This was a response to a friend asking the vague question: "Without speaking religion, is it predetermined or chaos and chemical?"
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Mad Hatter
What
goes bump in the night? Does a particular dance bring the rain?
Superstition is well documented across all cultures and in many species.
Pavlov's experiments are classic too and prove this. Watch Mr Nobody if
you want an awesome movie explanation, the whole structure of that film
is to play on superstition (if you can handle some self-aware cheese).
In the physical world, predetermined vs chaos and chemical is not
necessarily a different thing. Complexity is, however, different, and
goes a lot farther in explaining all this. But that's inconvenient, who
wants to have to read books and books and actually pay proper attention
to all of their senses to "get it?" That means giving up a lot of ego,
though. We exist at the end of 10,000 years of recordings and 1 million years of being human. As evolution shows that all adds up and it's on us, the living, to know that.
No magic crystals. No crosses. No special
stories you think only you know the secret to. Nothing, or you'll only
be misled into comforting myths and mental loops that go nowhere till
you're dead, and probably because you'll simply be ignorant or scared or hungry or
horny or especially lonely at the time the belief is established. It's
all superstition and ego.
Worst part is it's
extremely hard to tell when you are being misled by yourself, by some
information you like or by your own emotions, only judge the strange
beliefs you may begin to have and without attachment (initially. It's
cool to be attached to things later I think, I ain't no radical Buddhist). Actually discerning that requires you to know what's coming
in and coming out, from all culture and symbolism to your own psychology
and physical health, it's all intertwined. And when you think you know,
you probably don't. And don't do coffee enemas either haha, that's
weird.
There's infinite more we can do than all this superstition in our
time, but not enough are doing it, at least in very interesting ways. We're too busy being all fucked up on
our selves and our circumstances and especially our beliefs, which are
all the same damn thing.
So "I'm afraid it's so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are." - Alice
