Life and the World

Not so much a philosophical posting this, but peripherally related.

Just a few weeks ago, one of the blogs that I read quite regularly posited the question: what superstitions do you hold? This was in response to his own little foible to do with Arsenal and pants (don't ask). I posted a reasonable and, I thought, average response along the lines that although I paid lip service to a couple of superstitions (e.g. touching wood) I did not believe them to be literal. The touching wood, for example, for me is more of an acknowledgement not to take things for granted. And generally I tend to think of supserstitions as life lessons in easily assimilateable form (although I have never worked out the symbolism of not breaking a mirror). Likewise with much of the contents of holy books (of any variety you care to choose, especially the old ones). The Bible (since that's the one I know most about) contains many a story which most middle of the road Christians would, I think, consider to be allegorical. Although there are some that will take things literally (e.g. creationists), I assumed that this was the arena of extremists only.

I was surprised, nay, chastened to discover how wrong I was. Person after person listed a personal foible which they seemed truly to 'believe' in. This frequently seemed to be a gut, instinct reaction - a function of emotion rather than reason (although, see discussion below on that subject - certainly not done with yet). The phrases 'I have to', 'I can't do anything if' or 'if I don't do this, then' were frequently used; I was frankly astonished by the level of compunction involved. That there were some true believers was not itself so surprising; what really got me was that this was everyone's response. I was absolutely the only person who said what I said.

So what is going on here? I confess to being mystified. I knew that many people say they have to wear their lucky trousers/tie/pants/feather boa (delete as applicable) under certain circumstances but I had thought that most of them did so knowing in some way that this was, in effect, their mind playing tricks on them - their wearing of the feather boa is not going to actually change anything except their state of mind, which might indeed change something, but because of their state of mind rather than the actual feather boa wearing. A stadium full of sporting fans all wearing their lucky undies could lift the atmosphere thus spurring their team on to victory, but that's not the same as really believing that the wearing of lucky pants waves a magic 'winning' wand. The placebo effect writ large, effectively.

Or may be not. These musing brought to mind the bizarre world of 'the hundredth monkey'. The story goes that a particular and now famous set of monkeys were being observed on a number of islands. One monkey learned to do something new and passed that knowledge onto some of the others who passed it on to others etc. By no means all the monkeys learned this trick but the numbers gradually crept up and then - bizzam! - a critical mass was reached. The skill suddenly jumped without apparent communication to (you guessed it) the hundredth monkey on a completely different island. Here is a rather fuller description, should you care to peruse:

http://pure-research.net/healing/light/monkey.html

So far so amazing. This was turned into a book and eventually a movement that spoke about the possibilities of morphogenetic fields and (gulp) a sort of species wide ESP. Looking around the internet there are any number of sites dedicated to the idea that if we all think nice thoughts we can somehow make it happen in some kind of Jungian collective unconscious way. Think about world peace and the people with the big red buttons might be affected by all that positive thinking, goes the argument.

Sounds nice doesn't it? And it brings up all kinds of questions about the nature of our reality and communication, knowledge etc etc. And it sprung to mind when I was thinking about all those lucky pants wearing sports fans spreading out waves of 'go team!' - could this luck thing really be real? Bit of a leap from a hundred monkeys doing one thing to one person's thought contributing to changing the universe, but a leap worth considering. Maybe I was the odd one out, I thought, and everyone else understands this subconsciously.

Unfortunately, it turns out (not to put too fine a point on it) to be bollocks:

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC09/Myers.htm (for an interesting and well thought out view)

http://skepdic.com/monkey.html (for an altogether more hostile view)

at least as far as collective ESP goes. Although there are some interesting lessons to be drawn about cultural changes and passing of knowledge, there was in fact no evidence of a sudden, miraculous, physical contact-free communication of thought. And really, when you think about it, if it had actually come to pass as the legend says, there would be more attention being paid to it than just a few New Age websites (that also include, as an example, links to allow to purchase the no doubt eseential Crop Circle Year Book).

Which unfortunately takes me round in a rather pointless circle back to the original unanswered question: why do people believe? I have come to the only conclusion I can; that the placebo affect demands that you don't know it is a placebo. Or maybe not. I am stumped. Any thoughts?