Lucky Charms

we're superstitious. if you don't think so, think again about one particular lucky charm that's still very popular today. we believe that green slips of properly marked paper gives good luck to its owner. if you don't have this special paper, you are very unlucky indeed. people will go out of their way to keep readily available food away from you if you don't have the paper. if you try to take the food, whole groups of people will carry you into a closed off room that's hard to escape.

but if you have an abundance of this green paper in your pockets, people treat you with the utmost respect and deference. they'll open doors for you and call you by reverential titles. what a great lucky charm! with this lucky charm, you can enjoy all the luxuries society has to offer simply by presenting it to people protecting these luxuries from those without the lucky charm.

yes, certain objects and actions are strictly withheld from those without lucky charms. there is enough good stuff and human energy to go around, no doubt, but people insist that those without lucky charms do not enjoy the good stuff and the fruits of the human energy, also known as "commodities" and "services" respectively. services and commodities are deemed good or lucky. in a fair, just, and predictable (manageable) world, those without lucky charms cannot enjoy good luck. if they did, then the world would be confusing, unmanageable, and unfair! thus, they must be forcibly administered bad luck, which is really the withholding of good luck--the services and commodities that people create.

if you think superstitions are benign fantasies, i dare you to throw all your green lucky charms into a flaming pit. those who you call foolish believers will call you stupid. your friends will leave you. you will notice a great diminution of good luck in your life. if people notice that you are getting good luck, they will forcibly remove the luck from you and go out of their way to prevent more good luck from getting into your dirty luckless hands.

when large groups of people believe in a superstition, the force of their consensus makes the superstition a reality. to fight consensus is to run up against a brick wall erected by the consensus. the funny thing is that the builders of this wall don't think they built it. they imagine it to be like a tree that nature herself seeded. because of this belief, they imagine there is no other recourse than to follow "nature" and continue in their reverence of the superstition.

the black hole we face today is greed and jealousy, which are really the fear that there isn't enough good luck in the world and that other people are only out to hoard it. since lucky charms bring good luck, people hoard the lucky charms too. one person's fearful activity proves another's fearful expectations, and we dive into a spiral of fear and greed. lucky charms are the symptoms of a made-up belief that reinforces itself until it starts to look natural. universal selfishness is as real as the luck of a lucky charm. if you believe in it, you help strengthen and maintain it.