Wednesday, November 07, 2007
We live in a secular society, where spiritual beliefs a personal choice and more or less a private matter. The University of Toronto constitutes a pretty enlightened community - scientists, engineers, and philosphers - where the accepted and debated truths are likely expected to be based in reason and logic. So we're all steeping in a culture of rationality, exploring abstract thought, and more or less keeping religion on the back burner. But still, we shouldn't take for granted that even the most enlightened of students take part in a culture with some pretty illogical supernatural beliefs to explain our surroundings.
Take the concept of luck, for instance. I was really suprised when last year in lecture, Holly Wardlow paralleled luck to an indigenous concept of mana. Its something I'd completely taken for granted. We believe in as luck something you can actually possess in quantities - You can have lot of luck, or just a little; there are different kinds of luck - good and bad; you can do things to make you more lucky, carry charms, perform rituals. Even the firmest of atheists has probably shrugged off a shitty situation in the past; write it off as bad luck and for some reason feel completely justified about the outcome.
A proponent of causation might tell you that you finding 5 bucks on the sidewalk was determined at the big bang, but that's no fun because its beyond our control. We can appeal to luck in the same way we can pray to a God, by simply crossing our fingers. I'm gonna propose that luck is the simplest most pervasive response to the Remainder in our society.
Take the concept of luck, for instance. I was really suprised when last year in lecture, Holly Wardlow paralleled luck to an indigenous concept of mana. Its something I'd completely taken for granted. We believe in as luck something you can actually possess in quantities - You can have lot of luck, or just a little; there are different kinds of luck - good and bad; you can do things to make you more lucky, carry charms, perform rituals. Even the firmest of atheists has probably shrugged off a shitty situation in the past; write it off as bad luck and for some reason feel completely justified about the outcome.
A proponent of causation might tell you that you finding 5 bucks on the sidewalk was determined at the big bang, but that's no fun because its beyond our control. We can appeal to luck in the same way we can pray to a God, by simply crossing our fingers. I'm gonna propose that luck is the simplest most pervasive response to the Remainder in our society.
# posted by sam.butler @ 4:29 PM 
