I am not a superstitious fellow. Or wasn't, rather, until I started smoking spice. After an accidental and monumental surdosage (that you can read about here) I looked back over my day and remembered the emptied skull of some carnivorous beast I had found earlier in the middle of the road (pics below), and attributed my trip in part to a fear that had awoken in me (described in greater detail in the report link above).

Now, before I "vape up", I look back on my day to see if there were any events that may negatively impact my experience. I think this is healthy - some things, like that skull, have a subconscious effect on our psyche, and it is imo helpful to identify them before diving into an ocean as deep as spice.

However, i am starting to invent (I think) superstitious events as a means of opting out of a planned spice/changa session. Or am I...?

Let me cite today as a perfect example - i woke up, showered, reflected on the good things that have happened recently and went outside to unlock my bike to go to work with the thought churning in my mind that tonight would be a perfect night to smoke some changa, given my positive outlook and the beautiful weather and a generally sunny disposition.

Then I saw it: a little Ziplock baggie pierced and hanging from the wrought iron fence to which my bicycle was locked. (pic below) Inside was a curled, blond lock of hair! An omen? naahhhhh. I took the baggie off the spiked iron rod and threw it on the sidewalk.

But the thought did occur to me that maybe I was overestimating my mood and that this was some sort of a sign.

So I went to work and more or less forgot about it. A half-day enjoyable pre-light later (I am a cinematographer), I hopped on my bike to go back home with renewed zeal and was thinking about how to set up my apartment for my planned changa session when

BANG!!!

I was hit by a car.

i flipped over the handle bars and bent my pinky back in a breakfall to shield my head. The handlebars split my thighs for the worst Charlie horse I have ever had. Luckily, i was alright - just a little shaken and thighbruised and pinkybent. I was in shock and pissed and didn't want to deal with it so I told the driver i was ok and that he should watch what he was doing and check his mirrors. And hopped on my bike and hobbled away (as much as it possible to hobble a bicycle!)

The ride home was slow, arduous, painful and altogether unpleasnt (where's a teleportation device when you need one).

Lo and behold, the first thing I see when i pull into my yard is the little baggy, popped through the hole back up on the same part of the fence as it was this morning. Someone had put i back...

Needless to say I AM NOT SMOKING CHANGA TONIGHT!!

What a day. But the biggest suprise to me is that I see a little innocuous baggy (yes, strangely filled with a lock of hair) as some sort of sign from who know where or who knows who concerning my intentions of voyaging that evening.

Anyone else develop superstitions after they were introduced to spice. Is this a sign of a wilting mind? a newfound and inexplicable belief in the occult? my mind grasping for reasons, even unresonable ones, not to face the terror I have awakened in me?

I don't know. Curiouser and curiouser...

JBArk

Umm, where I'm from, baggies of hair don't just appear on personal property multiple times. Pissed anyone off lately?

ragbr - you give me too much credit!

But wait, there was that thick chested five oclock shadowed italian fellow with the fedora...hmmmm

I don't know anyone powerful enough or occult enough to send me "horse-head-in-the-bed" style warnings! And the only person i am habitually capable of pissing off is myself!

But then again, there's my GF.... maybe the message was for her...?

Cheers,
JBArk

I don't know about the baggie full of hair (although I understand how one could conceivably get creeped out by such a thing...), but aborting a spice mission because YOU JUST GOT HIT BY A CAR sounds like a pretty reasonable course of action.

Go easy on yourself, mein brotha. And stop posting those rotting mandible photos. They're making me superstitious!

You should burn the baggie with the hair.

for me...

it's creeping me out!

Too late, i ate it...

I hope you chewed very thoroughly

I just split myself laughing... I promise to stop posting them (sometime, heheh)!

JBArk

ps - if you'd like, Art, I could PM the to you!

I guess I've also become superstitious about this in a sense; when things happen or I see things - coincidences, unusual events, actions, objects that jump out into my mind - I think, hmmm, does this mean something?

My answer to this is that there is far more out there in the world than we usually pay attention to; our unconscious or super-conscious mind percieves much more than it lets the Daily You know about. What we see is the edited highlights of reality.

If I become aware of something out of the ordinary, that seems to me to be a 'sign' of sorts - whether I know what it means or not - I take that as a message from my unconscious/ Id/ intuition/ higher self (higher elf? )/ whatever we want to call it.

I think that perhaps it's trying to let me know something, because it sees my intention and perhaps has a greater understanding of the consequences of those intentions than my ego/ normal self/ rational mind/ whatever you want to call it ... so I pay attention.

That may be superstition, or just plain bonkers, but it works for me!

It's not superstition. Believe me. It is not. It is as truthful as the ticking of a clock.

By the way, check this out. The Higher Self has been located.

There is no such thing as "superstition". There is only belief or experience.

Superstition is a time-related belief in a lie.

Superstition is a subset of beliefs. wikepedia states:

"Superstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason, knowledge, or experience. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to folk beliefs deemed irrational. This leads to some superstitions being called "old wives' tales". It is also commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy and spiritual beings, particularly the irrational belief that future events can be foretold by specific unrelated prior events."

So yes, superstitions are beliefs. Just very specific types. That seem, by definition, to include any and all religious thought and any irrational philosophical thought, as distinct from logical philosophy (the kind philosophers practice).

But you forgot rational conclusion resulting from experience. Whether you consider it valid or invalid, it is distinct from irrational beliefs. But if belief is considered simply a state in which a premise is true, then I guess it is an umbrella term, and the two types of beliefs are merely subsets - but I am guessing that is not what you meant.

Embrace the void wrote:

"It's not superstition. Believe me. It is not. It is as truthful as the ticking of a clock.

By the way, check this out. The Higher Self has been located."

That article is VERY suspect.

"Motor neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle contractions and affect glands. Interneurons connect neurons to other neurons within the same region of the brain or spinal cord."

Also wikepedia.

The heart is a muscle that contracts. So of course there are neurons that control its pumping. To jump to the conclusion that information passes both ways (ie that the heart "communicates" with the brain" is conjecture at best and bad science at worst:

"The heart appeared to be sending meaningful messages to the brain that it not only understood, but also obeyed (Lacey and Lacey, 197. Later, neurophysiologists discovered a neural pathway and mechanism whereby input from the heart to the brain could inhibit or facilitate the brain’s electrical activity (McCraty, 2002)"

I could not track down the sources in the "American Pychologist." And the lacey & lacey study was done in 1978. If this was done 32 years ago, why has there been no significant subsequent & publicized studies? Seems to me that it is pretty important news, and if the studies were begun 33 years ago, there would be significant progress and a commensurate journalistic & public awareness.

turn on the critical faculties. Not everything you read is...

But none of this explains the zip-locked golden locks spiked on the wrought-iron in front of home!

JBArk

What i read from it is, that superstition is a derogatery term for beliefs deemed as "stupid" or "primitive" by the cultural mainstream. In many cultures, these "stupid" beliefs are prominent, essential parts of everyday life and in no way negative.

You are perpetrating an embarrassing extrapolation. I neither said nor inferred stupidity or primitivism. It was you that evoked these terms.

i know we disagree often obliguhl, but please don't put words in my mouth.

I might choke on them.

JBArk

Let me elaborate for clarity:

rational: In philosophy, rationality and reason are the key methods used to analyze the data gathered through systematically gathered observations.

irrational: Irrationality is cognition, thinking, talking or acting without inclusion of rationality.

Wikipedia defs.

I guess my main query is when does rationality give way to the irrational with respect evaluating one's own state? Or is it always irrational.

For example, I consider it rational to not indulge in changa after being hit by a car. Physical discomfort aside, the psychological ramifications are to put one at unease, and to trouble the mind with (perhaps irrational questions) such as: why did this happen to me? Am I cursed with bad luck? Am I shaken or in shock? - that make considering psychedelics unwise.

I consider it irrational to see "omens", or to fabricate meaning from a bag of hair on a fence beyond the meaning that there is a bag of hair on the fence.

But I do ascribe meaning to it. Irrational meaning, but meaning nevertheless. And this is perhaps due to spice - but is it a good development or a bad development? is developing superstitions ever good? And when does a direct causal link sink into the muck of superstition? and how?

FEAR. That's how. Anyone else?

JBArk

No, i'm just building upon the consensus of what the word actually means. I think its a very dangerous, ethnocentric word, that's why i'm so persistent. My point is, that there is no irrational belief, because the word "irrational" bears a negative connotation substantiated by our "rational" culture. It's almost synonymous with "good". At the same time, belief is always irrational even if the foundation is to be found in something rational (read: inductive thinking) just because logic is a belief in in itself.

But to constribute to the actual topic: Well, strange things happen with psychedelics. Things you couldn't have imagined before. Synchronicities...strange strange stuff.



There was one disagreement, i'm not your personal enemy

The word actually means something that is not based in rational thought. Hence most of what we think and feel. And create. Including what we experience during spice trance; nothing about it is rational, it is PURE irrationality, so the pejorative connotation you are borrowing from those I imagine you criticize. For me there is (usually) no negativity associated with the term, unless it has to do with mental illness.

Art, speculative science (string theory), love, intuition, joy, bliss and the impulse to write this very sentence are all irrational. And beautiful. And essential.

A few thoughts from the WikiWizard:

"Irrational is not always viewed as a negative. The Dada and Surrealist art movements, for example, embraced irrationality as a means to "reject reason and logic". André Breton, for example, argued for a rejection of pure logic and reason which are seen as responsible for many contemporary social problems.[1]

In science fiction literature, the progress of pure rationality is viewed as a quality which may lead civilization ultimately toward a scientific future dependent on technology. Irrationality in this case, is a positive factor which helps to balance excessive reason.

In psychology, excessive rationality without creativity may be viewed as a form of self-control and protection. Certain problems, such as death and loss, may have no rational solution when they are being experienced. We may seek logical explanations for such events, when in fact the proper emotional response is grief. Irrationality is thus a means of freeing the mind toward purely imaginative solutions, to break out of historic patterns of dependence into new patterns that allow one to move on."

What i am trying to do is distinguish, if you will, the difference between irrationality and nonsense. No easy task.

BTW, i use nonsense in strictly the pejorative mode.



I hope not. you'd be my first (i think...)

just a correction though; not one disagreement - a thread of them!

JBArk the rational irrationalist