I do not believe in the supernatural, magic, ghosts or anything like that. However, I can be very superstitious about tempting fate and won’t make jokes or flippant remarks that could be interpretted as such.
For example, my partner made a dark joke about how she’d rather have cancer than such and such. I begged her not to say such things, not because the thought of her having cancer upset me (although it did), but because it feels as if saying stuff like that could make it happen.
I call it a superstition but honestly the more I think about it the more it sounds like plain common sense. You shouldn’t name something (airport, highway, public institution) after someone who’s still alive.
I work in 911 dispatch, and there’s definitely something about full moons.
It’s not that we’re busier, or that the calls I get are more serious, but everything is just a little bit off when the moon is full. It’s subtle, I don’t think it would even be reflected in the types of calls we’re entering, but a lot of our callers just get weirder.
Way back in the 80s a dispatcher I was dating told me that very often they would see a little burst of activity right during shift changes - like burglar alarms going off. She said during the brief handoff period there was often a slight bit of confusion, or at least not 100% efficiency, and that “the bad guys” knew the schedule and would time their actions to take advantage of this.
I haven’t really noticed a burst of activity, but it’s certainly occured to me if I ever turned to a life of crime that I’d do stuff during that shift change, a couple of the departments we dispatch for definitely take their time with it and there’s often a pretty solid block of time where unless something serious is going down you’re not getting a quick police response.
Some of them handle it more efficiently than others, and the size of the town is a pretty big factor too. I’ve had more than a few callers complain about how long it’s taking because they live right by the station, but usually officers aren’t just hanging around at the station, they’re out on patrol and responding to incidents, shift change is pretty much the one time you’re going to find the station full of cops.
I heard from someone that works in a hospital that the ER gets weirder cases when the moon is full
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.
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.
IMO It’s some pretty dubious stuff, but you may find stuff about The Global Consciousness Project interesting.
Why is it that saying something bad will happen will make it happen, but saying something good will happen won’t?
Because god hates fucked up little sickos like me, apparently
If things are calm at work, not a lot is going on, don’t say QUIET. Never use the fucking Q word at all.
QUIET
Oh fuck they said it, HIT THE DECK!!!
…why
Because if you say quiet chances are it will not be quiet for much longer and in some situations become an emergency.
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.
I was a hockey player and a motocrosser. I don’t have blood running through my veins, they’re filled with superstition.
Whenever things seem to be going well, don’t let the universe know you’ve noticed, otherwise the universe will make things absolute shit to ‘balance it out’.
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
Absolutely nothing. I don’t believe in ghosts, magic, ju-ju, or karma.
Not even monsters under the bed? Because I mean, when you don’t check is when they show up!
There’s a word - starts with Q, ends with T. It is never to be uttered with regard to work conditions, ever.
Why the fuck are you talking about a quilt at work?
Well that’s the point, you’re not supposed to, no matter how well it’s crafted or warm it is.
Gotta keep your comfy q***ts on the d/l.
When I plan a trip and I somehow wake up late and for some reason I just feel so tired. I cancel the trip I take that as a sign something bad is about to happen. That saved me from two incidents. Personally I think it probably is just a coincidence.
Murphy’s Law says anything that can go wrong will go wrong. My more optimistic version is that the way to make things go right is to make it impossible for them not to. This just makes me proactive - for example, I assume that if I set a bag of groceries down next to a wall without thinking, it will lean away from the wall and tip over. So I just always give bags a half turn before I set them down, and Bingpot! they obediently lean against the wall and stay standing up. It might not exactly be a superstition because I don’t think mystical forces are involved. Rather I think a perverse part of our own brains subliminally plans these little accidents for amusement. But once you start using the conscious part of your brain to subvert the plan. those little snafus start not happening.
Similar principle applies to looking for things - say like I’m trying to find my tape measure. I’ve learned that if I can’t find it in a very brief time and consciously decide to do something different - like go to the store and get another tape measure - most often within a couple seconds I will look right at the tape measure, or whatever it is. Pretending isn’t enough - I have to sincerely decide to give up searching. My theory on this is that deep down I know where the object is, but part of me is enjoying the treasure hunt so it won’t let the knowledge rise to the surface. Once that part of me realizes the game is over, it stops hiding the information and I seemingly at random look right where the thing is.
Maybe believing in these little brain functions is the superstition.
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.
deleted by creator
