The Sunday Reflection #36 - Superstition or common sense?

Are you superstitious? It had never really occurred to me before, but whilst I think we all know what superstition is, I didn't know what the actual dictionary definition of it was. So I did what we all do these days and googled it 

"a widely held but irrational belief in supernatural influences, especially as leading to good or bad luck, or a practice based on such a belief."

When I saw this, I felt that it was a rather poor definition. I have many superstitions, but I would contend that they are anything but irrational. In our house, many of these superstitions are based on football. We have a code of conduct when we are watching Manchester City play. We are only allowed to go to the toilet when the CIty Goalkeeper has the ball, or immediately after a goal. Anyone watching who breaks these rules will get a huge volley of abuse from both myself and my son

Bruno relaxes after a mammoth
doggy power session yesterday

We also are firm believers in "Doggy power". This is the belief that if the dogs, especially our old boy Bruno is watching, City will play better. We believe that this power especially transmits to certain players, such as Kevin De Bruno, Kyle Walker and GunDOGan. If Bruno cannot be persuauded to watch, City invariably play much worse. This may sound like nonsense, But Bruno wll be fourteen years old this year and his arrival coincided with the period of domination of football by City. Oddly, there worst period in recent years, coiincided with when we had a cat - 1990-2004. When our lovely British blue passed away, we got a dog and City got better, but it was the arrival of Bruno in 2011 which really saw the rise of City. Now you are probably thinking  "what a complete load of old cobblers", but stop and think about it for a second. The reason we've got the toilet protocol is because it works. The number of occasions when we've broken it and the opposition score is quite freaky. Statistically it is quite rare for a goal to occur directly from a kick off or when the keeper has the ball in their hands. Does the behaviour of someone or a dog watching the telly in Mill Hill have any effect on a football match a couple of hundred miles away? Of course there is absolutely no logical reason why it should, if it did, then every such superstition everywhere in the world would cancel it all out as Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal fans presumably have their own superstitions. But......

Every time we don't follow our superstitions and things go wrong, we feel a totally irrational level of guilt and shame. Why would you want that burden, so why not follow the superstitions? Can sheer thought power affect things in remote locations? It would seem completely ridiculous to suggest such things, but even the CIA has experimented with the concept of using the power of the mind for espionage and other intelligence related work. They were more than interested in the concept of using 'remote viewing' to nick secrets from the USSR. The Americans spent over £20 million on the project. Ultimately the official conclusion was that 'no useable intelligence was ever obtained', but many conspiracy theorists do not believe that conclusion. If you have a look at twitter, there is some very interesting stuff. 

The CIA publishes the craziest stuff on their website.

"Oh yeah we had professional remote viewers, yeah, we asked them to go visit Mars one million years ago. What did they see? Pyramids, obelisks, a dying elder race looking for a new home. Anyway its declassified now." pic.twitter.com/Jpts5bbpsu

— Andrew Côté (@Andercot) November 17, 2024

I find it fascinating, not perhaps for the same reason as the conspiracy theorists, but the concept that our brains can do more than we realise truly fascinates me. My Dad was a WWII bomber pilot. He was the most superstitious person I've ever met. He once told me that all of the pilots he knew who dismissed superstitions got killed or taken POW. I once asked him how he could possibly square his superstitions with his highly logical mind as an engineer. His reply was interesting. He said "95% of people who drive cars, get on airplanes and put sausages in the fridge have no idea how these things work or are even possible". He pointed out that 1,000 years ago the idea that people could fly around the world would be dismessed as complete nonsense. His view was that if superstitions work, then you use them, even if you don't know how, why or even if they actually work. He said to me "Suppose I told you that if you walk to the park, you will find a bag under the bench with a million pounds in it, would you go and see, even if you thought I was joking?". It was an interesting point and I said "If I thought there was any chance that I'd find the bag, I'd go". He said "That is why I follow my superstitions. I don't need proof they work, I am prepared to take a chance". He then said "Of course, if you found a bag with a million pounds there, you'd have a completely new set of problems, you may end up regretting it".

He then told me a strange tale. My Dad was raised in the remote outback of Australia. He told me that when he was a kid he was friendly with an old Aboriginal witch doctor, or medicine man as he was sometimes referred to. The guy had told him that your mind had the power to do anything. You could make rain, make rain go away, you could even kill people simply by thought power. Dad had been fascinated and asked how you do this. The old man had then explained "All you have to do is understand that the whole world is in balance. If you make rain, then at some point you will need water and won't have it. If you kill someone, they will drag your soul to hell with them when you die, in effect when you change things, you become a prisoner of what you have changed. So if you killed Adolf Hitler by power of thought, you'd end up as his prisoner in Hell forever. I asked Dad if he believed the bloke. He said that when he was born, there had been a massive drought in Australia and he'd not seen rain until he was five. The old guy had turned up when a local farmer had paid him to make rain. The next day, there was a deluge. There was a dried out river bed, known as Cooper Creek that ran nearby and this became a huge river, all manner of strange fish appeared from nowhere and the land turned from sandy brown to a lush vista of green. I was fascinated. I said to Dad that the bloke who paid the witch doctor must've been delighted. Dad laughed and said "quite the opposite, the deluge washed away his house and all of his belongings, that was the price that you pay for using a witch doctor to make rain". Dad told me that he knew how to make rain or make it go away, but if you made the sun shine when rain was forecast, invariably a week later, you'd get caught in an unexpected cloudburst and get soaked to the skin. You didn't make sunshine, you just moved when it rained. 

I realised later in life that what Dad was trying to teach me was not that you could make rain or kill people. He was teaching me something far more important. He was teaching me that everything has a price and when you mess with things, there are always consequences. He was making me think about how our actions always have consequences. Ultimately the logical conclusion of what he was telling me was don't mess about with things you don't understand. I have often thought about the farmer who had his house washed away in the medicin man's deluge. He hadn't been doing anything bad, he simply wanted some rain as the drought was destroying his business. It seemed to me to be a bit unfair that the consquences are so devastating, but when you mess around with things that you have no understanding of, you can come very unstuck.

This month, on the 20th, we will see Donald Trump's inauguration as 47th President of the USA. I don't know why, but whenever I think of that farmer and his tragic fate, I think of Donald Trump. When I look at his forthcoming administration and the people he is appointing, he reminds me of that farmer, who thinks that the rain will come and he'll be rich, only to see everything washed away in the deluge. I see Trump rushing to open Pandora's box. My only hope is that we are not all washed away in the tidal wave that he unleashes. When Trump takes the helm, I will cross my fingers for good luck. Sadly that is all any of us can do. Whether it is superstition or common sense, I honestly believe that the citizens of this planet will need a lot of good luck in the coming months.