Superstition

In the past few decades, we have learned an enormous amount about how brains relate to the body.  There are four main brain parts and two basic kinds of brain functions that are really quite separate. And there are two basic human motives that can be thought of as approach and avoidance; subjective and objective; rational and emotional; intuition and sensation; Yin & Yang energies. Polarities make up the underpinnings of energy systems and not only balance each other, they also complement each other. The managing of polarities is essential for survival The conscious mind is the rational one—is your active awareness of something at any given moment, it processes thoughts in an ordered manner. The subconscious takes the responsibility of your essential life functions, fight or flight response, learned behaviour and habits, memories and emotions. At least 90% of all your processes and reactions occur at the subconscious level. The subconscious is involved with survival and the storage of your experiences. The fight or flight response is an automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening. The conscious, rational mind may be instantly shut down and instinct takes over so that we can fight or flee rather than deliberate. Trauma is a person’s emotional response to a distressing experience. Few people can go through life without encountering some kind of trauma. The parts of the brain that help people to observe and think clearly may get interfered with by trauma. Psychological trauma is caused by an adverse experience, or series of experiences, that result in an injury that changes the way the brain functions. Our brains are like pattern seeking computers. Add linguistic ability and the result is story telling, which is the basic way we process information at the conscious level. Humans and the human point of view is central to each story. So we have our rational brain that makes you get along with other people in a civilized way. And then we have our animal brain is about survival, it makes you go to sleep and makes us hungry and makes us turned on to other human beings in a sexual way. And so, the more emotional you are, the more you shut down the rational part of your brain. Your emotional responses are often at variance with rational behaviors. Everybody can rationalize what they believe as the right thing to do. But if our primitive part of our brain perceives something in a particular way, it’s almost impossible to talk ourselves out of it, because the instinctive part of the brain is so very hard to access. Modern humans have been around for at least 200,000 years, evolving through an unstable and traumatic environment that was not well understood. Volcanic eruptions, meteor storms, floods and droughts, plagues, wild animal attacks, violence, and fear of death or annihilation has strongly affected how our brains evolved. Anc climate has acted as one of the many factors that have repeatedly altered people's lives. The long-term, collective effects of changes in Earth’s position relative to the Sun are a strong driver of Earth’s long-term climate, and are responsible for triggering the beginning and end of glaciation periods (Ice Ages). Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of seawater as it warms. Volcanic eruptions are often discussed in relation to climate change. Throughout recorded history, hundreds of Earth impacts (asteriods and exploding bolides) have been reported, with some occurrences causing deaths, injuries, property damage, or other significant consequences. Plagues have swept through humanity ever since communities have gathered together in concentrated groups causing high mortality; pestilence. For instance, plague may have helped finish off the Roman Empire by causing widespread manpower shortages for food production, severely weakening the Roman army and the whole empire during the third century. There was also a 300-year spell of unpredictable weather coincided with the decline of the Roman Empire and even the possibility of a Flavian influence on the formation of Christianity. So the world is often not a place that is trustworthy. There is ongoing, low-level threat that we all have right now. The world is much more complex, unsafe and unclear, and we don’t know who’s on our side, who’s not on our side, who’s telling the truth, who’s not telling the truth — it’s a recent and very radical disintegration. In Western culture, we tend to turn these traumas into chin-up experiences. If you feel bad, just take a swig or take a pill. We have separated ourselves. We divided ourselves. And then, the more respectable people become, the more stiff they become, somehow. We’ve pretty much, to a person, been really upset now for a long time. The Body Keeps the Score. It’s not the memories, it’s the reactions, the embodied trauma that still lives in your body. You’re more likely to get triggered into being really angry or being upset or shutting down. During the primitive age of the hunter and the hunted, man's survival was of prime importance, to save him from ferocious beasts and natural calamities, as sufficient safety nets were not available to protect him, fear was running at its highest peak.  A superstition is the irrational belief that future events can be influenced or foretold by specific, unrelated behaviors or occurrences. The earliest superstitions were probably created as a way to deal with ignorance and fear of annihilation and the unknown. Superstitions are a way of attempting to regain control over events in one's life and to ward off harm. Nature spirits are usually attached to a specific place, such as a tree, river, plant or mountain. Nature spirits come in a variety of shapes and temperaments. Some are described as human in form, others are like animals or are half-human, half animal; some are helpful, others deceitful or malevolent. The ancient world abounded with superstition relative to evil and demons. The evil eye is a common belief that individuals have the power to look at people, animals or objects to cause them harm. Faced with natural phenomena like thunderstorms and earthquakes, as well as the unpredictability of illness and food supply, human beings attempted to create an understandable world of powers that could be influenced by action. Superstitions are thus a way of attempting to regain control over events, particularly when one feels helpless. Some groups are more prone to superstitious beliefs than others. Actors, miners, fishermen, and gamblers all tend to be more superstitious than average. The success of all these occupations tends to be more out of the control of the individual. Failures and successes reinforce such a belief. Superstitions are often considered relics of outmoded ways of thinking and are often passed down through generations. Often, the origin of a superstition is lost to history. A large number of superstitions are of the "if you do 'x,' then bad luck will follow" variety. Walking under a ladder, opening an umbrella indoors, spilling salt, are examples of actions that will cause bad luck. In some cases, it is possible to "undo" the action or protect against bad luck. Crossing one's fingers while walking under a ladder, and throwing salt over the left shoulder after spilling it are often thought to nullify the bad luck. Some superstitions are almost universal, suggesting a deeper connection than mere happenstance. Most superstitions are harmless, and even may be helpful in encouraging people to achieve their goals. But attributing results to an unrelated cause, if it leads to a lack of responsibility on the part of the person, can be a problem. Understanding the true cause of phenomena a deep desire of human beings, and people should not abandon that endeavor in favor of superstition. We regulate each other in various ways. Group cohesiveness can be defined as a bond that pulls people toward membership in a particular group or clan. Group cohesion means the degree to which the group members are attracted to each other and remain within the group.  Group cohesion develops out of the activities, interactions and sentiments of the members. Cohesiveness binds all the group members to work as one man to attain the set goals. It is usually reflected by its resiliency to disruption by outside forces. Group cohesiveness is another important factor besides group norms which affects group behaviour. Group cohesiveness means the degree of attachment of the members to their group. If group cohesion is high, the interaction between members of the group is high and the degree of agreement in group opinion is high. Rituals for changing one's fortune at cards is a good example. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has released a ball down the alley but continues to behave as if she were controlling it by twisting and turning her arm and shoulder is another case in point. Highly cohesive groups can falter by conformity, group think and group polarization. For example, religious beliefs have often been viewed by those outside of a particular religion as nothing more than superstition. Religious practices are most likely to be labeled "superstitious" by outsiders when they include belief in extraordinary events, supernatural interventions, apparitions, or the efficacy of prayer, charms, amulets, incantations, the meaningfulness of omens, and prognostications. While superstitions may seem to have parallels with religious practices, and some may seem to overlap more than others, there are important distinctions. Superstitions can also be learned behaviors. Superstitions  have shaped our society's traditions and culture in some way and plays a part in how we shape our own identity. Children who watch those around them perform superstitious actions like "knocking on wood" or not walking under ladders may adopt these behaviors. The true origins of certain superstitions can be centuries old, having been passed down from generation to generation through such an observational learning process. The fascinating thing about superstitions is that we often believe in them despite knowing, on some level, that they can’t be true. Humans can think both “fast” and “slow.” The former mode of thinking is snappy and intuitive, while the latter is more rational, and its main job is to override the intuitive judgment when it finds errors. People can recognize that their belief does not make sense, but act on it nevertheless. Superstitions are not merely a manifestation of our flawed cognition. Sometimes superstitions offer a host of benefits. Sometimes superstitions can have a soothing effect, relieving anxiety about the unknown and giving people a sense of control over their lives. This may also be the reason why superstitions have survived for so long. Our ancestors could not understand the forces and whims of the natural world. Survival of our ancestors was threatened by predation or other natural forces. Life is pretty scary sometimes so  people do whatever they can to try to avoid hidden dangers. God as a rescuer was probably an outcome of those horribly frightening situations. Activating a superstition boosts participants’ confidence in mastering upcoming tasks, which in turn improves performance. Employing superstition bears little cost compared with the alleged outcome of various “calamities” brought on by bad luck, such as “lost fortunes, jobs, and live Most (western) religions have evolved into a sort of piety competition wherein the most ritcheous wield power in the form of guilt and shame. The first is believing that spirits or transcendent beings actually exist. . Asceticism is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. The doctrine that through renunciation of worldly pleasures it is possible to achieve a high spiritual or intellectual state doctrine represents a school of thought or a system of beliefs accepted as authoritative by some groups. The idea is that the act of controlling your impulses and denying bodily desires is a way to draw closer to God. Prayers, rituals, and other religious acts are generally performed to venerate a deity. By offering prayers, sacrifices, and so forth, one may hope that the deity looks favorably upon them, but the power exists within the deity, not the performance of the ritual or prayer. The power of objects such as amulets similarly comes through the object, but such power originates with the deity, not the object itself. Superstition, on the other hand, puts all power in the action or object itself, or the person performing the action. For example, a religious person may sacrifice an animal to ensure a good harvest. The success of the harvest is thus put into the hands of the deity. A superstitious person may perform a certain ritual for the same purpose, but the success of the harvest is thus dependent on the power of the ritual itself. The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments: "You shall have no other gods before me." The Catechism of the Catholic Church states superstition "is the deviation of religious feeling" and "can affect the worship we offer the true God. Attributing the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to non-human beings, objects, natural, or supernatural phenomena.God, animals, the forces of nature. Belief in the existence of nature spirits is common to all cultures throughout history. They are said to have been here since the beginning of time, and to have created the landscape of reality.   If there is a creative nature spirit it isn't very surprising that humans might imagine that our species might be central to any such design. However no other earthly species has been so destructive to this planet and don't seem to even be able acknowledge that fact in any real or meaningful way. "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates of human beings,." -  Albert Einstein Spinozism  defines “God” as a singular self-subsistent Substance, with both matter and thought being attributes of such. “There is nothing except God… Everything is God.” The distinction between religion and spirituality is relatively new. It has become increasingly common to hear people say they are “spiritual” but not “religious,” with approximately one in four causes more adults in the United States now identifying as such. Most British people think religion causes harm more than good according to a survey commissioned by the Huffington Post. Religion can be a force for good, but also quite often a force for great harm. The world-view of the west which is exploitative of nature in unsustainable manner that is anti-ecological, hostile towards nature. It has imposed a break between human and nature with attitude to exploit the nature in unsustainable way where people stopped thinking of themselves as part of the nature. This exploitative attitude combined with the new technology and industrial revolution wreaked havoc on the ecology and native faiths. Are humans an invasive species is a species that is harmful to an ecosystem? Depending on how they behave, they can disrupt or even destroy the ecosystem. When an invasive species becomes an increasing problem nature often may take corrective measures against a species that is out of control. One of the best ways to insure that we don't succumb to primitive superstitions is to first stop believing that we are immune to them. How Your Brain Falls for the Wrong Ideas  - Lisa Feldman Barrett Self-justification Religion And Environment - YouTube The Lynn White Controversy  Sam Harris on Religion Lemming Population Control Overpopulation   -   YouTube Pantheism  - YouTube Life Lessons from Carl Jung