My dictionary defines superstition as "An irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear". Humm.... ignorance or fear. This means that ignorance is one factor that leads to blind beliefs. But we see that educated people (like me :-) ) are also superstitious. Many artists, sportspersons, people in high places are also superstitious. Does it mean they are ignorant? No. So why do people believe something that has no logical reason??
I would like to say that superstitions are of two types:
1) Your own beliefs: Beliefs that are unique to you.
Say something that makes you feel confident: say you do well in the exams if you wear particular clothes.
Something that causes fear in you: If you see somebody in the morning, then the day will go bad etc..
2) Universally accepted beliefs: These are the ones that are followed by (almost) eveybody. The belief of 13 is very rampant in the west. So are many such beliefs in India and elsewhere. The list is very huge.
So, coming back to the basic question, why do people believe something that has no logical reason?
Now, we all do our jobs. We all want to succeed in our lives and nobody wants to fail. But when we fail, we look out for reasons why we failed. Many times we find reasons but when we do not find them, we blame it on 'luck' and take refuge in superstitions. We say that we failed because such and such thing took place etc..
When we succeed, we desire for more success. Then in a similar situation, we try to imitate the earlier conditions that resulted in success. We hope that this will bring us success.
But what we are really doing is we are programming our brain to believe that we can succeed. And many times we succeed. If we see a bad omen, we feel that we are destined to fail. And many times we fail.
This shows that the real power lies in our brain. We are what our brain tells us we are. So the whole thing boils to confidence. I will talk about that later....
