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01 02 03 the 04 05 LAWS 06 07 of 08 7 09 MAGICAL 10 11 12 THINKING 13 14 How Irrationality Makes Us 15 Happy, Healthy, and Sane 16 17 18 19 20 MATTHEW HUTSON 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 N33 L34 A Oneworld Book First published in Great Britain and the Commonwealth by Oneworld Publications 2012 Published by arrangement with Hudson Street Press, For my teachers – past, present, and future a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc This edition published by Oneworld Publications 2013 Copyright © Matthew Hutson 2012 All rights reserved The moral right of Matthew Hutson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-85168-957-6 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78074-109-3 Cover design by Dan Mogford Printed and bound by Nørhaven A/S Denmark Oneworld Publications 10 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3SR For my teachers – past, present, and future 01 02 01 03 Contents 02 04 03 05 04 06 05 07 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 06 08 07 09 Matthew Hutson is a science writer and the former news editor of the 08 10 magazine Psychology Today. His work has appeared in the New York Times 09 11 Magazine, Wired, Scientific American Mind, Discover, and many others. 10 12 He is an atheist and magical thinker. 11 13 12 14 13 Introduction: We’re All Believers 1 15 14 16 1 Objects Carry Essences: ‘Cooties’, Contagion, and 15 17 Historicity 11 16 18 17 Symbols Have Power: Spells, Ceremonies, and the 19 2 18 20 Law of Similarity 37 19 21 20 Actions Have Distant Consequences: Using 22 3 21 Superstition to Make Luck Work for You 61 23 22 24 23 4 The Mind Knows No Bounds: Psychokinesis, ESP, 25 24 and Transcendence 93 26 25 27 5 The Soul Lives On: Death Is Not the End of Us 125 26 28 27 29 6 The World Is Alive: Animals, Objects, and Gods Are 28 30 People, Too 163 29 31 30 Everything Happens for a Reason: You’ve Got a Date 32 7 31 with Destiny 195 32 33N N33 34L L34 01 02 01 03 Contents 02 04 03 05 04 06 05 07 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 06 08 07 09 Matthew Hutson is a science writer and the former news editor of the 08 10 magazine Psychology Today. His work has appeared in the New York Times 09 11 Magazine, Wired, Scientific American Mind, Discover, and many others. 10 12 He is an atheist and magical thinker. 11 13 12 14 13 Introduction: We’re All Believers 1 15 14 16 1 Objects Carry Essences: ‘Cooties’, Contagion, and 15 17 Historicity 11 16 18 17 Symbols Have Power: Spells, Ceremonies, and the 19 2 18 20 Law of Similarity 37 19 21 20 Actions Have Distant Consequences: Using 22 3 21 Superstition to Make Luck Work for You 61 23 22 24 23 4 The Mind Knows No Bounds: Psychokinesis, ESP, 25 24 and Transcendence 93 26 25 27 5 The Soul Lives On: Death Is Not the End of Us 125 26 28 27 29 6 The World Is Alive: Animals, Objects, and Gods Are 28 30 People, Too 163 29 31 30 Everything Happens for a Reason: You’ve Got a Date 32 7 31 with Destiny 195 32 33N N33 34L L34 viii Contents 01 Epilogue: The World Is Sacred: A Stab at a Secular 01 02 Spirituality 239 02 03 03 04 Acknowledgements 251 04 05 05 Notes 253 06 Introduction 06 07 07 Further Reading and Selected Bibliography 283 We’re All Believers 08 08 09 Index 287 09 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 n 2008, the leaders of a powerful clan presided over a ceremony on 15 16 Ithe grounds of their new house of worship. The clan’s warriors, 16 17 known for their fickleness and inconsistency – their success against 17 18 other tribes depending to a large degree on luck – worried that an 18 19 adversary had placed a curse on their home turf. Someone had hidden 19 20 a significant artefact – a symbol of their sworn enemy – under the 20 21 premises. The media, typically dismissive of voodoo, had a field day 21 22 with this little rite. As journalists looked on, two men friendly to the 22 23 warriors pulled the offending relic from the ground and raised it high. 23 24 Flashbulbs illuminated a ragged piece of cloth clearly reading the num- 24 25 ber 34 and the name Ortiz. The new Yankee Stadium had been cleansed. 25 26 Why should an enlightened society adhering to the rigours of 26 27 science care so much about a shirt buried in concrete? And why would 27 28 the president of the New York Yankees baseball team threaten the 28 29 offender with legal action and demand recompense for the cost of 29 30 replacing the concrete? The jersey – carrying the number and name of 30 31 David Ortiz, the top home-run hitter for the rival Boston Red Sox – 31 32 itself posed no structural threat to the stadium. So how could that 32 33N worker ‘force’ the Yankees to dig it up? Because magical powers were N33 34L attributed to that jersey. (We’ll revisit Yankee Stadium in chapter 2.) L34 viii Contents 01 Epilogue: The World Is Sacred: A Stab at a Secular 01 02 Spirituality 239 02 03 03 04 Acknowledgements 251 04 05 05 Notes 253 06 Introduction 06 07 07 Further Reading and Selected Bibliography 283 We’re All Believers 08 08 09 Index 287 09 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 n 2008, the leaders of a powerful clan presided over a ceremony on 15 16 Ithe grounds of their new house of worship. The clan’s warriors, 16 17 known for their fickleness and inconsistency – their success against 17 18 other tribes depending to a large degree on luck – worried that an 18 19 adversary had placed a curse on their home turf. Someone had hidden 19 20 a significant artefact – a symbol of their sworn enemy – under the 20 21 premises. The media, typically dismissive of voodoo, had a field day 21 22 with this little rite. As journalists looked on, two men friendly to the 22 23 warriors pulled the offending relic from the ground and raised it high. 23 24 Flashbulbs illuminated a ragged piece of cloth clearly reading the num- 24 25 ber 34 and the name Ortiz. The new Yankee Stadium had been cleansed. 25 26 Why should an enlightened society adhering to the rigours of 26 27 science care so much about a shirt buried in concrete? And why would 27 28 the president of the New York Yankees baseball team threaten the 28 29 offender with legal action and demand recompense for the cost of 29 30 replacing the concrete? The jersey – carrying the number and name of 30 31 David Ortiz, the top home-run hitter for the rival Boston Red Sox – 31 32 itself posed no structural threat to the stadium. So how could that 32 33N worker ‘force’ the Yankees to dig it up? Because magical powers were N33 34L attributed to that jersey. (We’ll revisit Yankee Stadium in chapter 2.) L34 2 The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking Introduction 3 01 Most of the world is religious, and millions more are openly super- universe, first with my father and then on my own, and saw that the 01 02 stitious, spiritual, or credulous of the paranormal. But in this book I Big Questions could be answered, or at least approached, by science. 02 03 argue that we all believe in magic – luck, mind over matter, destiny, God made less and less sense. 03 04 jinxes, life after death, evil, and heavenly helpers – even when we are I found more books on the big bang and the fabric of space-time 04 05 sure we don’t. and abandoned my belief in a personal creator – but not my obsession 05 06 Magical thinking can be quite banal. We find occult meaning with him. I became a strident young atheist, eager to debate anyone who 06 07 in the world all around us, every day. Do you own any sentimental stooped to have faith in an invisible guide. In the copy of Why I Am Not 07 08 objects – say, a wedding ring, a family heirloom, or an autographed a Christian by the philosopher Bertrand Russell that I purchased for 08 09 football shirt? Objects you’d value more than an identical duplicate? pleasure-reading when I was about twelve, I underlined passages such as, 09 10 That’s magical thinking. Do you feel that what goes around comes ‘It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in 10 11 around, through some universal principle of fairness? That’s magical religion are fear, conceit, and hatred’. I struggled to understand human- 11 12 thinking. Do you shout at your laptop when it erases your files? Magi- ity’s unshakeable hold on magical beliefs – its stock in miracles, gods, a 12 13 cal thinking. Do you hope to leave a legacy after you die? Magical soul – against all reason. 13 14 thinking. Do you believe that certain events were meant to happen? That’s just it: faith is unreasonable, an emotional reaction.
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