Ira Livingston teaches and directs Poetics Lab at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. His many books - such as the 2015 digital book Poetics as a Theory of Everything (available free online) - cultivate hybrids of cultural studies and systems theory.

• Acknowledgments.About this Book1 Introduction1 All or Nothing? 2 Kindness ASIDE: The Two-Million-Dollar CommaASIDE: Sufficiently Magical TechnologiesASIDE: Our Gods3 Cruelty ASIDE: Ghostly CausalityASIDE: Durable Cruelties4 Beginning, Again ASIDE: Chaos Invoked5 The Freedom Not to Choose ASIDE: No Atheists in FoxholesASIDE: Blake on Firm PerswasionASIDE: Metafictional Magic: The Writer’s WillASIDE: Shapely SentencesASIDE: Beckett Meets Twilight Zone, Glass-Half-Full Version2 Complex Systems in a Nutshell1 Horror Movie Reboot 2 Interpositivity ASIDE: Interpositivity3 Becoming a System 4 Creatures of Light ASIDE: Transformative for Whom?ASIDE: Plant Sorcery5 Tornados, Whirlpools, and Fires ASIDE: iiiASIDE: Co-evolution6 Leveled ASIDE: On being born too early and dying too lateASIDE: Up Around the Bend7 A Personifying Universe of Stretchy Things 8 Dynamism ASIDE: One Plus One Equals Infinity9 Magic, but No Black Boxes ASIDE: The T-Shirt Version10 Wildness ASIDE: Pet Resemblance via Social Theory3 Magic by Example1 Failed Magic: Modernist Heaven (and Hell)2 Placebo Magic ASIDE: Pregnancy via MagicASIDE: Following the Scent3 Mirror Magic 4 Biting Game 5 Dog Whisperer 6 Conclusion 4 Future Perfect1 The Gettysburg Address as a Magical Speech Act 2 Pool, Poetry, Prose, and Painting ASIDE: Dr. Livingston’s Magical Bank-Shot Visualizer3 Meteors, Messiahs, and Migraines ASIDE: On This Rock I Build My ChurchASIDE: Falling Off a Log4 Magical Militarism 5 Four Asides ASIDE: Dr. Livingston’s Time Travel 101ASIDE: A Somewhat Rationalizing Account of Mystical NonviolenceASIDE: A Somewhat Mysticizing Account of Rationalist NonviolenceASIDE: Four Scholars5 What is Religion?1 A Fuzzy Set 2 Magic, Science, and Religion Coevolve 3 Restoring the Chaos 4 Rain Dance ASIDE: From Flow5 Providence, via Vico ASIDE: Systematizers Systematized6 God 3.5B (A Nearsighted Evolutionary Panorama)1 Salience to Sentience 2 Primordial Systemhood Membership Narratives ASIDE: Law and Order3 The Myth of the Acquisition-of-Consciousness Moment 4 Use of the Terms I and We5 Cis-Systems → Trans-Systems 6 First Caveat: Characters 7 Plant and Animal Intelligence 8 Learning and Evolution from a Systems Perspective 9 Second Caveat: Plot 10 Especially Informative Postinfundibular Amphioxus Hypothalamus Neuropile 11 The Holy Grail ASIDE: Neuro-X12 Teamlikeness ASIDE: Play and TeamlikenessASIDE: Three-Ring Circuits13 Conclusion 7 Blake Magic1 Famous in Heaven ASIDE: No Success Like Failure2 Blake Magic 3 Auguries ASIDE: Prophecies4 Angel Kings 5 Magic in the Current Conjuncture 6 Five Asides ASIDE: Black Lives Matter and Judith ButlerASIDE: An Elegant PoseASIDE: Ritual RetractionASIDE: ObscurityASIDE: Butterfly TornadoReferencesIndex