Chaosforge Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: Matt_S on November 15, 2012, 20:07
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Yep, it's that time again. Time for another one of (and the last of) my fieldwork assignments for my folklore class.
Hi, my name is Matthew Sullivan. I am soliciting this material for use in my folklore class. It is part of an assigned project on folklore field work. Your name, relationship to me, and basic contact information will appear on the materials I submit to the instructor, Prof. Maria Carlson (mcarlson (at) ku.edu) or Prof. Jonathan Perkins (jperkins (at) ku.edu), but no other use will be made of this material. These materials will be returned to me after the assignment has been graded. You may contact the instructor if you have concerns or questions.
So now, what is the official definition of a superstition? It is the oral lore about magical belief and practice. That's kind of an obscure way to put it, but I guess that's academia for you. It's pretty much exactly what you think it is. As an addendum, such lore often is inconsistent with the known laws of science.
In addition to whatever superstition you kind fellows give me, I'll need the following from you:
Name
E-mail (or other preferred contact info)
Profession
Level of Education
Cultural origin of the superstition (location of where you heard it, or maybe it's a legend associated with a certain profession, etc.)
And this time there's some optional questions that you can choose to answer to help my analysis:
How/where did you learn this superstition?
What do you think the superstition means? Why do you think it arose?
Do you act on this superstition? Are you generally a superstitious person?
*insert other useful information about superstition here*
If you'd like to contribute a superstition, you can PM it to me or post it here. I need a total of 12 different superstitions from 12 different people, but feel free to send multiple superstitions in case of duplicates. I was delayed in starting my meatspace superstition collecting due to illness, so any contributions from you guys would be greatly appreciated :) Any culture, any superstition!
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*chirp chirp* :/
I'd really appreciate anything.
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People these days still have superstitions?
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Possibly. Like how each Alternate Version of Windows Suck, or Apple's Products Are Sexy, or Android Is Fragmented.
They are generally irrational but serve as some form of explanation of something people have observed. =P
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Well, I'm dabbling a bit in all kinds of esoteric stuff... tarot, astrology, I Ching etc. The thing is, I usually don't assign any supernatural explanations to these - I'm interested in those partly because it's fun, and more importantly, because I think they work to some extent by allowing you to connect with your subconscious. The way I see it, the subconsciousness is able to put together pretty accurate theories about whichever question you might have, from body language and such when doing it for somebody else, and from much bigger source when the question is about my own life. The divination is usually pretty general, but I tend to pick some meaning which I see in it.
Interestingly, I tend to have more success the more I'm sceptical of the means. Then now and then, I make so precise divination that I'm unable to explain it by what I just wrote above, neither by pure luck and this unability to rationalize it makes me throw the cards or whatever away and stop using them for a couple of years, since I don't really want to live in a world where such things are possible.
One such occasion was when I told my friend, based on reading his palm, that he had a twin brother or sister who died when he was born. We laughed it off, but then two years later he told me that he just found out that it was true. I'm still pretty creeped out by that.
So anyway... not sure if this helps =)
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People these days still have superstitions?
As an anthropologist-in-making, I can tell you that yes. As many as ever. Superstitions is what we call them when we no longer abide by them :P
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People these days still have superstitions?
As somebody who used to know the poster above I can tell you that yes, people love clinging to superstition.
@Matt_S: I'll try to fetch some analysis as soon as I hoard some spare time. The results may... vary.
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As somebody who used to know the poster above I can tell you that yes, people love clinging to superstition.
As a moderator of this board, even if rather an inactive one, I would like to remind you that insinuations are not in best tone, better left for PMs and certainly eligible to get them redtexted next time they pop up.
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As a moderator of this board, even if rather an inactive one, I would like to remind you that insinuations are not in best tone, better left for PMs and certainly eligible to get them redtexted next time they pop up.
Which proves the thesis directly.
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Silhar, would you kindly stop with the jabs? They're neither subtle nor nice.
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Roger that.