Are You Superstitious?

[KoolHndLuke]

 A black cat runs in front of your car- do you turn around and head home? You have some trepidation about walking around in a graveyard at midnight- silly fantasy due to watching to many movies or television, right?

 

With all our modern science and knowledge, do you still find yourself inexplicably "uncomfortable" with some things of a traditionally unlucky nature?

 

To this day, I will not use the number thirteen for anything except here and now. Why? It has seemingly always been an unlucky number for me. Have you ever just gotten a "feeling" about something? "666" is another ominous number for me...and it recurs for me far too often. Is all this simply mindless superstition or an idiosyncrasy of the deranged? Or is our supposed "sixth sense" trying to tell us something?

[ToJKa]

Nope.

Still humans still have primal instincts, if you get a bad feeling from something there may be a reason for that.

 

Though i am convinced that RNGesus has some sort of anal fetish towards me.

But of course that too is just perception, fumbles stick to mind better than critical successes. Like that one time my Sniper in XCom2 killed five enemies in a row with Serial ?

[Tyrant99]

Nope.

 

Luck is just a word for randomness injected with irrational subjectivity. 

 

In reality, if people think randomness is anything more than what it is (random), they are fooling themselves.

[Fifoo]

"Superstitions are a defense mechanism in the face of uncertainty. Some superstitions are not completely absurd. Many of them are even based on truth: passing under a ladder can indeed be dangerous. They therefore have a real protective function. But above all, there are beliefs that hold us, that are the basis of our identity. Becoming attached to certain superstitions can be a way of paying tribute to one's culture.
I am more wary of rationality at all costs. Believing that one can explain everything, master everything by technique and science is an illusion that makes it even more unfortunate. Leaving the unexpected, the improbable, the chance is much more enchanting."

 

     - Quote by Elsa Godart, psychoanalyst and philosopher.

 

Personally I quite like the approach made by the author. "I have no bowl," "I never have a chance ..." are words that are often heard, this conviction of being cursed, doomed to misfortune and bad luck. This pathological relationship to luck, based on a bad self-image, is the bed of superstition - we believe in the evil eye, we rely on grigris or fetish numbers, we consult the auguries (clairvoyance, numerology ...). But what is luck?

 

Luck is the ability to seize good opportunities, so it is not just a coincidence. It results mainly from the way in which we turn fortuit into opportunity. And it is much more than a simple observation that is offered to us: it is a Way of Life.

[gregathit]

Bah Humbug.  I purposely break mirrors and walk under ladders whilst kicking that damn black cat.

[Darkpig]

16 minutes ago, gregathit said:

Bah Humbug.  I purposely break mirrors and walk under ladders whilst kicking that damn black cat.

What'd the cat ever do to you greg?

 

On another note:  forget 666 I am the beast!

[KoolHndLuke]

23 minutes ago, gregathit said:

Bah Humbug.  I purposely break mirrors and walk under ladders whilst kicking that damn black cat.

I'd forgotten about those. I've broken plenty of mirrors and other shit, but, don't walk under ladders cause of hammers and other tools people leave on them...you know. I just got to thinking that I have heard these things all my life and wonder if there is anything to it. Almost everyone I talk to does profess to believing in luck- especially bad luck.

[Darkpig]

2 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I'd forgotten about those. I've broken plenty of mirrors and other shit, but, don't walk under ladders cause of hammers and other tools people leave on them...you know. I just got to thinking that I have heard these things all my life and wonder if there is anything to it. Almost everyone I talk to does profess to believing in luck- especially bad luck.

Wasn't there something in quantum physics that scientists are having trouble predicting? I wonder if it has to do with luck?

[KoolHndLuke]

14 minutes ago, Darkpig said:

Wasn't there something in quantum physics that scientists are having trouble predicting? I wonder if it has to do with luck?

Dunno. Science is EVALL!!....at least that's what my grandparents thought.?️

[Darkpig]

Just now, KoolHndLuke said:

Dunno. Science is evil....at least that's what my grandparents thought.?️

For years science has improved and saved human lives. I'm talking about medical science here. How could human life be a bad thing unless the your grandparents hate human life? Logic is funny. XDDDDDDDD

[Ernest Lemmingway]

I enjoy Friday the 13th whenever it comes up on the calendar. Mostly because I enjoy freaking out the superstitious. Can't remember anything lucky or unlucky happening on one. Though I am uncomfortable in graveyards. I saw too many horror vids as a kid.

[gregathit]

51 minutes ago, Darkpig said:

What'd the cat ever do to you greg?

LOL!  Damn if I remember.........

[GimmeBACON]

I believe that if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have none at all, but in general...

Spoiler

 

Besides, I'd rather be skilled at something than just be lucky.

[Darkpig]

6 hours ago, gregathit said:

LOL!  Damn if I remember.........

Must have been those weird hypno eyes that got ya.

What were we talking about again? Something about bad luck I think.

 

Edit: Nvm I forgot

[Tyrant99]

Random shit happens, sometimes it benefits, sometimes it does the opposite. People make it about 'them' because we're an egomaniacal species. This is the whole concept of 'luck'.

 

That's why Casinos are multi-billion dollar businesses, people delude themselves into thinking that the laws of mathematics will magically bend in their favor... And they never do.

[Jazzman]

In religious superstition everything boils down to a natural explanation, a simple fact or basic assumption.

 

The Beast 666 refers to the Roman emperor at the time Revelation was written and that fact was obvious to Christian contemporaries facing the circus on the horizon that were fluent in both Latin and Hebrew and familiar with the inscription on his coins. It's just the transliteration of the name on the coin into summed up Hebrew numbers of the corresponding Hebrew alphabet and as such worked as a camouflage not to get sent to the circus directly after a political speech in a hiding, betrayed by omnipresent spies. True is that everybody that acted similar inhumane on a large scale like Emperor Domitian ('the Nero 2.0') was later on understood as reincarnated 666 - proverbially the wrath of the Devil - and rightly so.

 

The black cat has a problem, viz that she's black. And black refers to the darkness that opposes the light (required to see anything). It was believed that all evil thrives there - in the dark of the forest. And what goes for the black cat that allegedly is attracted to (young and everything but ugly) witches goes for the black dog, the black sheep and the black knight as well, let alone women with 'black' eyes (that's me), doubtlessly fathered by the Devil himself, legend has it.

 

The number thirteen is utterly interesting, 'cause it contradicts the 'harmonious', biblical dozen. It dearly wants to be part of it and yet can't for being a little too late. It is the superfluous, the one that quite obviously lies through the teeth. That's why Saint Paul, the founder of Christianity, as self-proclaimed thirteenth apostle (he had a fuckin' vision) had a god-damned hard time to defend himself against the public accusation of being the Lying Man. 'I do not lie' is thus an often read defensive phrase in his letters in New Testament.

 

Friday is the sixth day in the Jewish week and on that day Jesus got betrayed to the Romans in Gethsemane. So bad things might happen to the pious on such a Friday. And if it is the thirteenth of the month, Heaven forbid, well, then it can't get worse anymore... one better stays in bed, huh?

 

Have fun!

 

 

 

[Tyrant99]

Always thought 666 was due to the fact that if you add the numbers 1 thru 36 together it equals 666. The Babylonians had 36 supreme gods, so this was essentially a knock on an alternative polytheist religion...

 

Correlating to this is the fact that all of this stuff was in the Book of Revelations, where there's a lot of talk of 'The Whore of Babylon' - Obviously the author wasn't too fond of Mesopotamians...

[Jazzman]

1 hour ago, Tyrant99 said:

Always thought 666 was due to the fact that if you add the numbers 1 thru 36 together it equals 666. The Babylonians had 36 supreme gods, so this was essentially a knock on an alternative polytheist religion...

 

Correlating to this is the fact that all of this stuff was in the Book of Revelations, where there's a lot of talk of 'The Whore of Babylon' - Obviously the author wasn't too fond of Mesopotamians...

Oh, Babylon is just a pseudonym used by already said reasons. It refers to the 'sinful' capital of the brutal occupant in the Levant - Rome. By similar reasons the Rastafari here in Jamaica refer to Washington (and sometimes even to US individuals) as Babylon. Bob Marley's famous song 'Buffalo soldier' sheds some historical light on the reasons behind.

 

Mesopotamia as part of the Parthian Empire, on the contrary, was understood as a kind of refuge for threatened Jews and Christians alike. Some of the earliest Christian sects (mostly cave dwellers and nomads) still exists there and the Babylonian Talmud today Jews rely on was written nowhere else but in Babylon since the Roman Emperor Hadrian forced them to leave Jerusalem (actually Judea) for the next two millennia. Rome failed on numerous occasions to conquer Parthia, her much feared nemesis.

 

[Tyrant99]

3 minutes ago, Jazzman said:

Oh, Babylon is just a pseudonym used by already said reasons. It refers to the 'sinful' capital of the brutal occupant in Palestine - Rome. By similar reasons the Rastafari here in Jamaica refer to Washington (and sometimes even to US individuals) as Babylon. Bob Marley's famous song 'Buffalo soldier' sheds some historical light on the reasons behind.

 

Mesopotamia as part of the Parthian Empire, on the contrary, was understood as a kind of refugee for threatened Jews and Christians alike. Some of the earliest Christian sects (mostly cave dwellers and nomads) still exists there and the Babylonian Talmud today Jews rely on was written nowhere else but in Babylon. Rome failed on numerous occasions to conquer Parthia, her much feared nemesis.

 

It's easy to see Babylon as a simple pseudonym now as it is an ancient civilization and its religion is more or less relegated to the annals of history, now obsolete. 

 

Yet, at the time that the 'Book of Revelations' was being written, Babylon was still very much a 'thing', so what's an abstraction now was not in any way abstract then.

 

Crassus was killed by the Parthians at Carrhae, but after Ventidius trounced them in response, it was a one-sided fight from that time forward with the Parthians always on the defensive. The Parthian empire evaporated after about 150 years.

[Jazzman]

1 hour ago, Tyrant99 said:

It's easy to see Babylon as a simple pseudonym now as it is an ancient civilization and its religion is more or less relegated to the annals of history, now obsolete. 

 

Yet, at the time that the 'Book of Revelations' was being written, Babylon was still very much a 'thing', so what's an abstraction now was not in any way abstract then.

 

Crassus was killed by the Parthians at Carrhae, but after Ventidius trounced them in response, it was a one-sided fight from that time forward with the Parthians always on the defensive. The Parthian empire evaporated after about 150 years.

Much could be said of the betrayal the Parthian Pacoros had to face when his cavalry rushed to Jerusalem's aid (sic!) and through Asia minor (sth. Cicero always was afraid of), cutting through the legions like butter. Fact is Ventidius' victory was just a Pyrrhic one and the respect paid by the legions to Parthian cataphracts and mounted archery only grew over the next decades. And Ventidius, by good reasons, never had the balls to cross the Euphrates ford to enter Parthia, an entity that ceased to exist when the ruling Sasanians turned it into a province we even today know as Khorasan, the largest province in Iran before 2004.

 

So Babylon beyond the Euphrates was only a big thing for the Roman elite, their abysmal greed for more power, more wealth, never for people in the Roman provinces that went to the cross for thought crimes by the ten thousands in Judea by Pilate alone who couldn't wash his hands clean from all the blood caused by his alleged 'innocence'... and finally got fired b/c of it by the Senate.

 

The positive understanding of the real, contemporary Babylon by both Jews and Judeo-Christians never faded away in antiquity. And as I've already mentioned, today Jews most likely would recite Mickey Mouse instead of the Talmud if it wasn't b/c of Babylon's hospitality and comfort.

 

 

[Sethster]

I'd like to say that I'm not, but then again, I tend to look away from mirrors in my house after midnight at all cost. Ever since I was young, my grandma would always tell me stories of mirrors being the portals for dead to reach out and communicate with the living. Considering I was a 3rd grader at the time, such stuff definitely had an impact on how I grew up and it never really faded away till this day.

 

So I guess I'm superstitious to some extent. 

[KoolHndLuke]

Wow, I've been looking for superstitions from around the world and they're numerous. A certain lady here might recognize some of these-

 

If a woman is pregnant, she should not look at a dead body or her baby will die.

A pregnant woman should not look at a disfigured person or feel sorry for them, or the child will be born with some resemblance to the object of her pity.

If a baby boy looks like his mother, then he’ll be lucky. If a girl looks like her father, she too will be lucky.

If a person dreams about a nest full of eggs it means riches.

If you dream about a wedding, there’s going to be a funeral.

If a man dies with his eyes open, someone else in the family will die soon afterwards.

superstition-JamaicaDreams about death mean someone will be born into the family.

The mournful howling of a dog at night means that someone will die soon.

If a house is swarmed by ants it means that someone will die.

To prevent misfortune, a person who is building a house must kill a fowl (chicken) and pour its blood along with white rum on the ground at the four corners of the building.

The number 13 is bad luck.

If a bug drops dead in front of someone, it means that some misfortune will happen to that person.

If someone is eating and a bit falls from his or her mouth, it is believed that a dead relative knocked it out for himself.

 

BTW- has anyone ever read about making zombies? Read on Haitian zombie powder. Or watch Serpent and The Rainbow. Angel Heart is another good one, though it's about the transference of one's "essence" or "soul" to another person's body I think.

[Tyrant99]

Hmmm I remember reading about the black magic using goat that they got for armed robbery in Nigeria...

 

Luckily we only have people who believe in some guy that died and magically came back to life and floated away to some mystical kingdom in the sky or something in our court systems... ?

[winny257]

HeHeHe or better HaHaHa. ?

 

I am 60, I already have many Fridays 13 survived, I have already caressed hundreds of black cats, I own one myself.
I have gone under hundreds of ladders and nothing happened.
I believe only that what I see, if something happens, then it happens without any action a third Might!
Superstition is the worst Faith, if superstition would be contagious, then this superstition can cause panic and hysteria and thus catastrophes,  trigger! 
 

[iamknotsatisfied]

Spoiler

On 5/27/2018 at 4:15 AM, Fifoo said:

"Superstitions are a defense mechanism in the face of uncertainty. Some superstitions are not completely absurd. Many of them are even based on truth: passing under a ladder can indeed be dangerous. They therefore have a real protective function. But above all, there are beliefs that hold us, that are the basis of our identity. Becoming attached to certain superstitions can be a way of paying tribute to one's culture.
I am more wary of rationality at all costs. Believing that one can explain everything, master everything by technique and science is an illusion that makes it even more unfortunate. Leaving the unexpected, the improbable, the chance is much more enchanting."

 

     - Quote by Elsa Godart, psychoanalyst and philosopher.

 

Personally I quite like the approach made by the author. "I have no bowl," "I never have a chance ..." are words that are often heard, this conviction of being cursed, doomed to misfortune and bad luck. This pathological relationship to luck, based on a bad self-image, is the bed of superstition - we believe in the evil eye, we rely on grigris or fetish numbers, we consult the auguries (clairvoyance, numerology ...). But what is luck?

 

Luck is the ability to seize good opportunities, so it is not just a coincidence. It results mainly from the way in which we turn fortuit into opportunity. And it is much more than a simple observation that is offered to us: it is a Way of Life.

 

Agreed.