Confidence And The Paranormal

There are many people in my life who hold magical beliefs. These range from the idea that there is a God in Heaven who is watching over them down to the more mundane, such as those who become physically uncomfortable when I spill salt on the table and refuse to throw a pinch of it over my shoulder. Believe me, kids, that’s a fun one. When you find someone who has that superstition, it can be hours of good times as they wait for some awful thing to happen to you as a result of this salt spill.

Aside from the religious belief in God, one of the most common magical thinks that I encounter is the belief in ghosts. It’s an area I’ve never personally experienced, so I’ve never had an option but to take the word of those who have actually investigated these sorts of claims, and the sources I’ve encountered that I consider to be valid have without fail found the claims to be either purposely faked or explained away. I do not say that there cannot be such thing as ghosts, simply that I’ve never seen reason to believe in them. Much like God, if someone presented me with some kind of valid proof, I’d have no choice but to accept it until such time as it was disproved.

This all ties to an interesting article at Neurologica today entitled Superstitions – Not All Bad? that I thought I would share. The short and skinny of the article is that it talks about a variety of studies that all lead to the idea that superstitions in general are, at least in my own way of interpreting the article, a means for us to bolster our confidence. By performing the superstition, we are mentally taking control of a situation instead of leaving things in the less-than-capable hands of the cosmos.

One of the articles Dr. Novella references in particular got me to thinking. It’s an abstract on PubMed of some research from 2006 that “shows that people with a history of physical abuse as children are more likely to believe in the paranormal, especially those beliefs that provide a sense of control, like ESP and witchcraft”. This intrigues me quite a bit, and I can’t help but wonder about other correlations.

The people I know who are most religious are the ones who most feel, at least from my outsider-looking-in perspective, like things are stacked against them. They come from difficult backgrounds, often either physically or mentally abusive, and have had many people in their lives shatter their confidence in themselves. In my own experience, my religious affiliation essentially ended when I became old enough to make my way confidently in the world. Before that, when I was a child and needed the perpetual attention of my parents to survive, God was a parent by proxy, there for me when I needed him to keep me safe, but as I aged and grew in my confidence, it became less and less that I felt myself turning to my God to keep me safe, and more to my own wits. I would sometimes swing back towards the religious during my questioning days whenever things got difficult, but eventually it all faded.

Everyone that I have met who claims to have been in the presence of ghosts has what I would lump into one of two types of experiences. The first, the benevolent spirit who is there to maintain the their safety. The second, the malevolent spirit present to mess things up for the individual, and who seems to always be removed from their life through some sort of personal confrontation, ranging from standing up to the ghost and scaring it off or releasing it to some manner of exorcism. Both of these processes are essentially expressions of confidence, and as such fit the pattern nicely.

This is all just my own experience and guess-work, and I’m not saying I’m right about any of this. Testimonial evidence even from myself is hardly enough to draw a legitimate conclusion on anything. But I found it an interesting concept. As an adult, I’ve had difficulty understanding why people still feel they need God to keep them safe and have a plan for them. But I do not absolutely rule out anything, and those people in my life who hold these (as I see them) magical beliefs are not the objects of my scorn and derision, they’re just people who see the world differently than I do.

Okay, fine. Sometimes I tease them. But it’s just teasing.

Jim