Our world is a series of events, small and large, happening all around us at all times. Often, however, we cannot control these events. It sometimes may be tempting to take control of our lives by forming relationships between things to try to explain why they happen. This is what society has come to call "superstition," and what Stuart Vyse describes in his book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. However, frequently these fabricated causal relationships are both absurd and misleading. For this reason, personal superstitions can change from day to day or even minute to minute. If a woman receives a raise on a day that she wears a certain shirt, she may be liable to attach a positive value to that shirt and expect to have a good day the next time she wears it. If, by chance, she encounters a mugger on the way to work the next time she wears the shirt, she will immediately remove the positive value from the skirt and may possibly never wear it again. Much like this, many people are constantly trying to draw relationships between some of the numerous unrelated events of their lives. However, is this really the best solution to the uncertain and incomprehensible aspects of life? Would it not be better to find the true cause of success, failure, or any other life matter, if there really is one? In my opinion, it is better to search for the truth in the world, to understand exactly what efforts must actually be made to achieve some end, and to face superstitions with skepticism.

Almost anyone is susceptible to forming superstitions. Superstitions are the mind’s way of understanding our environment. The mind rarely draws connections between events that are spaced far apart. Rather, we tend to want to connect events that are of close proximity, whether or not they are actually related. Referring to the woman who received the raise, she may have worked incredibly diligently for the past year to meet many important deadlines with work that was above-and-beyond the call of duty. However, if she has encountered a period of rest, in which she has not been quite as focused on work lately, she may not immediately associate her raise to her high work ethic and productivity. Instead, she looks for something in closer proximity to getting a raise. Therefore, she equivocates receiving a raise to wearing that certain shirt. Of course, she did not receive the raise because of the shirt. Somewhere in her mind, I am sure that she knows that that is not the reason that she received the raise. However, people tend to ignore that better reasoning part of their minds when superstitions arise. If a reason is immediately available to explain a situation, people tend to readily accept this reason. They like to be able to provide explanations for things. People feel that they can control the world around them if they know why things happen. There are not any certain people that are more likely to draw these sorts of connections than others. Rather, most anyone will develop superstitions in a situation of uncertainty. "Uncertainty is, of course, a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of superstition" (49). It is natural to want to understand the world. However, some people are unable to, or simply do not, take a step back from time to time to evaluate the relationships that they have drawn. Without assessment of the validity of the connections, ridiculous relationships will persist, causing millions of people to be deceived from the truth.

I prefer to understand the ultimate truth of the world around me. I believe that I have the responsibility to comprehend exactly what is going on and why at all times. Therefore, I refrain from all things that will impair my ability to fully understand my surroundings. This includes being skeptical of superstitions. When a superstition is involved, I believe that there is always a more logical answer to be found. Without evidence to support the reasoning, I do not see any rationale in endorsing superstitious beliefs. They simply deceive the believer from the reality of the surrounding world. Many people feel very strongly about their superstitions and will go through great lengths to carry out whatever ritual or action they are supposed to perform. In doing so, they are most likely neglecting the actual cause of the desired event. It is true that there are some small superstitions that do not detract from an individual’s daily life or are not even believed to truly hold any special powers. For example, if a baseball player always steps onto the field with his right foot, this does not take any great effort. If he acknowledges that this does not in fact have any affect on his behavior, then I do not believe that this is a harmful form of superstition. However, many times these small superstitions can lead to the adoption of larger superstitions that are carried out on a grander scale. It is the causal relationships of superstitions with which I am most concerned. Once people begin attributing successes and failures and other life matters to completely unrelated events, they are devaluing the true antecedents of the matters. Of course the desired matter cannot be reproduced if it is unknown how it truly came to be in the first place.

The world is an amazing place. One of the most fascinating aspects is that everything around us has an explanation. We do not need to make up relationships between two clearly unrelated events or items to appease our mind of its discomfort with uncertainty. Instead we need to see the truth of the world around us and try to understand the intricate and delicate workings of our environment. It is important to search for evidence and to evaluate the validity of it. We must be responsible for our own understandings and our own beliefs. Those of others, like many societal superstitions, are likely to be ungrounded and without proper support and reason. We must take it upon ourselves to live in the most true, pure world that we can, and one way to do this is to use skepticism and evaluation techniques when approaching superstitions.

Vyse, Stuart A. Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. New York; Oxford

University Press, 1997.