I am in the midst of writing a Sci-Fi/Fantasy book in which people utilize Magic the way you and I utilize Science. That is to say 99% of people don't really understand what is going on, despite begin exposed to it in school. The challenge is to present this "reality" as plausible because the other thing we have had drilled in all of our heads is that Magic isn't real.

What if I was to tell you that Magic is real. And the reason you don't experience it more is because we are conditioned not to. We are taught that there is an objective reality. A Universal set of facts that are true regardless of faith or opinion. We also learned that matter and energy can't be created or destroyed. We live in a sealed system.

And then... we discovered in our studies of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity that none of this is true. At least on the level of subatomic particles. And certainly not on the Cosmic level. Particles are happy to live in clouds of probabilities. The Cosmos on the whole seems to have mass we don't understand, and an enormous source of energy that is seemingly expanding it forever.

I will start by saying that in the world of Sublight, they also don't believe in Magic. At least not in polite academic circles. They believe in the process of Tegic. It is a system for studying reality (and super-reality) in ways that do not try to construct one overarching set of rules. Because the Universe doesn't really have one set of rules. It has at least three, probably six, but it's silly to really try to count them because it's a fuzzy line the meets at each end. (Thus the Tegic Color Wheel)

I'm not sure exactly what the Tegic process actually is. I think it would be more fun to just leave it as a hazily defined spoof of the scientific process. But I still have to describe how one develops Tegical skills.

I am going to go with Magic is a joke. That is not to not to say that Magic isn't real, or something to be taken seriously. It is a joke in that what resonates with each person is different.

One set of researchers set out to find the funniest joke in the world. They set up a system for people to submit jokes and voting on them. Being the Internet, this experiment was accessible to people from many different cultures, faiths, and walks of life. Albeit, limited to people with Internet access and the type of people who would naturally fill out silly surveys online.

The joke that rose to the top went as followed:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says, "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence; then a gun shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, "OK, now what?"

This joke is mildly amusing. At best. But it suffers by having to be funny to every person who hears it. Magic is not dead in industrialized society. It is just watered down to what is acceptable to everyone who interacts with it. Basically: Science is what is left when you take all of the personal touches out of Tegic.

Some of the jokes that make people laugh the most, to the point of uncontrollable laughter, generally involve disturbing subjects. Other jokes play on nonsense. Some jokes are only funny in certain contexts. Some jokes are only funny to certain people, and tragic to others. Some jokes reflect a collective tragedy. Some jokes play on a shared culture. Some jokes play on stereotypes of other people's culture. Some jokes are funny because they aren't true. Some jokes are disturbing because they are all too true.

Magic has to resonate with the caster, and the people affected, in the same way as a good joke or an awful pun. The more powerful the resonance, the more disruptive the effects can be.

Blue magic is imaginative. It creates ideas that are impossible to realize in real-life. (M.C. Escher)

Magenta magic is about the contact high. It creates ideas that, on later reflection, seem like collective insanity. (Gallagher)

Red magic is about performance. They have highly unpopular opinions, but in the course of their act they bring you to their way of thinking. (Dennis Leary in his set No Cure of Cancer)

Yellow magic is about irony. It works through random events stacking up in satisfying ways. (Urban Legends and Internet Memes)

Green magic is about sympathy. It works by making us feel a part of a whole with the rest of humanity. (Patton Oswalt in his set Annihilation)

Cyan magic is about absurdity. It takes seemingly rational interactions, and subverts them. (Monty Python)