :-P Perhaps it's more of a fad than a belief; and anyway, homeopathy presents itself as an actual science, rather than magic.

[Aya Tari]

Strangely enough, I have seen homeopathy work on animals, so I am willing to keep an open mind when it comes to treating chronic or terminal conditions that do not have better conventional treatments. I am especially sympathetic towards homeopathy when US drug manufacturers are purchasing generic drug producers (or gaming the system to patent a generic drug despite not doing anything new) and raising the price of the drug by 50 to 500 times. What else are people to do? They can either try homeopathy and perhaps gain some benefit (even if it is only the benefit of a placebo) or suffer because they cannot afford the medicine.

What I am more afraid of are the climate change deniers, the vaccine skeptics, etc. I heard a caller the other day vent about NASA making up meteorites and how the geocentric universe was more accurate than the heliocentric. I find homeopathy to be a very minor intellectual sin compared to the real idiocy that exists out there that directly threatens my existence.

[Kammerer]

And yet, as far as I'm aware of, you will get laughed at (or at best treated as an amusing slight nutcase) if you bring up the idea of magic and supernatural beings (especially supernatural beings - it seems to me that many people can somehow accept concepts like fate, laws of attraction, karma, or curses, but would sneer at the idea of an unicorn) in public common ground - like talk shows, the news, the most read magazines, the vast majority of universities. This might not be the case outside Europe and North America, though.
Also I think many people who swear by homeopathy when it comes to cold or minor illnesses (or alleviating chronic pains) will rush to a modern medicine doctor when they get pneumonia or stomach ulcers. :-P Perhaps it's more of a fad than a belief; and anyway, homeopathy presents itself as an actual science, rather than magic.

There's this guy, Jesus. You may have heard of him. Cured the sick, made Lazarus come back from the dead, died for your sins, came back from the dead himself.



Here you can see the last president of the United States, Barack Obama, swearing an oath on a book written either by or under guidance of Jesus' dad. Jesus' dad was very angry when egyptians dicked around his chosen people and so he turned rivers to blood, sent rain of frogs, and killed all the firstborn children in Egypt. As of 2015 75% of americans said that they believe in Jesus and his dad.

Based on the poll from five years ago, 64% of americans believe in life after death and 45% of americans believe in ghosts.

Now please, tell me again how people totally do not believe in supernatural.

Oh, you say people don't use homeopathy for real diseases? I suggest you google "homeopathy pneumonia". Because there are totally homeopathic 'cures' for pneumonia and people totally buy them. There is even an FDA approved one.

And as a cherry on top, have this lovely discussion from University of Cape Town where a student argues that science needs to be restarted because it can't explain african magic.

[Ramnesis]

The best answer is "don't think about it". Mage's premise is broken. The whole "people don't believe in magic and science won" thing. That's bizarro world. It just doesn't reflect our reality, where science is fighting an uphill battle against superstition, religions, pseudoscience, etc. and is getting any traction only because science actually works, and works regardless of what you believe in. There is absolutely no proof that homeopathy works and all clinical studies were negative, and yet people believe in it. This year Russian Academy of Sciences began fighting to get homeopathy recognized as pseudoscience and pull all homeopathic medicine from the shelves, and there is no guarantee that they'll win.

It's not broken. Science is fighting an uphill battle in some arenas but has already won outstanding victories and its products are used in the everyday lives of everyone in the western world. If anything this kind of information actually supports the setting of Mage because it shows there's enough of an opening for the Traditions to even exist.

[Kammerer]

It's not broken. Science is fighting an uphill battle in some arenas but has already won outstanding victories and its products are used in the everyday lives of everyone in the western world. If anything this kind of information actually supports the setting of Mage because it shows there's enough of an opening for the Traditions to even exist.

Mage assumes that people don't believe in magic. People absolutely do believe in magic and don't know the first thing about science. That's why homeopathy is around, that's why CERN spawned mass hysteria about scientists blowing up the planet, that's why evolution has to fight for space with creationism.

[Aleph]

I think that the victory of science and technology over other beliefs can be seen not in the raise of atheists, but rather in the fact that almost all people, even among the most religious or superstitious, use things like cars and television, products of technoscience (believing more or less in the supernatural does not mean that you can't believe in science at the same time). Almost all christians accept that they can see their pastors in tv, and while they don't delve on the theory behind the aparathus, they believe that it works. Comparatively, while things like the "imposition of hands" curing minor stuff are widely accepted among christians, they don't have the same acceptance among the population (most non-christian will rather go to a medic than a christian priest, heck, a lot of christians will rather go to a medic). You can say that this worldwide aceptation it's what makes science the dominant Paradigm, whle all others are more insular (not a lot of Buddhism where I live, but in China they're so comon as to be a banal part of day to day life, but cars are both here and in china).

You can ask yourself, what's more comon, people that believes in the imposition of hands, or people that believes in the tv/radio?

---

In Argentina a lot of people believe in the Santeria, Umbanda, and that sort of stuff. In Buenos Aires it's common for burglars to pray to San La Muerte before going to...well...kill people or do dangerous and ilegal stuff (and this it's serious faith), but I've leaded to known that even people with power believe more or less in ritual sacrifices and that stuff. Most of the educated middle class don't believe in this sort of things, but everyone has a friend of a friend that was successfully healed by a witch or a holy person, even from things that science wasn't able to cure (at least in South America that's rather common, elsewhere I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me), or seen a ghost, or something like that (and the current president believes in New Age stuff, and has spend a lot of money in a witch and a spiritual guru. Not that he don't believe in science, too).

So, I would say that the common Paradigms here would be science, christian superstitions and various types of shamanistic beliefs. This it's specialy true in parts of the country with heavy native american population, like the north of the country. I've seen people in remote villages that trully believes as much in the supernatural as in science, to the point that the spiritual it's the day to day, while science it's rare-understandable, as they cultivate and build everything they need, and need to travel long trough the mountains to get to a hospital, cinema, or anything modern. But they had a truck and lanterns, so even they believe in science.