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Circumstantial Superstitions

2 points by Siddharth_joshi ↗ HN
This concept quite diverges from the conventional superstition-beliefs. The following word is coined to throw light onto the dynamical nature of beliefs concerning superstitions.

Consider, a black cat crossing one's path, which is considered a bad-luck in the US, which on the contrary is a good-luck in the UK. Even the intensity of this belief varies based on the cruciality of the task to be carried out. Per se, if someone is going for an interview for which he/she has prepared with all their heart and it is quite important to crack it, they wouldn’t risk going along the same path crossed by a black cat (US). However, with a trivial task, not taking the same path would be less rigorously thought upon. Is this quite frequently observed/ experienced, let me know what do you guys think?

6 comments

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qubex
I have experienced this.

I consider myself a staunch rationalist and atheist.

But during a specific phase in my life, when I was dealing with something that was right on the knife-edge (almost exactly 50/50 odds, calculated analytically using financial mathematics), I became very superstitious about knocking over salt on the table. Whenever I went to a restaurant I’d ask to have the salt removed to avoid knocking it over.

I reasoned that I attached a low probability to the superstition about salt being true (yes, I know its origins: salt used to be extremely valuable so wasting it was prima facie ‘bad’) yet that low probability of it being true applied to the tiny margin I had available to me made it significant to me.

Yeah, stupid, I know.

Siddharth_joshi
Indeed, you’re correct. Often a constant trade-off of weightage is observed while analyzing a situation through facts-superstitions.
iamkrs9
For the part where it is too important (interview), you are concerned more about it and think exaggeratedly about anything and everything. The crossing black cat and associated bad luck here could be a self fulfilling prophecy. For a trivial task you would not give it much thought and the crossing black cat would not matter much.

Consider you being an ambulance driver and attending an emergency call. The black cat crosses your path but you cannot change the route because it is the shortest one. You would do everything you can to save a life.

The point is - harder you work luckier you get.

Siddharth_joshi
That is correct, as you portrayed here, the cruciality of task at hand may surpass the beliefs. I am quite certain, this ideology is persistent.
raincom
Dale Martin's "Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to Christians" is an interesting book. In that book, Martin spends some time on what you call "circumstantial superstitions" esp in the first two chapters.
bhattdivya
My views related to this topic are a little bit different. I don't say that one should blindly believe in some superstition but I do believe that we should try to understand the reason for it and might as well follow it. According to my experiences in life I have seen all the superstitions are made due to some scientific or religious reasons to it. We might not have discovered it yet so we think it's crazy to follow them. For eg. It is believed that we cannot leave the house with a diya in the house still lit. The underlying reason is that an object nearby due to any unforeseen circumstances may catch fire and create a problem.

Similar is with cutting nails in the night, that it would poke a bird's eye. But the real thing is that in night the vision is not as clear as day and in early days there used to be no nail cutter and people used scissors.

There are endless of these examples but unless we find a scientific or logical reason to it we are not going to follow it. So I would say if there's something that is preached by the previous generations there must be a reason to it let's not oppose it and find reality to it !!