Superstition

The most captivating superstitions are the specific mythologies that inform any contemporary world-view - they are always wrong, usually look ridiculous in retrospect, and are the hardest to identify and view for what they are. What little insight we can gain into the actual, really human condition is rooted in the language of poetry - analogic and metaphoric - rather than syllogism; those insights are often obscured by the rigidity of dominant thought-forms. Do we know where myth ends and truth begins? Of course not: anyone who tells you they do is either a liar or under extraordinary self-delusion. I'll give you a very honest opinion: I don't think there is a time in history that has been so thoroughly dominated by groundless and ignorant opinions marching under the banner of certainty and absolutism as we have before us now. Whatever creative, imaginative, and probing flashes of insight or even brilliance we've had as a collective species about ourselves in the past, we seem to be locked in a deep and abiding period of regression marked by furious self-congratulation and mostly pointless activities. But as Thomas Carlyle noted, "Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight."