Superstitions, Made up Beliefs, and other things that make us Crazy

[Aranian]

Originally posted by Never
First, I'll give a simple definition of what these words mean to me.
Fate: That which inevitably happens.
Free Will: The power of personal self-determination.

All these ideas are cosmetic however, they are just a rationalization of what Fate as already decided will happen.

Woah, your definition for fate and your explanation of it are at odds. You describe fate as a being/god that takes two endpoints, a start, a finish, and brings them together. In the process it forces the human mind - a random variable in the equation to take on a set value. That is, compelling a person to make a particular decision.

Whereas a decision is simply the result of nervous stimuli and electrical signals in the brain.

My own perception of fate is that from an all-knowing point of view, it was predetermined that you would make any particular decision to solve a problem before the dilema was ever introduced. The word 'before' and use of past tense in this context is a misnomer because the predetermination always was so and not decided at any conceivable point in time since the beginning of the universe...unless you believe in divine intervention which would be considered a random. To my mind, events, happenings and all are a complicated domino effect. My definition for the word 'fate' is pretty much synonymous to the 'future'.
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[Adoratrice]

How weird is this?? I swear just this morning I was pondering whether or not to start my first thread on this EXACT topic!! A little history on why...when my daughter was 6 , I was walking her to school & we were running late. She saw a patch of clover & wanted t stop and look for 4 leafed ones, I , being a typical mother said "Not right now, you can't find one that fast"(when not running late I am very supportive of my children LOL)anyway, her being 6 she insisted ...she bent down and just picked one...I'll be damned if it didn't have 4 leaves! I was a bit surprised so we started looking in the patch ...when we were done we had found 10 of them...we were late to school & I learned a big lesson.(another thread perhaps)At this time in our lives we were having a lot of problems...money etc. I laminated the clovers 5 to a strip & hung them on the fridge....shortly after, my hubby got hired on a in his dream job,we bought a great house, my youngest daughter got hit by a car*seriously* and didn't have a scrath on her.The list of good things goes on & on....for 5 years. 6 months ago things started going down hill money became tight again , oldest daughter needed surgery on her ears,My husband who is 29 & in perfect health with no family history HAD A STROKE!(fully recovered thank you)then it hit me about 2 weeks ago that one strip of clovers was missing....I looked everywhere & finally found them under the fridge. I promtly hung them back on the front...since then ...I found a great job, we found out that we were due to receive an inheritance,what we thought was a major car problem turned out to be minor...on & on.I had no intentions of rambling on like this. I'm sure this is more info than you wanted but it is so easy to drone when nobody can shut you up ! LOL . Lasher will have my ass for sure, I'm an easy target
Oh I almost forgot.....YES I BELIEVE!!!

[Edited by Adoratrice on 08-16-2000 at 10:29 PM]

 

[Slut_boy]

That's a solid reply Cheyenne, but whatever happened to the idea that justice ought to be proportional. Is the damage to a couple of ships in a port in proportion to the destruction of two entire cities? I suppose it depends on which side of the war you stand.

 

[Weird Harold]

That's a solid reply Cheyenne, but whatever happened to the idea that justice ought to be proportional. Is the damage to a couple of ships in a port in proportion to the destruction of two entire cities? I suppose it depends on which side of the war you stand.

I agree with Cheyenne that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the end of the loop rather than the beginning. From the standpoint of an American, Pearl Harbor was just one bit of the karma that built up to the atomic bombs.

Other incidents added to the japanese karma. The Rape of Nanking, The Bataan Death March, The slave labor on the railroad immortalized in the "Bridge on the River Kwai", and many other acts of inhumanity lead to the decision to save lives on all sides by sacrificing Hiroshima.

As far as personal Karma is concerned, I'm a firm believer in random acts of kindness that will eventually work their way back to me.

Otherwise, I'm not particulary superstitious. Many of the important things in my life have involved the number thirteen, and I've sufferred no "bad luck" because of the association. (Well except for being registered with Draft Board number 13 during Vietnam. <G> and even that wasn't bad luck, as I was already in Vietnam when I got my draft notice.)

 

[RisiaSkye]

Defining Fate

Is it possible that "fate" is nothing more than that "Opportunity Knocking" that we've heard so much about? Perhaps it doesn't imply predestination as much as it suggests that all of the decisions we make have repercussions which are not immediately apparent. Sometimes those repercussions fit the pattern of "karma" or "payback"; sometimes we are given the chance to re-make a decision at a later time, with different results.

Case in point: My husband and I met in the 9th grade, when his mother was my kid sister's fourth grade teacher. We spent a night dancing together at a high school thing, and really hit it off. He called me up to ask me out, but my parents split up THAT WEEKEND, and we moved away. I never expected to see him again. However, four and a half years later (and several hundred miles away) he was randomly assigned to be the roommate of a friend of mine in a college dorm. Now, if my parents had not split up at that time, if I had gone to the Eastern college that I considered, if he had gone to a different college, etc. etc. we wouldn't have had the chance to meet again. Or would we?

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

Excellent post, Weird Harold. You saved me a long post detailing the war atrocities of the Japanese in World War II and the years preceding it. As you know, (and Slut-boy should) the Japanese were every bit as savage and murderous as the Germans were, but were less discriminating in whom they killed. For some reason, history considers the killing of millions of people for their religion as worse than the rather indiscrimate killing done by the Japanese.

If you ask me, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are far better evidence in support of karma than against it.

[Edited by Oliver Clozoff on 08-17-2000 at 03:46 AM]

 

[Firesprite]

Tempting Fate

I tend to "tempt fate" and havn't (thus far) had any problems with it. I have opened umbrellas inside, walked under ladders, have no problem with 13, black cats or shoes on the table. I havn't broken any mirrors yet (although a rather large one fell off my wall and broke when I wasn't home)

I don't talk to furniture or plants and my car doesn't have a name (unless referring to it as "the beast" counts)

I think the only odd thing that I do is I get seriously put out when people put rubbish in my ashtray. ashtrays are for ash and butts, not your bubble gum!

Then again.. I do believe in Karma.. I don't wait around to see people get whats coming to them, but I feel quite reasurred that they probably will get what went around

Oh.. and I'm still not sure about things happening in threes.. I think its a fluke..

 

[April]

That's a great story, Adoratrice. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?

 

[Adoratrice]

It does....I can't even come close to matching the deepness of the above posts but do you think it is possible to transfer energy to an inanimate object? make something true because we believe it to be?...as far as fate goes I think most things that have happened in your adult life (except life & death) can be traced back to a choice you have made at some point, most people hate this concept because it makes them acountable.....you cannot control others actions or reactions ( you might influence them but not control). I also believe that some things were meant to be and many occurrences in our lives are lessons in disguise.

 

[Never]

Woah, your definition for fate and your explanation of it are at odds. You describe fate as a being/god that takes two endpoints, a start, a finish, and brings them together. In the process it forces the human mind - a random variable in the equation to take on a set value. That is, compelling a person to make a particular decision.

Whereas a decision is simply the result of nervous stimuli and electrical signals in the brain.
.
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If you would be so kind, please tell me how my definition of fate argues with itself. I'm thinking that's what you meant to do but I hardly find my definition of fate and your definition of a decision mutually exclusive.

In addition, is that my little Signature at the end of your post? Bad Aranian, bad, bad Aranian.

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That is so Trademark infringement, isn't it?

 

[Slut_boy]

Perhaps I am missing something here: I always thought that karma was a spiritual concept embracing principles of 'natural justice' based on the 'cause and effect' idea. But it seems to me that we are speaking here of a different set of justice norms all together - yours are apparently not inherently spiritual but postively determined by men and what they want to declare their justice to be.

The problem always, I fear when men determine justice in times of war, is that invariably the victor judges ex post facto the vanquished - often for the sake of creating the jurisprudence to redeem his own actions - no matter how atrocious. It seems to me that you are trying to use this same logic to justify the massive inhumanity inflicted upon the innocent women and children of the Oriental cities. But then don't call it karma, because is not a human commodity.

Did I come on a little strong? Sorry, I am already onto my fourth glass of red wine. Dinner is almost ready - it's a vegetarian lasagna - I don't eat meat because I want to avoid to karma that goes with it.

 

[Never]

Slut_boy has a point there. Neither of these cities were military bases; they were highly populated areas for citizens, women, children, elderly, and a slew of people who had never killed Americans. Their bombing was an all too human act of vengeance not some divinely conjured justice.

 

[Aranian]

The history books are written by the victors.

However, I disagree with the sentiment that the bombings were an act of vengeance rather than calculated military strategy. The thought process behind the use of the bombs was well reasoned out.

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/docs/1957/570529-chronology.html

The Japanese were given a final warning before the first bomb was dropped. Even after the annihilation of one of their cities, they still did not surrender. Three days later the second bomb was dropped. Taking into account the Japanese resolve to die fighting, a land invasion would probably have cost many more hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.

 

[Weird Harold]

Perhaps I am missing something here: I always thought that karma was a spiritual concept embracing principles of 'natural justice' based on the 'cause and effect' idea. But it seems to me that we are speaking here of a different set of justice norms all together - yours are apparently not inherently spiritual but postively determined by men and what they want to declare their justice to be.

I'm sure that you probably have a better grasp on the definition of Karma than I do. However, I feel that just because karma is "divine retribution" doesn't preclude it from using men or nations as it's agent in "restoring the balance."

The problem always, I fear when men determine justice in times of war, is that invariably the victor judges ex post facto the vanquished - often for the sake of creating the jurisprudence to redeem his own actions - no matter how atrocious.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki undoubtedly incurred a karmic debt on the US as well as being a result of the "bad karma" of the Japanese. Nothing is as simple as the victor's history books make it seem.

I don't eat meat because I want to avoid to karma that goes with it.

I think there are possibly different kinds of karma. for lack of better way of explaining things.) Your restraint in not eating meat is a personal thing, and affects your personal karma.

Nations, corporations, and other groups of people have an existance above or beyond the sum of the people who make up the group. I think karma applies to such groups separately from the individual karma of their components parts.

Aranian,
The second bomb was probably not necessary. The reason the Japanese didn't surrender immediately after Hiroshima is because they didn't know what happened. All they really knew, was all communications with Hiroshima were lost. Byt he time of the second bomb, they were just barely figuring out that Hiroshima had been destroyed by the enemy and not some natural disaster or industrial accident.

Never,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just as valid a military target as any other Japanese city. Every city in Japan had some sort of war industry, and every person in Japan was training to repel the planned invasion.

The people there were no more guilty or innocent than the people of Tokyo or Dresden who were fire bombed. A civil war General said "War is Hell, boys." 'Total War' is a nasty and brutal business that doesn't deal with 'trivial things' like what today is called "collateral damage."

"precision bombing" in WWII meant being able to hit the right city. Decisions were made then that are considered barbaric by modern standards because the technology to allow more "humane" decisons didn't exist. The video card in your computer has over a thousand times the computing ability and memory than all of the computers in the world in 1945. Hell, the four function calculator you use for your checkbook has more computing power than every computer in the world in 1945. (all two of them.)

Back on topic:
I've always named my cars, and most of my computers. I talk to them, pleading and cursing as seems appropriate at the time.

 

[Always]

remember the threefold law ye should,
three times bad, three times good


i'm not superstitious, really, Aerdrie Faenya is a good friend of mine, Tymora my buddy, and ya can't forgte Hanali... or my crazy familiars... Dragon, a cat from the para~elemental place of ice, and Silky, a normal (crazy, but normal) Tiffany cat. Silvia left... But angerspark is still here! okay, i'll shut up now... NOT!!! *grins*

superstitons? i stand under ladders on purpose, love to walk around in the house with an umbrella, and purposefully jumped on cracks in middle school, trying to break my mother's back (she's a bitch...). but they never really work, and all cats are cool. I don't follow superstitions but I have friends who are ghosts... i've astrally traveled, visited different planes, and tried herbal enlightenement, bu for some reason i'm not superstitious. does that make me even crazier than you already think i am by having read this? *grins* you see? teenagers can do philosophy!!

oh, yeah, and btw, once, at my friend's birthday party, i broke a mirror...

[Edited by Shila on 08-17-2000 at 03:05 PM]

 

[Cheyenne]

Thanks, Weird Harold. You pretty much took the words right out of my mouth. My point of view is that of an American who was born well after the war ended, but who grew up listening to my family discuss the effects of the war. I also have relatives in Germany and have listened to their stories of what it was like to live through the war. And my childhood best friend's parents were Greek Jews and were survivors of a German death camp, complete with numbers tatooed on their arms. I listened to their stories, too.

I truly do believe the bombings were the end of the loop, not the beginning. I expected a few responses when I posted that, too. Glad to see I wasn't disappointed.

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

Slut-boy, your arguments concerning karma are well-taken. But as I don't even accept the idea of karma to begin with, I won't even begin to argue that the dropping of atomic bombs was karmic retribution or not.

What I will argue, though, is that for all the horror and destruction created by those bombs, they saved lives. Allied intelligence calculated that an invasion of the Japanese home islands to end the war would have cost 400,000 to one million American lives. (As it was, America only lost 325,000 men in all of WWII combined in Europe, Africa, and the South Pacific over 4 years of fighting). And they couldn't even estimate the number the Japanese would have lost in an invasion, considering that the Japanese people had been so brainwashed by their leaders into believing the inhumanity of their American opponents that they almost never surrendered, but instead killing themselves and even their own children first. Women and children literally threw themselves off cliffs. Men laid on grenades.

So, an invasion would have been perhaps the costliest single invasion in world history, and short of an invasion the use of atomic weapons was the only way the fanatical Japanese military that ruled the country was going to agree to end the war. I don't recall the exact figures of Japanese losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I know it was well under 200,000 lives.

The question remains, of course, whether it is ethical to kill hundreds of thousands of people, especially civilians, to spare the lives of your own soldiers. Can it be right to base the correct decision on a simple mathematical formula of lives to be lost? I can honestly understand arguments for and against it, but lives lost and saved seem to be the best measure of right and wrong to me.

I think it's far too easy to sit here in 2000 and criticize the actions of the American government in using its best possible means of ending what was the bloodiest confict in the human history. Had we not used the atomic bombs and 500,000 American men had died (in addition to at least as many Japanese), there would be people arguing (justifiably) that it was immoral not to use atomic weapons and by doing so, shorten the war.

And as for the issue of the immorality of atomic weapons themselves, what is more immoral about a single bomb which splits atoms of uranium or plutonium than thousands of separate bombs of TNT? More people died in the first night of the fire-bombing of Tokyo in April of 1945 than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And it's hard to argue for a more immoral nation than Imperial Japan (possibly excluding Nazi Germany). Japanese surgeons used healthy Korean and Chinese civilians to practice surgical procedures and would simply let the "patients" die afterwards. They often wouldn't even sterilize their instruments because they simply didn't care whether the person died of infection or not. They tested chemical weapons on captured Chinese cities. I could go on and on, but this post is getting too long already.

My major point is this: war is the absolute most violent and terrible part of human existence. The more just of two warring nations is still committing horrendous acts of murder. War is never going to be just. The Japanese started the war (even before the Germans). America ended it as quickly and painlessly as it could. Sadly, I think that's as close to morally right as we're going to get in modern warfare.

By the way, have you discovered the real cause of AIDS yet?



[Edited by Oliver Clozoff on 08-17-2000 at 09:48 PM]

 

[Slut_boy]

Wow, there are very informed opinions operating on this thread. I am not American and because of that, I lack the nexus to truly feel the emotion, as some of you do. Perhaps my lack of subjectivity gives me the perspective to see that chapter of history differently. I am not saying that objectivity and the benefit of arm-chair reasoning excuse my ruthless moral judgement of America (and by the way it's now tomorrow morning and the wine has been replaced with coffee), only that I hope not to give you the impression that I am unable to relate to emotional responses. I come from a place with a terrible history of conflict and human rights violations.

My involvement in the war crimes tribunals (in respect iof the former Yugoslavia) have forced me to see how the aftermath of atrocities very often remain for just as long as the victory medals (like those that celebrate the Enola Gay). This is not a sermon on morality, just an acknowlegement that I am grateful to have shared in the views of people like Oliver, Cheyenne, Aranian, and Never - even though we may disagree. And then of course, WH. Harold, I don't think that I have ever really told you how much respect I have for your opinion - I do.

 

[Weird Harold]

I am not American and because of that, I lack the nexus to truly feel the emotion, as some of you do. Perhaps my lack of subjectivity gives me the perspective to see that chapter of history differently.

I'm a baby-boomer, and also a Vietnam veteran with over 20 years military service. I suppose that gives me a militaristic world view to some extent. I know it has given me an interest in military history.

No one can remain totally objective about the horrors of war. No matter how they try, their upbringing and personal beliefs are going to get involved.

One thing I do know, both objectively and subjectively, is that war is misunderstood by almost everyone. the reality of what the military can accomplish is vastly different than what people think it can accomplish.

During the buildup to the Gulf War, a radio talk show host here in the US was advocating that the first units on the ground go against ten to one odds immediately rather than wait for sufficient numbers to have a cahnce of success. His jingoist stance was "An American soldier is worth a hundred of any other nation's soldiers." It's attitudes like his that get soldiers killed.

War often comes down to a cold calculation of "how many deaths are required to accomplish our objective?" It's a cold and inhumane way of thinking. However, when politicians let things get to the point where force is the only viable option, then things have gotten inhumane and cold calculation is the only logical way to think.

My involvement in the war crimes tribunals (in respect iof the former Yugoslavia) have forced me to see how the aftermath of atrocities very often remain for just as long as the victory medals (like those that celebrate the Enola Gay).

I cannot comprehend the hatred based on things that happened 700 to 1000 years ago that drives the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia and other places. I do however comprehend the fact that until someone sticks a gun in a hatemonger's face and says "STOP!", the madness and atrocities will go on and on. Sometimes, the only way to deal with hatemongers and bullies is to be a bigger bully than they are.

To my mind, to discuss and and negotiate with someone while they are killing and raping innocents is madness of the same degree as killing them yourself. If someone is going to die, it should be the hatemongers instead of the innocents.

And then of course, WH. Harold, I don't think that I have ever really told you how much respect I have for your opinion - I do.

I thank you for the compliment. I try my best to be relevant and comprehensible. It appears that I sometimes even succeed. <G>

 

[Always]

Harold... you've got a point. Nobody's actually gonna stop the bullshit until someone tries to kill 'em. Mayb that's what it takes.... And that is why the state won't let me get my sniper rifle. *grins* there is no beginning or end of the loop... i mean, it's a loop! it just keeps going, better and better (or worse and worse) each time around. i think, at least.

 

[SimplySouthern]

The problem always, I fear when men determine justice in times of war, is that invariably the victor judges ex post facto the vanquished - often for the sake of creating the jurisprudence to redeem his own actions - no matter how atrocious. It seems to me that you are trying to use this same logic to justify the massive inhumanity inflicted upon the innocent women and children of the Oriental cities. But then don't call it karma, because is not a human commodity.

Well, good golly isn't that paragraph just "chock-full" of big smart-people words? (thank god Il ike that)

Simply put, I am of the opinion that in matters of justification...the Jusifier, if you will, always slants things in his/her favor. That's human nature...call it what you like.

 

[Jade]

Hot damn!

I have just spent the last 30 min. or so reading over this thread... seems as if I got all the philosophers to post on this particular topic... I LOVE it... I am so intrigued... I want to go and address each and every one of your brilliant minds... but my brain is SO fried right now...
However, this was a pretty good remedy (not "cure") for the "finals sucked my ass" blues and I thank you.. all of you who contributed.

OH! For all you people who mentioned their cars being named and all that... that does NOT count! Why you ask? B/c cars really DO have feelings... just ask Marvin (he is outside in the heat right now, poor thing... I will have to kiss him in the morning to make up for it so he doesn't hate me too much.............)

 

[Carl East]

Re: Hot damn!

OH! For all you people who mentioned their cars being named and all that... that does NOT count! Why you ask? B/c cars really DO have feelings... just ask Marvin (he is outside in the heat right now, poor thing... I will have to kiss him in the morning to make up for it so he doesn't hate me too much.............)

Let me get this straight Jade, you kiss your car, I'm worried about you, you need to get out more. Kissing should be fun, and involve two sets of lips.lol

Carl.

 

[Jade]

Re: Re: Hot damn!

OH! For all you people who mentioned their cars being named and all that... that does NOT count! Why you ask? B/c cars really DO have feelings... just ask Marvin (he is outside in the heat right now, poor thing... I will have to kiss him in the morning to make up for it so he doesn't hate me too much.............)

Let me get this straight Jade, you kiss your car, I'm worried about you, you need to get out more. Kissing should be fun, and involve two sets of lips.lol

Carl.

Well, actually, I kiss my hand and then put my hand on the dashboard... do I still need help Carl? If so... what would you suggest for my therapy?

 

[Carl East]

Re: Re: Re: Hot damn!

[/B]

Well, actually, I kiss my hand and then put my hand on the dashboard... do I still need help Carl? If so... what would you suggest for my therapy?

[/B][/QUOTE]


I prescribe a good dose of loving, followed by some tender moments, then if you're up to it, another good dose of loving.lol

Carl.