Superstitions
Superstition is derived from Old French or Latin, from “super” which means over and “stare” that is to stand, perhaps from the notion of standing over something in awe. But this definition has been altered over the years and awe has somewhat changed to fear. Now superstition is seen as a fear of the unknown often associated with religion and blind faith. And sometimes this hear can take very dark turns. For example, in India, it is considered unlucky if a black cat crosses the road in front of your car. Now, different people have different ways to tackle this “bad luck”. You can either get out of the car, spit on the road and keep driving, which is a harmless way of evading the bad luck, or you can choose to use a more gruesome way and drive over the poor animal. I honestly don’t think that it is fair to take a life just to complete your baseless rituals.
However, people have used the idea of superstitions to create good things. There had been a lot of accidents that used to happen on the hilly regions of Himachal Pradesh, India because people did not slow down near the sharp turns. So, the government built temples on the areas with these sharp turns, and this compelled people to slow down in order to pay their respect to the Gods. I think that this was a very clever trick used by the government to stop numerous fatal accidents, even if it used religious superstition as a means. On the other hand, when the government wanted to take down these temples, the people refused to let that happen because it was disrespectful to the Gods. Personally, I feel like it is ok to believe some superstitions as it is the same thing as believing in luck or even karma. But this shouldn’t reach a level where it governs your whole life to a point where you obsess over it.
