What is something you are superstitious about?

Oh I'm superstitious about a great many things but I try to make it as useful as possible by being the most superstitious about not practicing regular gratitude. So for instance I'll "wish" or "bless" someone with something like "a boring shift" because that's the kind of thing it's important to remember to be grateful for. Or instead of saying it's "quiet" (a common bad-luck superstition in healthcare), I'll comment that "I have been blessed with a good night so far."

A core component of my spirituality that I've reflected on lately is that regardless of what I do or don't believe cosmologically, spirituality and religion offer a huge amount of emotional / psychological tools that have stood the test of time and appeared across multiple religions in various forms due to sheer usefulness. These include things like community and regular gratitude and mindfulness practices.

They absolutely can and have been analyzed and implemented in other ways, but that requires a lot of research and very careful coordination of a lot of individual components. Meanwhile I've found a remarkable amount of success emotionally and psychologically in connecting with a faith community that has all those things built in and which has a LOT of other people who are doing the same thing to support me sticking with it.

TIL Lune from Expedition 33 was insane

I believe there’s a connection between conscious minds that is not connected to the senses.

It originates off some legend that a large team of monks gathered to meditate and pray together on a given day. The city’s crime rate drastically fell on that day.

It sometimes seems to manifest in other stories, like family knowing immediately that something bad happened to a family member (before getting a call about it) or animal keepers having an emotional bond with their creatures without being able to communicate.

I really think this Earth is alive. Like a consciousness we can’t fully understand. And when we mistreat it more diseases get released.

When its not feeling well were all gonna feel it.

I get superstitions about being cocky or headstrong. Nearly every time I do, the universe corrects my behavior, typically by me failing in some huge, embarrassing fashion.

Touch Wood

It's a small superstition that saying some things out loud will jinx it "it's going to be good weather today" - turns the weather bad - and that then following it with "- touch wood" and finding anything wood to touch will make the jinx cancel out

Mind and body are very tightly bound (that is how placebo works) I don't think you are wrong to be wary of speaking disease into existence. The only sinus infection I have ever had, came after reading a particularly vivid and detailed article about how they start. Like my body was following along.


I do give my work computer enrichment activities to keep it happy. Listen to music so that it can have music, browse occasionally so it doesn't have only work to work on. I get far fewer problems than my teammates do, so it seems to work even though it's superstitious nonsense.

If things are calm at work, not a lot is going on, don't say QUIET. Never use the fucking Q word at all.

I think I believe this too. I have birthed 4 kids. 2 tech wizards, one average, and one who the computer hates. They just don't work for her like they do for me & the average kid. I think the difference between average and the tech girls is interest and effort, but the difference between average and the one who has bad luck with them does not seem to be explainable in the same way. And it's not a creative/logical split either.

That's called animism, in a sense.

Had a friend that took apart an old vacuum cleaner and a shock sent a screwdriver across the room. Large capacitor had kept a charge for days at least. Not superstitious, this is just a best practice around electronics.

It originates off some legend that a large team of monks gathered to meditate and pray together on a given day. The city’s crime rate drastically fell on that day.

Probably the claimed "Maharishi effect" in 1974. The Transcendental Meditation organisation (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) said that the quality of life would noticeably improve if at least the square root of 1% of the population practised the TM technique. They claimed the crime rate fell in some cities in 1974 because of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation

Why is it that saying something bad will happen will make it happen, but saying something good will happen won't?

Weird ritual stuff is also pretty common if you're autistic. I too have random things that I have to do or something just ain't right, and I am well aware it doesn't make any sense. The worst one requires closing my eyes for a moment, which leads to weird side effects like I cannot look at any clocks while driving a car, so I don't have to do the stupid ritual and crash