It could be both—the hard “magic” (learning quantum physics and constructing your own device) is too hard for most people, and the soft “magic” (using a standard device bought in the nearest supermarket) feels too impersonal, and also doesn’t make you special.
So perhaps the desire for magic is the desire for awesome things to be (1) rare, but (2) relatively simple for the protagonist, and (3) feel natural after mastering them. A world where at most 10 years of studying somehow makes you able to to do all kinds of awesome stuff semi-automatically, while most of the population somehow can’t do the same.
(Uncharitably, we could say that it is a desire to achieve extremely high prestige relatively cheaply.)
Also, the magic is supposed to be useful for personal purposes. Suppose you are an expert on quantum physics—does it allow you to cast fireballs in self-defense, build a fortress on the top of the mountain, levitate, turn your neighbors into zombies, become invisible, or see through walls? Your magical equivalent in the parallel world can do most of this.
It can absolutely be both (or all three—I take “being special” as distinct from “your own power”), in different mixes for different people.
I’m not sure about the “useful for personal purposes” part. A lot (but not all) fantasy wizards pay a fairly high social cost for their erudition, and it’s not clear that all that studying and experimenting helps them nearly as much as just getting rich and hiring an army would.
All that said, there’s a limit to what we should learn from fiction.
It could be both—the hard “magic” (learning quantum physics and constructing your own device) is too hard for most people, and the soft “magic” (using a standard device bought in the nearest supermarket) feels too impersonal, and also doesn’t make you special.
So perhaps the desire for magic is the desire for awesome things to be (1) rare, but (2) relatively simple for the protagonist, and (3) feel natural after mastering them. A world where at most 10 years of studying somehow makes you able to to do all kinds of awesome stuff semi-automatically, while most of the population somehow can’t do the same.
(Uncharitably, we could say that it is a desire to achieve extremely high prestige relatively cheaply.)
Also, the magic is supposed to be useful for personal purposes. Suppose you are an expert on quantum physics—does it allow you to cast fireballs in self-defense, build a fortress on the top of the mountain, levitate, turn your neighbors into zombies, become invisible, or see through walls? Your magical equivalent in the parallel world can do most of this.
It can absolutely be both (or all three—I take “being special” as distinct from “your own power”), in different mixes for different people.
I’m not sure about the “useful for personal purposes” part. A lot (but not all) fantasy wizards pay a fairly high social cost for their erudition, and it’s not clear that all that studying and experimenting helps them nearly as much as just getting rich and hiring an army would.
All that said, there’s a limit to what we should learn from fiction.
people use magic for purposes you can’t use an army for XD