On Technology

Because there is an absence of magic in our technological world, we are given to thinking that magic and technology are mutually exclusive; where one is found the other must be absent. Such thinking is parochial and in no way different from a chick still inside the egg who, experiencing only darkness and imagining only light, declares that no world could accommodate both. No, the reason that there is so little technology in the magical land of Faerie is not because magic and technology cannot coexist but rather due to the fact that technology is powered by fossil fuels or uranium and results in pollution so vast and so long-lived that it can change the climate of an entire world and drive species to extinction in unrelenting waves. Moreover, technology requires endless upgrades, resulting in debilitating headaches due to various incompatibilities of versions, adapters of different sizes, and the stubborn refusal of manufacturers to provide replacement parts. In short, the drawbacks of technology are vast. The price of magic on the other hand is quite different, a piece of your soul to a minor devil for the gift of flight, a year off the end of your life for an end to unrequited love, a month of grieving in exchange for a child who brings you moments of joy all the days of your life. There is little technology because in Faerie one more easily recognizes uselessness and, having identified it as such, rejects it before exhausting one's reserve of willpower.