Can the State Outlaw Superstition?

After simmering for more than a decade, a debate over  superstition bubbled into full boil in India last month. Legislators in Maharashtra -- a huge state on India's west coast, which includes the nation's most populous city, Mumbai -- prepared to consider a bill that would  make superstition and "blind faith" criminal offenses.

The bill would outlaw not only animal sacrifices, supernatural cures, and healing practices not supported by science; it would also ban the sale of charms, potions, amulets, and other objects purporting to bring good luck or magic powers.

Maharashtra's anti-superstition effort dates back to 1999, when a similar measure was indefinitely tabled. The most recent bill has been languishing in the legislature since 2003. It finally passed in 2010, but requires approval of the central government to take effect. And that's what the current brouhaha is all about.

Supporters of the anti-superstition law see it as a public-health and consumer-protection issue. Opponents -- including many devout Hindus, Janists, and Muslims -- say the definition of  superstition seems too broad and would outlaw certain religious rituals.  The Indian press reported widespread public protests in Maharashtra in December, as the central government prepared to consider the law.

Besides showing that religion mixes with politics in places other than the United States, the proposed Indian law highlights a key question: what's the difference between religion and superstition? Between a rite of faith and an act of magic? Anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists have wrestled with the question for well over a century. To the Indian officials now struggling with it, I say: Lots of luck. You'll need it.

Meanwhile, where would you start to separate the two?

Luckyball

Moneyball came out on DVD last week. Like most really good sports movies, it's only superficially about sports. Based on the bestseller by Michael Lewis, it tells how the 2002 Oakland Athletics won 103 games (including a record-breaking 20 in a row) and their division title after losing their three best players to free agency.  Actually, the movie explores the tension between faith and reason, and how that tension affects the way we work and play.

Income inequality in Major League Baseball forced Oakland’s general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) to re-think his roster. How could small-market teams like the A’s compete with big-market teams like the New York Yankees? With three times the cash to spend, the Yanks could outbid the Oaklands of the league for the best athletes. An awkward computer geek fresh out of Yale (Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill) convinces Beane that the answer lies in finding undervalued players – guys who produce out of proportion to their salaries, as revealed by sophisticated statistical analyses. Instead of relying on subjective evaluations by his scouts, Beane decides to go with Brand’s cold, hard numbers.

The movie gets big yuks from the old-timers’ unscientific approach to judging players. The old talent scouts give a thumbs-up to a prospect with “a good face,” thumbs-down to ones with less attractive girlfriends. (“He can’t do better than her? Shows a lack of confidence.”)

But when the team goes for its record-setting 20th consecutive win, even the converted number-crunchers fall back into magical thinking. Beane, on the road to scout a prospect, gets a frantic call on his cell phone from Brand, who begs him to get back to his habitual place in the stadium – presumably, for luck. Beane thinks over his options for a second, and we can almost hear his inner voice saying, “Well, what the hell, it can’t hurt.” He turns his pickup around, and we next see him watching the game on TV somewhere in the bowels of Oakland stadium. And, in true Hollywood fashion, a player who was signed not for his power but for his on-base percentage wins the game with a walk-off homer.

Michael Lewis has said that his book explores how "an unscientific culture responds, or fails to respond, to the scientific method." To the book’s credit – and to the movie’s – it also shows how even the most science-minded folks tenaciously hold onto their superstitions, especially in a superstition-laden sport like baseball. Ironically, it's Brand the Science Guy who implores Beane to get back to Oakland for luck. Or maybe it's not ironic at all. After all, don't science and superstition spring from the same impulse -- the drive to find patterns in the past and present that will predict the future? Whether we find the patterns in numbers or in behavior, it doesn't matter. The drive is still there, hard-wired in us.

Moneyball shows people who put their faith in computers hedging their bets with good-luck rituals when, as the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski put it, the stakes are high and the outcome is uncertain. In other words, it shows people acting like people.

So, You Think You're Not Superstitious?

Would you call yourself superstitious? Before you answer, consider these questions honestly:

• Before you landed here and saw the photo above, did you notice that today is Friday the 13th? Or did you take note of the date several days ago? Have you mentioned it to anyone, even casually? And have you done anything special – or avoided doing something – to keep your luck today?

• Do you ever “knock wood”?

• Do you own an article of clothing or piece of jewelry that you consider lucky?

• Do you make a wish on your birthday? (Oh, you don't think of that as a superstition? Don’t pretend to claim that it’s “goal-setting.” Why else do you try to blow out the candles with one breath? Who says that we don't pick up superstitions from our culture?)

• Have you ever gone out of your way to do something – other than studying – before a big test in school, just for luck? 

• Do you hesitate to speak ill of another person, for fear that what you say might come true?

• Do you ever avoid talking with others about a plan or hope – say, a promising new job that you’ve applied for  – for fear of jinxing it?

Now, do you still think you’re immune to superstition?

Where You Stand
Only one in four Americans admits to being superstitious, when asked by Gallup pollsters on the telephone. In fact, nearly half of the people surveyed claim to hold no superstitious beliefs whatsoever.

Frankly, I doubt those numbers. Like any survey that relies solely on self-assessment, Gallup’s doesn’t just invite skepticism; it positively screams out for it. The very word “superstition” is so pejorative, few will fess up to it, especially to a stranger on the phone. Face it – would you admit to holding “a belief, based on fear and ignorance, that is inconsistent with the known laws of science or with what is generally considered true and rational”? That’s how Webster’s defines superstition.  You might as well confess that you’re crazy. If you answered the questions above honestly, I'd bet you doubt Gallup's conclusions, too.

When Numbers Get Serious

Chapter 9 tells of Cain's fascination with 45.

Since Herman Cain’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination flamed out last month, copies of his autobiography are probably headed for remainder tables in Dollar Stores all over the country. Where else would you expect to find a book called  This Is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House, given the journey's abrupt and ignominious end? Even at only a buck, the book isn't worth reading – that is, until you get to Chapter 9.  “‘Forty-Five’ – A Very Special Number” details Cain’s fascinating foray into numerology. As far as I know, no presidential candidate has ever revealed his peculiar superstitions so frankly and unabashedly.

Cain attaches special significance to 45, and he finds it everywhere. He had planned to become the 45th president of the United States in 2013, 45 years after graduating from college and 45 years after marrying his wife Gloria.  A Reader’s Digest article that significantly influenced his thinking was published in 1945. He gave memorable 645-word speeches. Another important speech was interrupted by applause 45 times. And so on.

“I’m not a devout numerologist, but my mathematical training does cause me recognize when numbers appear more than coincidentally,” he concludes on page 123.  (Cain majored in math at Morehouse College.) More than coincidence? Really?

Sigmund Freud didn't believe much in coincidences, either, especially when it came to numbers.“‘Chance numbers’ that come to mind always reveal a reason when subjected to analysis,” he wrote in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.  For instance, when a critic pointed out a small mistake in an article published by one of Freud's colleagues, the man dismissed the criticism by saying that readers could probably find "2,467 mistakes" if they looked hard enough. Freud wondered, why did his colleague say 2,467? After persistent questioning -- and some pretty convoluted mathematical calculations -- Freud concluded that  2,467 was related to the man's birthday and his older brother's, which revealed an unconscious and still unresolved sibling rivalry.

Not that Freud took much stock in numerology. The superstitious person "projects the motive to the outside, while I look for it myself," he wrote. "He explains the accident by an event which I trace to a thought." In Cain’s case, the good doctor wouldn’t need to look far to find the thought behind his obsession with 45. Cain himself zeroes in on the year of his birth (1945) as the source.

But what would Freud say about other apparently “chance numbers that come to mind” for Cain?  For instance, when confronted with stories from four women who claimed to have been sexually harassed by Cain and a fifth who alleged a 13-year affair with him, the candidate told CNN,  “You go through life and you believe that you have some people that are friends. And when someone that appears to be a friend turns around and concocts this story, you've got to question, the hundreds of thousands of people that I have met in my life? A hundred thousand people could possibly come out. It's probably an infinite number of people who could come forward with a story.”

A hundred thousand ? An infinite number? Applying Dr. Freud’s technique, let’s start with the magic number 45. 4 + 5 = 9. Nine, minus one gigantic ego, equals eight. If you knock 8 flat on its back you get   ∞ , the symbol for infinity. Hmmmm. Maybe that's it.

Seriously, though, another of Freud's observations offers a more likely explanation. Although Freud claimed that he wasn't superstitious, he did believe in omens. As he explains, ancient Romans would give up on a project before starting it if they tripped on the threshold on the way out the door. This behavior made perfect sense to Freud. The Romans' initial misstep was the physical manifestation of doubt; doubt sapped confidence and planted the seed of failure. By quitting before beginning under those circumstances, the Romans were "superior even to us unbelievers" and understood psychology better than even they knew. Or, at least, better than Herman Cain seems to have, when he decided to run for President.

Embracing the Almond

Every Christmas morning, my family eats oatmeal for breakfast -- not ordinary oatmeal, but "lucky" oatmeal. Buried inside the pot is a single almond. Working alone in the kitchen, I spoon the steamy cereal into bowls, one bowl for every member of the family, an equal heap in each. Then, everyone troops in, chooses a bowl, and sits down to eat. That's when the suspense begins. The person who finds the almond in his or her bowl will be blessed with luck all year, or so we say.

We've played find-the-almond every Christmas for as long as I can remember, ever since our kids were little. My wife and I shamelessly stole the ritual from a wonderfully whimsical children's book, Santa Claus and His Elves by Mauri Kunnas, now long out of print. (In the book, Santa and his elves fortify themselves with oatmeal with a hidden almond back at the North Pole after a long night of Christmas eve deliveries.) As young parents, we wanted to establish our own family traditions and add an extra dollop of magic to Christmas for our kids.  Since then, I've learned that the ritual seems to have Scandinavian roots. In some Norwegian or Swedish or Danish families, the almond-finder gets a marzipan pig or other special treat. And in others, everybody gets an almond in their bowls. This version sounds to me like Little League baseball, where even the losers get a trophy.

For the last couple of Christmas mornings, we've invited our good friends and neighbors, Tim and Denise and their two children, to share the almond tradition with us. We cook a huge pot of oatmeal, set the table with bananas, dried fruit, brown sugar, maple syrup, and other mix-ins, and all eight of us sit down to eat. Of course, our friends' attendance effectively doubles the odds that someone from my family will get the almond.  But that's OK. What decent friend wouldn't want to bestow a year's good luck on a guest?

And therein lies the problem: for the past two years, I -- the dismayed host -- have found the almond in my bowl.  The first time it happened, I apologized. When everyone good-naturedly busted my chops, saying maybe I'd snuck the almond into my own bowl, I tried to laugh it off. But when I spooned up the almond this year, I was downright embarrassed. "Look," I said, "after all the bad luck I've had this year, I'd prefer NOT to get the almond again. I don't want to go through another 12 months like 2011."

"Well, maybe you have to embrace the almond for it to work," said Denise. "Accept it. Don't feel sorry. Just look forward to better luck this year."

Good advice. So that's what I plan to do -- embrace my almond. After all, like all good traditions, the almond-in-the-oatmeal isn't about acquiring luck. It's about cherishing the luck we have. Eat enough bowls of oatmeal on enough Christmas mornings, and you'll eventually find the almond in yours. You'll eventually get your moment to feel special. Luck eventually comes to everyone, and repeating the ritual year after year reminds us of that. And, most important, the tradition brings loved ones together to share a breakfast on a special day, making the ordinary seem extraordinary. The real result is togetherness, and it comes from sharing the ritual, not in finding the random reward.

I've started this blog to explore exactly those kinds of questions: What peculiar things do we do to look for luck? What's the difference between superstition and ritual, and what roles do they play in our lives? What do they reveal about our character?

Join me in embracing the almond and thinking through those questions.