Magery and genetics
Feb. 12th, 2010 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethBeen thinking more on the magery as genetics thing from earlier.
If it's possible to test for magery genes then people will test for them. One main group would be rich people that can pay for their own tests. But who else plays with dna lately? In Britain, there's a massive police database, gathering more people all the time. If *they* test for magery routinely, then that may be the more common way to discover you carry the genes. And testing for magery would have its place in a psych eval, though there's nothing to say someone can't have Magery and mental disadvantages. If police and psych services do by far the most testing, then anyone who knows they have magery might be assumed to have found out that way - a social stigma, possibly a nasty one. Rich people would seek the gene, but they'd keep it hush, because they wouldn't want anything in common with those people. But a government that gathers all that data on who has trainable magery would probably want to do something about it. At the very least it would be a possible job, and not taking the opportunity could impact negatively on your benefits! If the options were 'government mage' or 'have benefits withdrawn', you'd get government mages with significant trained power and a social perception based on how they were recruited. Which could get interesting.
If the practice of magic is potentially dangerous to the wielder then any government pressure to perform would politicise mages quick sharp.
This is fun.
And I haven't started adding in the beliefs that might be encoded in old school religious texts. Culture clash time...
If it's possible to test for magery genes then people will test for them. One main group would be rich people that can pay for their own tests. But who else plays with dna lately? In Britain, there's a massive police database, gathering more people all the time. If *they* test for magery routinely, then that may be the more common way to discover you carry the genes. And testing for magery would have its place in a psych eval, though there's nothing to say someone can't have Magery and mental disadvantages. If police and psych services do by far the most testing, then anyone who knows they have magery might be assumed to have found out that way - a social stigma, possibly a nasty one. Rich people would seek the gene, but they'd keep it hush, because they wouldn't want anything in common with those people. But a government that gathers all that data on who has trainable magery would probably want to do something about it. At the very least it would be a possible job, and not taking the opportunity could impact negatively on your benefits! If the options were 'government mage' or 'have benefits withdrawn', you'd get government mages with significant trained power and a social perception based on how they were recruited. Which could get interesting.
If the practice of magic is potentially dangerous to the wielder then any government pressure to perform would politicise mages quick sharp.
This is fun.
And I haven't started adding in the beliefs that might be encoded in old school religious texts. Culture clash time...
no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 07:51 pm (UTC)