This post by my spouse and other current events in the lives of my family members have spurred a frustrating line of reasoning in my mind today. When we don't have a clue what's going on, when we have no means of influencing what happens to us (with regard to a particular desired objective) the human brain has a funny tendency--it tries to draw cause/effect relationships between utterly unrelated factors (which will either help or hinder the progress of the objective).
To expand off of Ben's example, our attempts to fake out the bus gods were unsuccessful nearly all of the time, but the one or two occasions when walking away from the stop actually did coincide with the bus arriving reinforced the notion that it was worth a shot. We probably would carry on trying our pointless summoning dance, getting more and more frustrated and convinced the universe was out to get us, if the opportunity to gain relevant information had not presented itself on the always-open public transit website on my phone. It is this access to live bus locations alone that has prevented me from ever downsizing back to a dumb-phone. The bus tracker provides not only invaluable information--it is a reminder of the existence of information, a souvenir from the day I stopped feeling helpless to TFL's whimsy.
It is a pure, simple example of the triumph of understanding over superstition. But understanding is not inherent, nor is the relationship between cause and effect always obvious. In my instance, the failure of the bus to arrive on time, or within its expected time-range, could have a whole host of causes--from heavy traffic, to a passenger-related incident on the bus, to a drivers' strike to the fire-bombing of Catford by the disgusted city of Greenwich. All I know is that I don't have a bus when I should. A more inquisitive mind than mine might be inclined to undertake a simple research project to this end. Perhaps one might catch a bus heading the opposite direction to inspect the route the desired bus should be coming through. If the route appears clear, perhaps they could contact the depot to enquire if there has been a bus breakdown or a sick driver. Once they're told off by the depot receptionist they could check a newspaper about that all-too-possible strike. There is plenty of information out there waiting to be discovered for the patient, unperturbed passenger with nowhere in particular to be. If you follow the scientific method, more often than not you will figure out what the hold-up was.
Or you could do the impatient-commuter version of a rain dance.
If, like me, you are too chicken to annoy a bus dispatcher, too desperate to get where you're going to try going another direction purely for the sake of inquiry, or too trusting in your state to believe the drivers would do such a horrible thing as leave you stranded on the side of the road, you'll probably just stick to rain dances. But why is this? Is it intellectual laziness? Faith? Something else equally as childish?
I tend to think it is somehow related to my capacity for empathy, albeit perhaps a capacity which has developed far beyond its usefulness. As a feeling, reacting entity who has grown up (and on a larger scale, evolved) within communities of other feeling, reacting entities, I seek to place myself within my environment--establish how I relate to the people, objects, and events going on around me at all times. It is entirely likely that, as I have observed how my actions have affected other people and theirs in turn have impacted me, on a less-conscious level I have attempted to apply my understanding of this relationship to my other environmental elements (that is objects, events, and other non-person phenomena). Perhaps the inner baby in my head, still thrilled with herself for figuring out how to fit all ten toes in one mouth, assumes that I should be able to affect anything that affects me. "Surely, if the bus can make me late, I must be able to do something to make it early!" Furthermore, this same dribbling, grinning moron, lodged firmly near my medulla oblongata, who was the centre of the entire universe for about two years, sincerely believes that anything which has affected me must have been meant for me personally, be it a hurricane, a found dollar, a pleasant breeze or a late bus. This has compounded with the beautifully-crafted sense of white-kid guilt instilled in me by the South Carolina Department of Education to force my default assumption to be, whatever negative happen-stance befalls me, I deserve it, either because I'm a horrible person or because I don't appreciate the nice things I have. "I see. I accidentally smushed that snail but was more disgusted than sorry, so this is my punishment. No bus."
As I meander through my everyday, I realise that the ol' thinker in my head is making a lot of junk up to either make sense of, mitigate, or disappear from view the billions of unrelated events that make up the world around me. I want everything to be linear, despite the fact that it rarely is. I want effects to have obvious causes, I want to know why and how things happen, and I want to be able to control the factors which nevertheless control me. In most ways we are completely helpless, the hovering end of the slinky which has no idea that it has already been dropped. But rather than acknowledge this--an acknowledgement which has surely landed more than a few people in quiet, padded rooms--we attempt to control, or perhaps pretend to control, everything we can. The rain dances don't work, and on some level we are of course aware of this, but without access to genuine understanding of what the hell's going on we can either embrace the nonsense or the crushing futility of existence.
Oh these things always spiral downward rapidly.
