SUPERSTITION – HOW THE MODERN WORLD WORKS?

Have you tried my current affairs? Stay informed about the world.

When the Large Hadron Collider was switched on, people began to fear a black hole would form. How stupid, weren’t we? Then a few days later the financial markets collapsed and a black hole appeared in the global economy.
Are the two events related? Well, in one sense, the human mind does form a connection between the two. We have the idea of irony, an apparent perversity of fate. And irony is so well known because sometimes the world DOES seem to work like that.

Irony is the driving force of superstition.

In Medieval times the Devil was out to get you because people perceived the perversity of fate about them. Often it was caused by sinister meaning placed on words, such as the ‘black hole’ in the economy.
We can say that we’re not affected by such bunkum today. Yet, the financial meltdown was caused by a loss of confidence due to irresponsible trading. The money is apparently there, but banks became too frightened to lend it. Fright and loss of confidence are the result of irony, and therefore superstition.

Storytelling is also important to the process.

It is through the storyteller, telling tales around the camp fire, that myths grew. Studies of the paranormal can show how a haunting at a particular time in history sticks to the theme of the ‘story’ of the ghost believed in at that time.
A similar cultural force operates today in conspiracy theory. An event happens and storytellers (conspiracy theorists) sensationalise it. Suddenly, popular understanding of the event is made up of an event plus our appreciation of it following the fact. Reality, like time, is relative to the observer.

This form of reality is more than perception.

Indeed, it is beginning to gain scientific acceptance. In chaos theory we learn of concepts such as the ‘strange attractor’. This can be a tiny event which nonetheless has a disproportionate effect on the events that follow.
Typical is the analogy of a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane. Place the concept into psychology and could the insinuation of a black hole and doom regarding the LHC have caused subtle psychological perversities in the unconscious of some financial traders?

Coincidence can be brought into the discussion.

We know they happen and we’re told it is to do with chance – or is it fate? Yet we also have the concept of synchronicity, where coincidences become meaningful. Could this be due to an initial coincidence affecting the unconscious, similar to a butterfly’s wings?
It would work like this. We know that the human mind is selective in what it appreciates. If it wasn’t we would be overwhelmed by information. This is often known as ‘selective attention’. Yet is it possible that such a concept allows us to walk a path from an event based solely on what we selectively see and react to?
If possible, then we are not just talking about personal psychology. Culture provides ‘symbols’ which define who we are and what we will do. The science of semiotics is carefully mapping such influences.
This is sociology in action, and affects the masses. From this process a ‘consensus’ arises of how we think the world works. Yet, bearing in mind the above processes, we can easily decide that we are not talking, here, about a definite reality, but how a particular society imagines how things work.
Dawkins identified a process to allow such psycho-sociology with the ‘meme’ – an idea that spreads through a society like a virus. He did of course limit the process to our foibles, as such, and not to an actual appreciation of ALL our knowledge of reality.
Ironic, that, isn’t it?

© Anthony North, October 2008