The World: Superstition not Reason.

From the Financial system to mathematical and scientific daily life beliefs.

“Mumbo Jumbo“. Yes, a historical character who somehow was transformed into an epithet, and it was through such a form that it entered our “modern society”. And in the nowadays popular consciousness; in the mind of the average person, it has become a “Monolithic” term: referring in general to “superstitions” of all sorts; something outside the boundaries of “Reason” and Rational thinking; therefore, out of Logic; and in time-wise, somehow pertaining to a distant past, long gone from us, the Civilly educated Modern humans of this complex globalized world.

Briefly, it is generally accepted as a “lower level of knowledge” that belongs to a more “primitive” sort of life. And to put it mildly, an “underdeveloped” lifestyle.

(It transpires that the said transformation (degradation) created and imposed a value too).

Progress

2. But let us stop drifting away from Reason (Mumbo Jumbo apparitions), and let us enter into some basic solid education: a basic economics example, from textbooks:

– IF all the account holders of any given bank would like to withdraw / take / get their money at the same time, no bank would ever be able to give it, for no bank really has that money (which the bank has already received).

Banking Fractional Reserve Lending System; a classic example.

Not that money does not exist, but it does not. It certainly exists in books but ………//

– “What exists and what does not exist”? A discussion which has long been overcome by humanity.

(luckily, mathematics is Rational Factual Objectivity).

Simply accept! Progress is inevitable: we pass from a less efficient state to a more efficient one, through accumulation of experience. So, either one accepts evolves (“accepts”) or one perishes together with the historically less intellectually developed Cultures.

Fortunately for Us, humanity as a lot, the existence or apparition of the Mumbo Jumbo coming to exert bloody and cruel justice among the people is not as harmful and destructive, at a global scale and to life itself, as the existence of such ruthless a device as the Banking system (one example only). And in this context, if we are to use the epithet in its general popular sense, perhaps no ancient, old-fashioned, local or regional superstition (cruel) has ever posed a threat at such a scale as many Rational modern intellectual products have done so.

In logical terms, somewhere and somehow The Particular was magically transformed into “The General” (as a threat) in order to impose an even bigger, more general (global) device, through institutionalising a particular body of knowledge/ thinking, which inserts such inversion of logic (particular into general; local into global) into generations, so as to produce a sort of logic zombies (very rational ones, indeed).

An example nearer to our daily, general social interaction, and which may tell us more about those numerous and intrinsic social Superstitions and beliefs about peoples and group of peoples (many are objective statistics, of course. Or perhaps, social superstitions materialise the Statistics?): the transformational story and History of The Mumbo Jumbo Itself.

(continues down)

Somehow, such connotation and denotation are not so different from those of race or class, etc. Namely: a fairly recent, modern notion.

The entire apparatus of knowledge upon which The World-Vision of the West was formed (derivations and values of which still exist in the education of nowadays) were put together during The Era of Reason, The Enlightenment Era: under colonial assumptions of Knowledge (or reasons?). As “Exploration” expanded and started producing recounts, discoveries, research, travel logs and assumptions on the World which they were discovering, the concept of Others was formed (the only rational one?).

The solid “belief” that such interpretations (inferred from their own reason, methods, values) were all a matter of complete certainty – thisis something else (The Reason/The God?). But certainly, an unlimited amount of Faith in one’s own methods is needed so as to derive a universal validity from them, and upon a world which, to the naked eye, clearly was not a product of certain universal reason or universal history. Hand-in-hand with the Fabrication of the Third World; the creation of Modern Poverty ……………..etc. and here we are anyhow: with a lot of Faith in Reason, Science and Mathematics. So it appears that the most human, autonomous and “universal” amongst all faculties: “The Reason”, which since Stoic times was conceived as the proper (and only) guide for humans (as instinct is for animal), which liberates the individual from false opinions, religion and superstition, and which should lead every aspect of human life and every field of the human investigation found its “Enlightenment” in its virile struggle against the absolutism of European religious dogma. Enlightened to the absolute global potence:

World Literature; World this and World that…; Mankind ….. Humankind! ……… Human species! (Which universal reason universally defined these for us all?)

(exist or not exist?) (particular into general and ………..?)

Savages might doubt about the existence of the obvious, while attributing existence to ……….Mumbo Jumbo.

The Modern, Progressive, Contemporary idea / image / concept of The Superstitious Savagemight somehow be traced back to what Nicholas Hudson says: why The South African Herders have a very important place in “world history”, for he affirms that the conceptualized image of the Hottentots was what formed the image which hitherto has travelled to our modern highly educated man: The Native. It even made it to the Third Edition of the Shortest Oxford Dictionary, it transpires: “a person of inferior intellect and culture” (Extract from: First People; Andrew Smith; 2022).

Well, Prejudices is “human nature”, isn’t it ?

(who defined “human nature”?)

As professor Vinay Lal from UCLA university argues: “there is a difference when a prejudice has been already Institutionalised. It is not anymore an innocent, naive, funny, common misconception at an horizontal, particular level.

(Then, the proportion, extend and depth seems to undergo one of those transformations.)

Logic games seem to be a favourite of our rational, scientifically educated man who must drive ahead the progress and amelioration of the human lot.

– So, is superstition simply an issue of denotation: Generally accepted only for a certain sort of people, applied to certain features (often times racial ones)which have been imposed to certain groups of people through human degradation and cultural humiliation?

– Or is Superstition a product of that common, inseparable and fundamental element of the abstract faculty of humans? A production of our abstract thinking (whatever the cause is: the language, soul, spirit, brain….), and thus it cannot be categorically eliminated from what humanity is?

Perhaps verisimilitude to what some anthropologists think: that both “religion” and art come from the same human artistic sense; that faculty which transforms reality / natural environment. Then art, religious beliefs, the notion of the supernatural and the spiritual, etc would be a product of such sense.

If it is then something inseparable from human faculties (thus from human societies at any stage or scale of organization), something shared among all humanity, has not then that historical conflict of knowledge been a problem about who imposes a certain superstition on who? Reduced then to a sort of Darwinian struggle whereby a so-called stronger, or more efficient, imposes itself. And by some kind of absolute or divine right can even annihilate the “less efficient” ones?

Then, strong & efficient would be a matter of universal definition, and related to a universal human condition, universal environment, universal………

(are we talking again about static, immoveable substances?).

And if reduced to such impulse, would not be then a Colonial Fabrication (out of colonial times, still) which has everything to do with appropriation and extraction of resources & wealth, and nothing to do with a more accurate or efficient way of producing human knowledge of the world which we all share, and which could guide humanity into a better one? For its methodology (racial representation too) has proven to produce the highest civilizing way?

Would then reason and its historical consequent: “science” be another superstition (one more head of the chimera) which results are to be seen as simply accepted arguments at this point of history which we live now; but not yet something with the level of accuracy and certainty which science and its beneficiaries claim to have (as how the Church before)?

Science could then be doubted in the same manner as any other superstition has been. For, if “to-prove” something is what humans should endeavor; and upon “proven things” mankind must submit and accept; there would be countless examples when science has proven categories such as the “criminal classes”; the inferiority of certain physical features; or also how harmful a product is for the beneifts of a certain corporation “human consumption”, etc, etc.

Furthermore, could science not be accused of backwardness and tardiness in producing trustworthy, reliable and relatively more accurate knowledge about the nearest things to us? How could reason tell us that some things and some people were something that now science is telling us they were/are not? But actually, those people were the wise, knowledgeable and rightful people who they themselves always felt to be, before Reason and Science. (like the discovery of continents before the discovery. Don’t ask more about moveable ……….).

(if humans were linear; but it was only discovered a few centuries ago)

What was it, the baptism: that which could change the social luck, esteem and even status of a person in Medieval Minded society? Superior, Modern Science has not a single bit of that power as to produce such a rectifying effect in the consciousness of their own scientific people, not to say among the highly educated people of our globalized world. It appears that in our time of superior scientific knowledge, the privilege of knowing, discovering and somehow and in some manner inverting some zombifying logic, falls into the hands of the dis-educated person. Perhaps the ones who have fallen from the grace of the almighty global paradigm and structure.