Superstitions.. do they really suck??

When I hear the word, what immediately comes to mind is an old lady with half her teeth missing doing weird stuff saying she has to ward off “evil spirits”. And I’m probably not the only one. In fact, this image is so popular, that superstitions are also called “old wives’ tales”. A lot of educated people believe that superstitions exist only in backward villages where scientific progress hasn’t taken place at all. In which case they’re ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!

Just like this quiz show contestant:

Because almost EVERYBODY has a bunch of superstitions, no matter how “scientifically minded” they are. For example, I don’t really buy all these superstitions like “Breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck”. But I still believe that the download speeds of my internet increase when I stare at the monitor. I know that the internet can’t know when I’m looking at the monitor and when I’m looking away. I know that the belief is totally illogical. And that’s the point. I know it’s illogical. But I still believe it’s true. That’s why I call it a superstition.

And that’s where many people make a mistake. They usually associate superstition with religious beliefs. It can actually be ANYTHING that we believe without any proof. While there IS a lot of religious superstitions, there are superstitions without religion as well. 

And there are superstitions born out of pure fear. Like “Eclipses bring bad luck”. Or, a few years ago, the construction of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) was completed. It was supposed to help the scientific community better understand the creation of the universe. Immediately, some guy started a rumor that it can create a Black Hole and kill us all. Nonsense!!

Only the Black Hole bit. The LHC is definitely capable of killing us. 

But I digress.

Humans are the smartest animals in the world, right? So if superstitions are born out of a lack of logic, how come humans are the only species with superstitions?

Simple, straightforward question. With an even simpler and more straightforward answer. They aren’t.

In an experiment to observe animal superstitions, several pigeons were… well, they took several pigeons and just kept a watch on them. And they noticed that the pigeons started doing rituals to get food. Even when the food was distributed automatically, and at the same time every day. 

“My sister Jamie… died. Broke her neck falling off a tree. My mother blamed herself, of course. Thought she should’ve kept a closer watch. She stopped eating, stopped sleeping.. stopped everything. Six months after her funeral, a golden retriever came to our house. No collar, no tags, it was very healthy. It sat on the couch and looked at my mother. And she just burst into tears. And from that day, until the day she died, that dog slept in Jamie’s room, on Jamie’s bed. Then, right after she died, disappeared. It went back to… wherever it is that it came from.”

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When I heard this story, it had me rolling my eyes. I’m not a very close minded person, but I found it hard to believe that this dog was a form of Jamie that came back to his family. After all, it didn’t even come at the funeral or right after it. It was just a random dog which came up to the house. His mother was desperate enough to believe that it was Jamie, and took the dog to her room, I suppose. Nothing mysterious about it at all.

But I couldn’t just say that to his face. I mean, it was probably a very important incident for him. I have to get to know a little more about this. So I didn’t voice my concern right away. But my mind dwelled on the subject. Why are people so ready to believe in the supernatural?

It’s the same here with superstitions. Sometimes, there is a pretty good reason why the superstition arose. Like these:

Don’t light three cigarettes with the same match

 At first, this doesn’t seem to make any kind of sense whatsoever. But that’s because you’re living in the 21^st century, which is relatively VERY peaceful. But the world earlier was riddled with war. And the war didn’t really stop at night-time. So there were plenty of soldiers keeping watch.

Now there isn’t really much for a soldier to do if he’s keeping watch. So he does what any average guy would do. Smoke. And if he kept a match burning, that would give away his location. If that happened for long enough, he’d be shot by a sniper. Yes, snipers were that good. Snipers were actually made to eat carrots to increase their eyesight.

So if he lit 3 cigarettes, he’s as good as dead.

If a black cat crosses your path, it means bad luck

It must be noted here that Egyptians actually considered cats sacred. The Egyptian god “Bast” was supposed to have the head of a cat. Cats were respected, even revered. And when they died, the cats were mummified and were laid to rest with fine jewelry, a practice used mostly for Pharaohs and other people of importance. And this was one of the many cultures to consider the cats divine.

Enter Christianity.

Christianity is the most widespread region in the world with over 2.1 billion followers. And it didn’t get that way by displaying the “power to believe”. It has a bloody history, killing about as many people as Genghis  Khan.

For those who don’t think this is a big deal, he killed enough people to cool the WHOLE EARTH by 7 degrees Celsius. And they built the Great Wall of China just to keep his tribe out.

But at least Genghis tolerated all religions. Christianity did not. Obviously. After conquering nations, it defaced all the religions that existed. The Greek god Poseidon’s trident became the devil’s pitchfork. “Pagans” which meant “those who worship nature” was equated to “devil worshippers”. And this is why cats became untouchables. Literally. Those who kept cats were actually burnt as “witches”.

All right, but the superstition says black cats. Why black?

But on the other hand, there are also superstitions that are born purely out of fear. Like these:

Breaking a mirror means seven years bad luck

This is one of the more popular superstitions. It’s interesting to know that the reason for this actually existed before a mirror was invented!!

So what exactly was this belief? When early humans saw their reflection in water, they thought that a part of their soul was trapped there. That they’d sent themselves in another world, somehow.

And when glass (a.k.a breakable) mirrors were invented, the long carried on belief evolved. Now people began to believe that if you break those mirrors, that’s like destroying a part of yourself, or leaving it to be trapped in a mirror forever. And it took 7 years to get out of the mirror. Why seven? My guess is that five or ten sounded too fake, so they settled with seven.

A rabbit’s foot gets you luck

Once again, this has come up due to Christianity. Rabbits were supposedly envied for their breeding habits. Having a lot of offsprings supposedly made them really lucky. Lucky enough to end up on the Christian holiday of rebirth. The Easter holidays.

Okay, we get why rabbits are lucky, but the thing is, it isn’t just any foot. It’s a rabbit’s back foot that’s supposedly charmed. And taken away by people for luck. 

So what reason do we have for taking a perfectly healthy rabbit and leaving it with a bloody stump (or two, if we’re greedy)? It must be something spectacular if it means we can bring ourselves to cut off its legs.

Turns out there’s NOTHING special about a rabbit’s back foot. Yes, you read that right. There’s something special with a hare’s back foot and hares were just easily confused with rabbits. Okay, that’s an easy mistake to make, though. What is so special about the hare’s back foot?

People considered it magical because when the hare is running, their back feet hit the ground before their front feet… sounds legit. 

In an age of science, where people find answers and conveniences in a lab rather than in prayer, it seems irksome that some people continue with beliefs that stand in the way of scientific progress. In fact, many scientists are as opposed to religion as religion is opposed to science. Because it seems completely illogical to try stop the study of evolution just because it goes against certain beliefs. The history of religion is just a bunch of cover-ups and lies. Science, on the other hand, accepts any new data, and revises rules, some of them thousands of years old, just to attain pure, true knowledge.

But instead of embracing science, some people stick to the superstitions, and it can drive anyone crazy. For example imagine you have a cough. What are you going to do? The logical thing to do is to take a cough syrup. But NO! Superstitious people have their own ingenious way of curing a cough. They pluck out a hair from their head, put it between a buttered sandwich and feed it to a dog, while chanting “Eat well, you hound. May you be sick and I be sound.” Tuberculosis? Who needs science? All you have to do is drink dog’s blood.

And not just medicine. Children come home from school at 5pm, and are about to go outsi… actually, they aren’t, if their parents are superstitious. Because if the children aren’t back by 6 ‘o’ clock, they’ll bump into a guy without a head.

“OUCH!! I just broke my arm, think I should use a few bandages”. Not if it’s Friday, you shouldn’t. Apparently, if you do it on Friday, that makes you a witch.

Superstitions are, at best, a nuisance. They seriously hinder our progress, and make people refuse to listen to reason, even if we provide proofs for whatever it is we are saying. That’s the conclusion I’d come to.

“So you think that your sister Jamie was re-incarnated as a dog? And that she came back to live with your mother?”

He laughed. “Now that would be silly. But my mother thought she did. Thought she’d come from the dead. That she’d come from beyond the grave. That she’d come back to see her. To tell her that it wasn’t her fault, really. Let her off the hook.”

He paused, and said, “Probably saved her life.”

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Now this was something I didn’t think of before. It’s more or less like the placebo effect. It was highly illogical, no doubt. Did it really matter? It ended up saving a life. So what if the beliefs are false? Imagination, hope, compliments, and so many other things are false all the time. We still get a certain amount of happiness from it. And isn’t that what we want in the end? To be happy?

And religion? I consider religion a complex superstition. Based on faith and with no proof whatsoever. But before we can really understand how useful religion is, we need to understand something called the “Dunbar’s number”.  

Monkeys live in groups. Groups of 50 or so. And instead of letting them be, like any sane minded individual, a few scientists decided to figure out how many social relationships a monkey can have. 

And.. guess what? They figured out that monkeys can have 50 or so social relationships.

Not content with monkeys, they cut open the brain of a more advanced version of a monkey. Yep, a human. And we can have around 150. And I really don’t care what your Facebook account says, that truth won’t change.

This number was more than enough, in the past. When humans lived in tribes, and didn’t really know that many people. But with advancements in communication and transportation technology, the world is growing smaller, and 150 doesn’t seem like it’s even NEARLY enough.

Damn it! So the humans are just going to finally disintegrate, because they don’t care for each other?

Fortunately, there’s another thing that our brain is capable of. Instead of making a bond with an actual human, it has the power to bind with an idea. The more you like the idea, the more you like the people who have the same ideas. And one of them, is religion.

The USSR had a better arsenal, a better military, and literally EVERYTHING better than the USA. So why did it lose the Cold War? What reason did the USSR have for breaking down?

Godlessness.

Since the people in the USSR didn’t have much in common, it was only a matter of time, before it broke apart. And that’s not the only good thing religion is doing. It actually makes people believe that they’re part of a bigger plan, that their life has a purpose, and that one day, they become one with God himself. It gives them salvation. And a reason to be good, do good things. I’m not here to talk about if it’s true or false, because it doesn’t really make a difference.

So are superstitions good or bad? On one hand, it slows scientific progress, and is just freaking annoying. On the other hand, it can give us peace and happiness. I, for one, think the question is rather personal. 

Note: Article given by Adwaith Rao!!