Magic in Society: Attitudes & Reactions

We now come to the third aspect (fourth installment) in our Magic in Society series:  Attitudes and Reactions.  This installment is going to be pretty brief because for the most part it is self explanatory.

People within a given society are likely to mostly share the same feelings about magic, whether those feelings are the result of government regulation or propaganda, historical events, or culturally influenced.  There will still be some who have different feelings but in building a fictional setting it is convenient to set a general attitude about magic for each society.  So, getting right to it, here is a short dichotomous list of attitudes/reactions about/to magic:

Love - Members of society think magic is the best thing ever!  It may or may not be heavily incorporated into society but they are open to any new information or implementation they can get.
Hate - People think magic is the worst thing ever!  Maybe they think it's evil, or a sign of weakness or simply too dangerous to have around.  They shun all things to do with magic and those who are involved with it.  They probably seek to destroy, imprison or banish any users or sources as quickly as possible.

Fear - Society is afraid of the power and dangers of magic.  They may be able to put up with its presence or users for a while but their tolerance is low and eventually they will flee if able or turn on it and seek to banish it from their midst.  Fear can easily turn to hate under the right conditions.
Fascination - Society is fascinated by magic, they probably don't have or see much magic in their daily lives and the wonders it is capable of draw their attention like moths to a flame.  Even so, it may only be as a form of distraction to many just like modern man is fascinated by space travel but very few actually pursue the sciences that would lead to it.  There are probably many organizations dedicated to its pursuit.

Wary - People are willing to be around magic and have casters around but they are suspicious of it/them and keep it at arms length.  It wouldn't take much to push them into fear should a disastrous event occur.
Eager - People want to hear about magic and the pursuit of it but it is not a driving desire in their lives.  There are probably a few organizations which dedicate themselves to its pursuit but not many.

Meh - Take it or leave it.  Magic is a thing that exists but we're not overly concerned about it.  Swords exist to but we don't run around fearing that they're going to suddenly stab us in the back.

There are likely more emotions that could be assigned to a society's general outlook on magic but these are the major ones that came to mind when I was working on this idea.  The descriptions of several of these will also need to be adjusted depending on the saturation levels you settle on, as discussed in the next installment.

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