In my last blog post on why religious myth relies on fantasy, I implied that superstition works better than a starkly objective view of the world. I can believe that superstition exists because it works; that it has fought for survival against a physical-only interpretation of reality and has stood its ground. It has passed the Darwinian evolution test.
But because that may not satisfy many, let me try and answer the question: Why are we superstitious?
It is easy to trace individual superstitious practices to their roots and say how they started. But that won’t really answer the question. The real question is why. Why do human beings have this need to believe in strange things? Why have people imagined incredible fantasies since the beginning of time? Why has the tangible side of existence consistently failed to satisfy mankind?
Stark atheists would say superstitions are signs of a weak mind that can’t handle reality and therefore must come up with fantastic explanations for things. I find that strange, seeing as how everyone is superstitious at one level or another.
When you yell, “Come on! Don’t do this to me!” at a hung computer, you are being superstitious. It’s a machine, it can’t hear you, and you know it. If you feel the loss of your favourite pen, that’s superstition too. At a physical level, pens are just pens. The importance you assign to one pen over others is imaginary. The same goes for people being sentimental about their cars and motorcycles, people saying, “The damn door broke my nose,” and people cursing the weather. Nobody is utterly free from irrational behaviour (even though some might want to pretend that they are Vulcan). Human beings have this instinctive tendency of thinking up imaginary truths.
A recent scientific study by Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, points in the same direction:
The findings of Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, suggest that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force. His work is supported by other researchers who have found evidence linking religious feelings and experience to particular regions of the brain. They suggest people are programmed to receive a feeling of spirituality from electrical activity in these areas.
I believe that the act of storytelling roots from this tendency. As far as we know, man is the only animal that tells stories. We read books, watch plays, we pay to go sit inside movie theatres and allow ourselves to be moved to emotion with a narrative we know to be false, even if it is for a short while. This behaviour falls under the same category as the little personal superstitions I referred to in the previous paragraph.
There is something inside us that craves the imaginary. It is something inherent to human nature, something that makes us human, something that is essential to the human condition. There are those who believe that with the advent of modern science and the spread of education, the world will soon be rid of all superstition. I don’t think that will happen. Superstition is not rooted in ignorance. It stems from the same part of us that creates stories and myth.
What we call superstition is thriving in the modern world. Storytellers are some of the most prosperous and well-known people on the planet (writers, filmmakers, actors). Every year, more and more people spend their money to immerse themselves in imaginary worlds and situations. In fact, this is practically the age of imagination.
Feeling bad at loss of a pen or shouting at a hung computer – I’m not sure one could term them as superstitions exactly. Even though I shout at a hung PC, I know it is inanimate. Superstition is a belief. I see a cat cross a road, I am genuinely scared something bad might happen – that is a superstition. But, yeah, I do get the general point you are making.
@vijaybhargava
You assume that everyone who stops at the sight of a black cat believes that it will bring him bad luck. Many people know that it’s something irrational, but they still stop. It’s the power of the black cat story.
i think superstition and/or fantasy stems from the dissonance between our acquired verbal mind and the older non-verbal mind. myths are messages filled w/ non-verbal meaning; icons, archetypes, metaphors. superstitions and beliefs tap into these non-verbal messages that our minds experience and express them as verbal information.
That was too much high-speak for me to understand Mike.
But thanks anyway. The mind is a beautifully intricate place.
Vimoh:
Shiva is important, not because Shiva is real, but because Shiva _means_ something; _stands_ for something. that something was existed before Sanskrit. the difference between what Shiva means and what is written about Shiva is the superstition; the fantasy.
and, yes, the mind is _many_ intricate places!
Thanks for explaining. Now it makes sense.
Please be kind to my mind in the future also.
!ha!
you can see that my confusing attempts are not the evidence of a wise man, but proof i am still searching; still struggling.
i have read enough here to know you help me quite often.
thank you.
One is always glad to have been of help.
Good examples dude….especially the hung computer… as u said all of us believe in stories at some point or the other….
I guess we make distinctions like u are superstitious and i am not by the degree of ‘illogical’ness of that belief. Like, it is fine if i am inclined to use my favourite pen during my exams but it is very superstitious if i wear ring which are made according to birth stars or if i religiously follow all the customs during eclipses.
True. The difference is of degree, not of kind. One is less superstitious, the other is more. But they are both superstitions.
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I tend to agree with Vijay Bhargava that shouting at or cursing inanimate objects or weather is not exactly superstition. It is an expression of frustration with the relevant object or at times frustration with the choices that one makes – “oh, I forgot my umbrella. Damn the weather”.
“It stems from the same part of us that creates stories and myth.” is, I think, correct. I would, in fact, go as far as to say that even scientific thoughts emerge from the same part. Science, myths, stories and superstition aim to understand the world around us. They record certain observations and try to make certain predictions (ex: it is unlucky if a black cat crosses one’s path). Some systems of thought may be better than others at predicting and at adapting themselves.
While I mostly agree with you on why people feel a need to believe in superstitions (my previous comment), I disagree with you on why many superstitions have persisted for so long.
By the way, “I implied that superstition works better than a starkly objective view of the world.” In what way are most superstitions subjective. For example, in the case of a black cat crossing one’s path is the subjectivity in the blackness of the cat or in the catness of the cat or the angle at which it crosses? In fact, of all the superstitions that I can recall, none are subjective.
“It has passed the Darwinian evolution test.” I wonder, then, how you are referring to the “Darwinian evolution test”. If superstition did really pass it then we would have forgotten what the phrase “Darwinian evolution test” means.
I think many superstitions survived primarily because of fear and social custom. Sometimes when I ask perfectly rational people why they believe in CERTAIN superstitions when it is perfectly clear that they cannot be true, I get the answer “there is no harm in believing it, just in case it is true”.
Answer 1: The cat’s being a cat or it’s being black in colour was never in question. What’s subjective is the viewing of it as unlucky. That is subjective. You don’t see superstitions as subjective because you do not look beyond appearances.
Answer 2: I don’t get it. Do you forget you took a test after you take it? How does that compute? What I meant was that it has survived because it was fit to survive. Just like animals survive by being competent animals.
Answer 3: It is more complicated than that. “There is no harm in believing it, just in case it is true” doesn’t really answer the question WHY people believe in superstitions, does it? In the article I linked to, there is mention of a part of the brain that is host to such thoughts and ideas. One has to wonder why it is there in the first place.
Answer1: “What’s subjective is the viewing of it as unlucky” – what do you mean by that? If you view it as unlucky, then you believe in the superstition and if you don’t then you don’t believe in the superstition. It is a binary choice. When we talk of the subjectivity of a superstition, it is assumed that we consider subjectivity with respect to believers. Otherwise even science (not considering things like quantum mechanics, which anyway is “subjective” in a sense) should be considered subjective. To believers of science it is one thing and to non-believers it is something else.
And, now having said this, I do not see any subjectivity in a superstition (take the black cat example itself).
Answer2: Forget it, it was just a small joke. No point in elaborating on it.
Answer3: I did not say it answers the question why people believe in superstitions. It just demonstrates that fear is a major contributing factor in the survival of many superstitions for centuries.
I already said I more or less agree with you on why people feel a need to believe in superstitions. What I was trying to address is “why MANY superstitions have persisted for so long” in many cultures.
“In the article I linked to, there is mention of a part of the brain that is host to such thoughts and ideas. One has to wonder why it is there in the first place.”
Something resulting because of a hard-wiring in the brain is also an answer to how not a why. I do not know if one HAS to wonder why it is there in the first place but I assume a significant number of people do wonder about such things. But unfortunately, in my opinion, none understand why. That is because in most cases there is no answer.
In mathematics, often, it is easier to say if a solution to a problem exists or not than to actually find the solution (if it exists). If a certain problem is shown not to have a solution, then there is no point in spending further effort to find a solution.
Though the why questions of life are much more complex, I do believe it is easier to say if an answer does exist. And I also believe that many important why questions in life do not actually have an answer thus making the efforts of most religions and even some scientists (like Dawkins) pointless.
I didn’t get the first bit about the black cat example. Subjectivity exists because the believer exists. If there was no believer, who would a black cat’s crossing the road look unlucky to? All meaning is subjective.
I agree that the why can’t be found. Religions say so themselves (even though the message has been blurred over with time and overtaken by mythic images). As to whether one HAS TO wonder about the whys of life, I think it obsesses everyone at one level or another. I don’t think it is a choice as far as humans are concerned. We climb Everest because it is there. We swim across the English channel because it is there. There is no end to human pursuits that may be labelled “pointless” in the strictest mathematical sense. We are like this only. Which makes me wonder (and it may make you wonder also), why?
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