---
title: "040-superstition"
aliases: 
tags: 
- podcast/philosophizethis
---

"falsely attributing somet cause to some affect"

e.g., apple is preventing me from going to doctor

more common than commonly thought

most people are mistaken about the true causes of things

e.g., sports fan thinkgs type of beer they drink affects outcome of game

## on happiness
most people want to be happy

so emulate people who are happy. they see rich people who are happy and think the cause of their happiness is their material things. eventualty realise than not all rich people are happy

socrates - "happy is he who is content with the least"

happiness lies in low expectations

if basic needs aren't met would you be necessarlly be unhappy? -> no you can still be accepting of that

∴ happiness lies in acceptance

what is acceptance: accepting what you have and what is in your future. so is happiness being fully present in this moment. when have money you are able to do this more easily 

## back to supersition

These ^ are all superstitious conclusions. we are all gulity of things like these. 

It is good to periodically examine our own superstitions. However, if we know they're superstitions, why do we have them?

huge "enemy" during the enlightenment

### The enlightenment
relatively short (relative to history), made up of three key generation of people who had ideas on the backs of each other.

ways to describe:
- the ultimate awakening of mankind - start the snowball of reason
- others say the snowball had been rolling since the middle ages (aristotle). enlightenment is just the culmination
- fueled by religion - the counter reforation of the curch
- propaganda - thinker propped up by people to give legitamacy to new way of thinking

regardless it was transformative - attempt to abolish superstition is all aread of thought

### bishop berkley
aboish superstitions with senses. 

what we percieve with our senses is not reality "veil of perception"

we have an idea of reality in our mind far from actual reality

underneath is some "true" reality. 

berkely questioned this assumption

the only thing we need to interact with is our  "idea" of reality

"immaterialist idealist"  also a monist (the one substance is mind) and impericist (all knowledge is derived from sense experience)

we never experience the supposed "real" world, so how do we know it exists

"if a tree falls and noone sees it does it fall" - if there was nobody or notging aroud to percieve it is wouldn't exists. but there is one entity that is perpetually aware of everything in the universe - God

He is the first in this line of thinking

tyring to preserve the idea of god.

gave rise to idealism - emanual kant


how did he get to this line of reasoning? why ask these questions? maybe because he was trying to preserve god. once matter is a substance that explained itself, what is stopping god from being removed. therefore. why does this physical stuff even need to exists at all


### Voltaire
not a big fan of the religion of his day

evolved throughout his life - deist -> theist -> ? Belived in the cosmological god.

common to be anti-semetic. most peopole because mad at "people who killed jesus". valtaire was mad because jews made christianity able to exist. 

easy for us to project our time period onto voltaire. chistianity - islam - judaism, were different than they are now. they represented something bad to volatire (enemies of supersitions and tolerance). volatire wanted toleration, he thought that god was more that what these religions had laid out so far. 

#### letters concerning the  english nation
anallysing system of govern in england after reformation following the (3) civil wars, knowing there would be a revolution in france soon

liked some elements. they were producing good thinkers (newston, bacon, hobbs, and more)

trying to understand elements of english cuture and how they differed from france. in order to help the french revolution

appreciates their system of religous tolerance. why do people of differenet religions get along so well. maybe because there are many different forms of religions. 

if there was only one religion - there would be no need for government
if there were two religions - they would be fighting (e.g., democrat vs rebuplican)

so more that two is best. no religion feels threatened by another religion.

