Step on a crack (day 61)

Superstition.  It makes up a large part of our belief systems.  Complexity breeds superstition by the sheer number of contributing factors to a particular outcome and the unpredictability of said outcome.   We don't want to believe that bad things happen to good people so we choose to believe in a higher power that somehow knows what they are doing.  In that belief, we convince ourselves that power has a fickle personality that we must assuage.  I don't happen to have that particular superstition but I do have others.  I take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator because I think that if I don't I will increase my chances of becoming paralyzed in the future.   I don't use locker 13.  People that suffer from migraines are also prone to rituals or avoidances  sometimes based on evidence but often with some degree of superstition involved.   At the root of superstition there may be some rational behaviour.   By superstitiously participating in particular behaviours we 'fix' some parameters while allowing others to vary.   So if we get sick for example, we can say things like "I wash my hands after shaking hands with anyone, so that can't be it".   It just allows us to rule out or include causes that are either ritually absent or present.   So it affords some control.  The point at which rational action becomes superstitious ritual is the point at which we forgot why we do it, or we have become unable to vary it without some kind of emotional stress ("the sky will surely fall if I floss _before_ I brush").  On the surface, it seems likely that scientists would be less prone to superstition but in practice that hasn't been my observation.  It seems that beside the stuff that can be scientifically studied, there remains plenty that is chaotic and beyond measure.  Like why your lover left suddenly leaving not even a note.

There seems to be two types of superstition: one to stave off the bad and one to invite the good.  It is likely that people have an implicit preference toward one or the other.  I tend to fall in the superstition for the summoning of good category.   I believe that people that are superstitious to stave off bad or in a kind of prison where more and more superstitions are likely to be added since bad things happen anyway.  At least it seems more a slippery slope.  Superstition for generating good is self-perpetuating but not in an ever-growing way.   Believing in a parking goddess for example just means you praise your goddess every time you get a parking spot, and remember those times all the more.

A song for this post.