Bad Vibrations and Magical Thinking
At a recent Science Festival of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), a very interesting experiment was announced by Dr. Bruce Hood, professor of psychology at Bristol University. Hood was researching the origins of mystical beliefs.
He’d presented to his class a common cardigan sweater—or “jumper” as the Brits call it—which he told them had been thoroughly cleaned and bore no trace of its original owner. He also offered students £10 if they’d don the garment. Most agreed to wear it, until Hood told them that it had belonged to an infamous UK serial killer named Fred West, who was convicted of murdering at least a dozen persons and had hanged himself in 1995.
The mere association with evil seems to be enough to cause strong disgust.
At that point, in spite of the attraction of an easy £10 (US$19), most of the students quickly reversed their decision to wear the garment. Professor Hood explained that the mere association with evil seems to be enough to cause strong disgust. In actuality, the cardigan itself was innocuous; it was not really linked in any way to the Gloucester murderer. Hood avers that his subjects’ reactions in this test illustrate that even the very rational among us tend to give more credibility to superstitious intuition than we realize. He notes:
Most people will wear it if I offer them, and then when I tell them it’s Fred West’s jumper most hands go down … Of the few hands that stay up and put it on, most people move away from [those persons]. It’s a powerful emotive effect.
Hood’s research has indicated that people will often attribute emotions or sentimentality to inanimate objects such as wedding rings, souvenirs, medallions, and other special possessions. He described how he also allows his audience to pass around a fountain pen that he tells them belonged personally to Albert Einstein. When he later reveals that this is not really true either, the audience disappointment is evident, and the pen is thereafter treated with much less reverence and interest. Hood has found that humans are hard-wired to try to make sense of the world, and that includes both rational and irrational assumptions and attributes. This propensity leads us to try to find explanations for everything, and may, he thinks, explain why superstitions and even religious beliefs—and thus religions themselves—develop.
It is well-recognized that all animals—including, of course, our own species—have a very pressing need for pattern-recognition; it is a very important survival technique. (Indeed, we magicians depend upon our audiences finding evidence in small indications that we surreptitiously provide to them in order to accomplish our misdirection.) In primitive times, we had a more serious need to find significance in an unusual shadow or sound that could have indicated some large-fanged critter intent upon having a Homo sapiens snack. Professor Hood has done well to extend this survival need as an explanation for our inventions of spirits-in-the-sky and various Valhallas as refuges.
This propensity leads us to try to find explanations for everything, and may … explain why superstitions and even religious beliefs—and thus religions themselves—develop.
I have had personal experiences with this phenomenon. As a child, I vacationed a few times at my grandparents’ home in Montreal. It was located right down the block from a very famous shrine, St. Joseph’s Oratory, where a monk known as Brother André once lived. He gained a reputation as a healer, and the shrine was festooned with crutches, canes, artificial limbs, braces, and various prostheses that appeared to attest to his ability. I recall seeing penitents mounting the long stairway leading up the hill, on their knees, arriving there bloody and, of course, in agony. But the one article inside the building that really got my rapt attention was Brother André’s heart. You read that correctly. They actually displayed the monk’s heart in a jar, preserved in rather cloudy formaldehyde. Back in the 40s, which would be when I visited this shrine, the devout could actually stick a finger into the liquid and touch the heart! Conveniently, tissues were available so that the brave and faithful finger could be wiped off.
That moldy-looking gray lump of meat in the jar commanded a great deal of attention and devotion from shrine visitors. I would stand fascinated by those who approached this ugly thing and expressed their devotion to it; whether it was actually the heart of the departed monk, or of an unlucky goat, I’d no idea, and I didn’t care. However, this attraction wasn’t a money-maker for the Oratory; other carnival items did bring in the cash and my own father was inadvertently pressed into aiding one of the major money scams active at the shrine. At that time in his life, both he and my godfather worked for a large department store—the Henry Morgan Company—and one day both of them were summoned to the manager’s office and assigned a very important task. They were each given a pair of pinking shears along with a roll of black gabardine fabric, and told to present themselves at the souvenir shop of St. Joseph’s Oratory. They did so, and for the next few hours they found themselves cutting up the fabric into two-inch squares, after which they stapled them to already-prepared cards bearing a printed message claiming that this was a piece cut from the actual robe worn by Brother André on his deathbed. He must have been of very ample girth, judging from the amount of gabardine required to cover him! Business was brisk …
I think my dad never quite got over that experience.
Channeling Sylvia Browne
I’m on Sylvia Browne’s mailing list, and every now and then a hilarious item from The Claws comes in and quite makes my day. Here are eight mind-numbing questions that Browne says she’ll answer for readers of her newest book, Exploring the Levels of Creation. After each question I provide my own answers. But first Sylvia warns us, “I answer your toughest and most curious questions and show you another dimension of your existence. Are you ready for the answers?” Oh yes, Sylvia, please favor us with the profound answers to these burning questions:
Where do I go when I die?
This assumes that you “go” somewhere, and we’ve no evidence to support that, other than a preferred notion. But if I must answer, I’ll say that it depends on whether you’ve chosen embalming or cremation …
Where are my loved ones who just passed over?
Same place, Sylvia, same place. And that place, I know you’ll believe, has either very, very, hot, or ideal—heavenly?—weather.
How do I reconnect with my kindred souls?
Ask around! How else? Or do you expect a really huge telephone directory with billions of entries? After all, you’ve got eternity to look around, right? Get real, girl!
What does the Other Side look like?
Crowded … Very crowded … And with very dull people.
Why do some people die young while others live to be very old?
Well, let me see … Some get sick, or a house falls on them—as in the Wizard of Oz—or they play too much in the traffic. Others get lucky, exercise, and limit their pizza input. Sylvia, you really should read more!
How can I tell if one of my family members is a dark entity?
Compare him/her with a light entity, or smooth-talk him/her with a slick question like, “Hey! You a dark entity, or not?” And smile, because you don’t want to be politically incorrect, right?
Are there really fairies, unicorns, and dragons?
Sure! And while you’re acting crazy, include elves, talking horses, snails that do calculus, and smart Republicans. Go all the way, girl!
What do I do when visited by a creature from the underworld?
Pack some undies and a toothbrush, whistle while you dial 9-1-1 and gently, calmly, ask for the loony wagon to be sent to pick you up …
Legislative Sin, Florida Style
Florida Representative Katherine Harris has now declared to the media that she believes that God did not intend for the United States of America to be a “nation of secular laws,” and that the idea of separation of church and state is a “lie we have been told” to keep religious people out of politics. Obviously, in Katherine’s case, this didn’t work. She writes: “If you’re not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.” Harris has assured interviewers that her religious beliefs “animate” everything she does, including her votes in Congress. We’re fortunate that she has such a direct, clear, connection with the deity. Harris told journalists:
We have to have the faithful in government because that is God’s will. Separating religion and politics is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers … and if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women … we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our Founding Fathers intended, and that certainly isn’t what God intended.
You see how mistaken we common folks were before Representative Harris straightened us out? I know of a whole bunch of people who erroneously believed that our politicians were accepted or rejected solely by the voting procedure! Happily, both Democrats and Republicans in Florida were appalled by Harris’ tirade. After all, there are several degrees of crazy, and with this contribution to woo-woo, Kathy has demonstrated just how high up on the scale she is, and has managed to frighten both parties.