Written by Ananya Panchal. Graphics by Ananya Panchal.
Black cats are common subjects of superstition; however, there are many opposing views on whether they symbolise good or bad luck. In Cambridge, there is an old local superstition that black cats protect houses from bad omens. Cat skulls were even buried in the walls of houses to protect the inhabitants from ‘evil.’ In Scotland, a stray cat on your front porch signals upcoming luck. All the while, countries like the United States, Belgium, and Spain associate this feline creature with Satanism or witchcraft. In my own country, India, black cats crossing your path have always been a prevailing superstition.
These culture-specific superstitions open up your mind to the versatility of a symbol. Superstitious beliefs are inherently irrational, but they illustrate how assumptions can build up to affect our actions and eventually our everyday lives. Every time a path is avoided because of a black cat is an act in which irrationality and anxiety hold power over a choice your head should make. Sure, avoiding a path is a small thing, but the principle of letting fear dictate an action is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
I’m taking a SCADpro class this quarter, and it entails a lot of collaborative action and coordination. This often leads to making assumptions about the people in your class that you work with and that dictate your attitude towards them and the way that the work might be split up. My professor said something the other day in class that really resonated with me and connects back to the idea of fear, assumption-making, and superstition—the idea of “climbing the ladder.”
“Climbing the ladder” defines how assumptions stack on top of each other to dictate action. For example, based on a set of personal experiences you’ve had, you might have built up the assumption. Say a person doesn’t explicitly express enthusiasm for an idea I share, and they are completely disinterested. This may lead to a follow-up assumption, “This person thinks my idea is stupid,” and then, “If I share another idea, I might embarrass myself.” All leading to the action: avoiding sharing ideas with this person.
In contrast to black cat superstitions, this chain of assumptions could be deemed rational, or at the very least, a sound argument is being made to lead to the concluding action. But when you clearly map out the assumptions and the order in which they were built like that, you see how anxiety is making so many decisions for you. And we are able to see how going into a rabbit hole like this actually leads to quite an irrational decision.
While you might feel immune to baseless superstitions regarding black cats, we all occasionally succumb to a dangerous descent into irrational decisions caused by assumption-building. This is a normal thing; it is impossible to look at anything neutrally, but you can always take a step back and reconsider those biases, superstitions, and cultural beliefs that frame your day-to-day behavior. What are your black cats? What are you avoiding out of irrational assumptions or superstition? Challenge those beliefs, get off the ladder, and try to see things from a neutral perspective.
