The Familiarity Paradox -- Misconception Or Lie?: Bonus Snippet

The Familiarity Paradox -- Misconception or Lie?

By Dr Jessica Phalange

Much has been made of the so-called ‘familiarity paradox’; the notion that the danger of a familiarity bond and the fact that its strengh is predicated on emotional attachment are at odds with one another. To create a strong bond, strong emotional attachment is needed, but strong emotional attachment decreases one’s will to put the animal at risk by making it a familiar in the first place. Unfortunately, as fashionable as this topic is, it is built on a shaky foundation – the very ‘fact’ that the bond’s strength is predicated on attachment is, almost certainly, false.

A familiar is, after all, merely a subset of fetish, with the same general creation process and a runic bond that is identical in the fundamentals, only altered to add stability due to the ever-changing nature of the subject. These alterations are not, in any known way, dependent on the emotional state or perspective of the mage, and emotional attachment is unnecessary for fetish creation. Why, then, should one’s emotional attachment to a familiar be relevant?

The obvious answer is, of course, ‘because it is alive’. But this here betrays the very source of the misconception. Humans recognise living things as fellow beings, and deal with them differently to how we deal with inanimate objects. In our narrow-minded arrogance, we assume on some level that the mere presence of our emotions makes them relevant; that it must matter, in some way, that we care about them. But there is no reason to think that this is the case.

That, then, of the evidence? Of the demonstrable improved effectiveness of a familiarity bond between an emotionally bonded mage and familiar, both anecdotally and under laboratory conditions? There are three likely causes of this observed, but completely illusory, phenomenon.

The first is an artefact of the variability of spells themselves. When studying something highly variable, a small coincidental effect that makes a good story can quickly become the dominant view, thus affecting future research and publication to the point where said view is continually emphasised and conventional wisdom is given the illusion of verified fact. Such misconceptions are likely to persist until an unbiased study is done on a scale large enough to give reliable results, which has not happened.

The second possibility is that the oserved effect is real, but not an effect of the strength of the bond – just human psychology. Specifically, a mage who has particular care for their familiar is more motivated to practice precision in regulating their energy during spellcasting for their familiar’s benefit. The bond is not stronger; it is undergoing less strain, because the caster is subconsciously being more attentive.

And the third possibility is, of course, the influence of belief. It is well known that competence at a task is greatly affected by confidence – in almost any skill-based task, a subject who has been primed to expect a better or worse performance from themselves will perform accordingly. Much of the so-called ‘evidence’ of the emotional influence on a familiarity bond was gathered after the idea gained traction in the pulic consciousness; that is, those mages forming familiarity bonds already expected their affection for their familiars to influence said bonds. Much in the way that a believer in astrology is likely to modify their own personality to fit their astrological sign, thus retroactively making astrology more accurate for them, or how somebody told a task will be easy will perform better at it than somebody told that it will be difficult, a mage who sincerely believes that they are capable of making a stronger familiarity bond is likely to make a stronger bond regardless of whether the mechanisms they have faith in are real.

Thus are illusions considered fact, and mere coincidence and sociopsychological factors misattributed to incorrect causes. But while proponents of the ‘familiarity paradox’ have been unable to produce proper evidence for this idea and completely unable to explain why such an effect should even exist with familiars when identical mechanisms produce no such effect for fetishes, it does make a nice story, and thus, we may be stuck with this conventional ‘wisdom’ for quite some time.