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A Word on Superstition
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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 A Word on Superstition
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A grossly underrated phenomenon of evil.
Initially, with the Johnny-Head-in-the-Air premise, superstition may appear as a matter floating within its discrete metaphysical realm, meaning no harm to physical reality and ranging just in the significance of everyone´s legitimate freedom of thought.
When you are a bit more aware than that, then you may start realizing how actually superstition does effect reality outside of an believing individual´s imagination. How it creates precondition and prejudice.
How categorizing by unrelated criteria, as with chronological data in astrology, or morphology in methods of characterization and similar lump sum (women that dress "provocative" are nymphomanias, those who smoke in the streets are indecent and thelike nonesense) leads to discrimination.
Further up the road you start realizing how superstition is undermining the substantial human challenge of understanding reality, and how actually misunderstanding reality tends to produce mistreatment and injustice on principle.
Figuring how harmful and destructive misunderstanding is, and how much worse even the willing arbitrariness of superstition.
One more step ahead and you realize how trillions of humans and uncountable numbers of fellow creature have fallen victim to the reckless concept of superstition. How most cruel of crimes are conducted on the arbitrary altar of this archaic phenomenon.
And when reached at the insight of this mental venom you look around and you see billions of children deprived of their natural right to gentleness and shelter, exposed to paradox irrationality and orthodoxy, made to become emotionally lost and self-righteous ogres themselves.
Individuals who will live from bigotry, envy and hate. Venting inequity continuously throughout their failed existence. Some even so driven from irrationality that they be cowardly cutting off heads of pinioned fellow men, and at that even be proud of being such berserk.
You see how fellow creatures being kept in agony and torture, all derived from the estranging principle of superstition.
However, in case of having difficulties of making out the coherence between superstition and brute, more obvious examples might help you see the connection.
Be it the Chinese medicines superstition that is currently causing decimation of wild-life world-wide, so that traditionally impotence dreading China men may find rare species limbs in their bowel.
Or be it the example with human albinos in East Africa.
Sometime in the very early new millennium some reckless African faith healer ( obviously inspired by Chinese methods) came up with the claim that consuming pulverized human albino bone would be helping prolonging life and against diverse diseases.
That led to corresponding offerings in the market and sky rocketing prices.
In Tansania families with albino members are since experiencing invasions in their homes by groups of men with machetes and axes who then for example will before their eyes either cut their father into pieces and drag away the limbs, or chop off children´s arms or legs alive.
In the aftermath guarded schools have been opened for albino children in attempt to keep them from being attacked and amputated.
People bring their albino kids to there either for to have them protected, or - much rather - to get rid of them for good / leaving them orphaned.
Because of another version of local superstition claiming that albinos were to be ghosts and that they would be bringing misfortune over their surroundings.
Superstition is no small deal, nor peripheral matter of individual choice. It is in fact among the main misfortune causing plagues on the planet.
No matter what type of it, it deserves zero tolerance, as superstition on principle is sabotaging our attempts to understand the world and shifting us towards the bovine and crude end of intellect.
It should be fought on any level on principle.
Ruphus
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 27 2015 13:21:43
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: A Word on Superstition (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
There is an alternative narrative, that this has been an enduring strain of fledgling capitalism striving for life in a repressive socialist regime.
Except that, historically, the alternative narrative you suggest does not hold up under scrutiny. Some of the worst environmental degradation imaginable occurred under the socialist, command economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Witness the disappearance of the Aral Sea because of re-channeling of rivers for growing cotton, the soot-blackened towns of Rumania, etc. Capitalism does not have a lock on environmental and species degradation. It has occurred equally under socialism. But this has all been discussed in previous threads over the years, and we needn't go over well-plowed territory again.
With regard to the issue at hand, Ruphus's point about superstition having an adverse effect beyond those holding to it is spot-on, particularly in the Chinese case regarding the medicinal properties of tiger parts and rhino horn. If the superstition were not present there would be no demand. And if there were no demand, there would be no poaching.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 4 2015 14:12:43
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: A Word on Superstition (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
This is a pretty standard definition of market forces. There is a symbiotic relationship between superstition and capitalism not a parasitical one since both philosophies prophet from each other. I often bemoan superstition on this forum but noone ever finds medically and mechanically unproven corrective training shoes or sports drink emotive enough to inspire much exchange. And anyway buying fancy things makes people feel special whether it be a rabbits foot a new brand of strings a viagra or a rhino horn. I don't have a problem with capitalism. It is a shame though that discussions about it tend to be dominated by fundamentalists.
My point was that environmental and species degradation occur under both capitalism and socialism. I was not defending capitalism's record here; rather, I was suggesting that it is no worse in this realm of activity than socialism or any other "ism." I used the Soviet Union and eastern Europe as examples. Chinese medicinal superstition has been a driving force for the extraction if tiger parts and rhino horn long before the current capitalist economy took hold under a communist authoritarian dictatorship.
I don't know what you mean by discussions about capitalism being dominated by fundamentalists. To make the case for capitalism is not to be "fundamentalist," any more than to make the case for socialism is to be "fundamentalist." In any case, to draw a dichotomy between capitalism and socialism in discussing which is more harmful to the environment and species is neither helpful nor enlightening. Environmental and species degradation occurs under both systems. The culprits, in large part, are industrialization, post-industrial economic activity, rapacious land-use policies, and overpopulation. And, yes, superstition that requires the sacrifice of endangered species in order to be sated.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 4 2015 19:29:36
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: A Word on Superstition (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
Superstition is not a stand alone thing in my opinion it has to be nurtured. Whether one sees a quack or a spiritualist as evil or deluded they are first and foremost entrepreneurs.
With that we are one hundred percent agreed. And such entrepreneurs exist in every economic system and in every form of human social organization, from the most advanced Western society to the most primitive tribal society. Whether they be spiritualists, priests, imams, shamans, or purveyors of endangered animal parts for sexual potency and snake oil salesmen, they are all entrepreneurs dedicated to ensuring their place of privilege within their society. Throughout history much power has been maintained and riches acquired via the institutionalization of superstition.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 4 2015 20:23:04
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: A Word on Superstition (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
No, superstition arises when really bizarre coincidences or events occur that can't be explained logically and makes your hair stand on end.
That, in part, is how religions have historically arisen, leading to a priestly caste that itself uses superstition and belief to maintain its position of power, either absolute or as an adjunct to the secular authority that uses it as a source of legitimacy.
But we've come a long way from Chinese belief in the medicinal benefits of tiger parts and rhino horn.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 5 2015 11:59:21
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