Superstitions


Lots of people in India seem to care about the digits on their license plates. So much so that the license issuing authorities decided to make money out of it: put up the most sought after numbers (like 001) for auction. And they don’t make peanuts out of the process: the bids often run into tens of lakhs of rupees! That’s more than the cost of many vehicles!

And superstitions exist across cultures, across races, across regions. So why are people so irrational?

Did Grey’s Anatomy get it right?
“Superstition lies in the space between what we can control and what we can’t. Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck. No one wants to pass up a chance for good luck. But does saying it thirty three times really help? Is anyone really listening? And if no one’s listening, why do we bother doing those strange things at all? We rely on superstitions because we’re smart enough to know we don’t have all the answers. And that life works in mysterious ways. Don’t diss the juju, from wherever it comes.”

While I agree that we don’t have all the answers and that things often work in mysterious ways, I don’t agree that we need to attribute the first arbitrary reason that comes along for everything. Some things are just random, and for others we may learn the reasons later.

But I guess we’re programmed to attribute reasons for everything. Goes back to evolution, I think. Reasons meant predictability, and spotting those predictable trends (like what events or observations come before the rains) could mean the difference between survival and death.

Comments

  1. KumarOctober 22, 2012 at 11:21 AM

    Your argument is OK as a rationalist. When you say, "I don’t agree that we need to attribute the first arbitrary reason that comes along for everything", this argument cannot be argued. But, there is a small difficulty with your choice of word: 'the first arbitrary reason'. Irrational and superstitious people would believe to an arbitrary idea (not reason) without any interest in reason in terms of actual cause-effect relationship. We can only shrug our shoulders and leave them to their ignorance and faulty thinking.

    Purely philosophically viewing the concept of rationality, I would go so far as to say that nature is under no compulsion to make her details conform to our understandability, while adhering to our way of rationality. If a time comes when no amount of our quest for understanding helps, we may actually understand better/differently by accepting our inability to understand.

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