Everything about Superstitions

What is a Superstition?

A superstition is something that is believed by many people all around the globe based on myth, magic or irrational thoughts and beliefs. Superstitions are soaked in mythology or tradition, and it’s quite difficult to highlight the exact origin. They usually involve animals, ghosts, graveyards, inanimate objects, fruits or even other people. Some superstitions commence based on a fact, and then become misrepresented over years and years of use and belief and some are formed from religious beliefs. Understanding the superstition concept from the scientific point of view, superstitions are a part of adaptive behavior in all organisms, as they struggle hard to make sense of an uncertain world. The evolution of superstition is much more than the natural selection of genes that is associated with crossing fingers, toughing wood and gold and many other superstitious traits. But, it’s really illogical to live lives based on superstitions despite of well developed brains, scientific progresses and complex technologies.

Some best examples of superstitions are

• Friday 13^th is considered as unlucky day and date.
• Avoiding 13 number in every work as it is linked with devil.
• Black cat crossing your path could be dangerous as black cats are considered as the companion of witch.
• Breaking mirror could bring 7 years of bad luck.
• Cutting nails on Saturday is considered as a bad luck.
• Opening umbrella inside your house could bring bad luck.
• Shaking legs while sitting could bring you loss of wealth.

Impacts of Superstition

Superstitions cause mind obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental illnesses. But the closest impact to the surface is obsessive-compulsive disorder. Measuring magical thoughts sometimes include artefacts that are similar to superstition, and high scores when measured are correlated with subsequent mental illness. Superstitions, however affect different people to varying degrees as women tend to be more superstitious as compared to men. Moreover, people who are more depressed, dealing with anxiety or have an external locus of control who believe they are the losers or not the masters of their fates are more likely to be superstitious. Even hard-core cynics can occasionally fall prey to superstitions like, if the stakes are high and the effort implemented is low, many rational people say they don’t believe, but they also don’t want to take a chance. But if people are from a superstitious family, it is more likely they will be superstitious. Not only this, superstitions have many demoralizing effect on our society such as

• Weakening self confidence.
• Incapable of thinking in a reasonable way.
• Paralyzing of will power under the influence of fear.
• Blocking logical thinking.
• Over indulging in non existing beliefs.

Reasons Behind Superstitions

People who have superstitious belief are usually of two categories, independent strong belief people who already have the old belief and the dependent in fear belief people who know that superstitions have no existence still they do believe in fear of failure and misfortune.

Humans, who don’t have the confidence and trust on their hard work and efforts, prefer to take the safer route believing in superstitions in order to avoid any adversity, harm or injury. This is the reason why most superstitions are associated with fear of some harm that may strike the person if he or she does or fails to do a particular thing. Hence the superstitions are considered as a chain reaction affecting each with weak will power. Superstitions could be said as contagious effect on people. However, people with high self confidence and huge logical reasoning stay unaffected by superstition as they believe in science, logic and in themselves.

Some people who know that a particular belief is superstitious, irrational and hence illogical, yet they don’t hesitate to go against it, because of some past experience of others or their own reflects that there may be something in it. But the thing is, superstitions are mere the fear and weakness of mind and heart which leads to serious beliefs on rubbish facts. For example, a black cat crossing your path is no big deal. Just forget about that it ever happened you will gradually experience that it has no effect on your activities, results, and your luck.

Final Word

Superstitions are an undesirable part of our lives. Ignorant and uneducated people have faith in unseen or unproved superstitions however educated people do the same thing. The only remedy for unnecessary superstitions is education and awareness, developing reasoning power, developing scientific mind, analyzing the things in logical way.