There is a saying that in the long corridor, if you don't turn on the lights, you will encounter ghosts!
People who are not superstitious will sound and think that this sentence makes no sense.
But for many, eerie, cramped, and endless images of promenades often come to mind before reason and logic, creating an indescribable sense of horror.
Film directors are also well aware of this mentality, and countless horror films have used empty corridors to create an atmosphere of mystery, the unknown or danger.
For example, the corridors in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining are hard for viewers to forget.
In this classic 1980 film, danny, a young boy, rides a mini-children's tricycle through the corridors of the hotel, leaving puzzling characters in circles.
In particular, the camera was placed smoothly behind the boy close to the ground.
So, in the long corridor with the hard-to-see end, there seems to be a pair of eyes staring behind the back at the young child who is playing happily alone...
However, why are the corridors covered with such a mysterious color? Why do people emphasize that the lights must be turned on in the corridors?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" >01 Superstitions are valuable</h1>
Zeng Shiqiang, the "father of Chinese-style management", once specifically elaborated on the problem of turning on the lights in the corridor at night.
He pointed out that the need to turn on the lights of the long corridor at night had nothing to do with supernatural forces and had nothing to do with the demands or interests of the "rumor-mongers".
In previous buildings, long corridors were the exclusive design of wealthy homes.
However, in order to save money, the rich are often reluctant to keep the lights in the corridors on, which is bound to cause inconvenience to the servants who pass by in the dark of the night.
Imagine that in the narrow space where you can't see your five fingers, you don't know what is coming towards you.
I don't know who made the footsteps behind me, and I can't be sure that things in the dark won't quietly hurt themselves... Who wouldn't be afraid?
Therefore, Zeng Shiqiang believes that the idea that there are "ghosts" in the long corridor without turning on the lights is likely to be a statement made up by the servants to try to influence the decisions of the rich in order to protect themselves.
The servants hoped that the rich would be willing to illuminate the promenade at night in order to drive away the "ghosts".
This example inspires us not to be hastily beaten to death with a stick at the "superstitious" claim, but to analyze the value behind it.
Since ancient times, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, superstitious activities have been widespread, which is by no means a coincidence.
Although today's society relies on the development of science and technology, it has been proved that superstition is basically nonsense and cannot be taken seriously.
However, there is always a reason behind "existence", and it may be of great significance to study "why superstition arises".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="10" >02 Cognitive value of superstition</h1>
A careful analysis of the content of people's "superstition" in ancient times will find that it is actually a set of knowledge systems that people try to understand and explain the world.
In the past, people lacked scientific means to perceive the world around them, but the need for this cognitive world was unavoidable.
They need to be familiar with the alternation of day and night, the cycle of the four seasons, the change of weather, in order to arrange their own labor activities, and they need to know which behaviors are dangerous and need to be avoided.
Why humans are afraid of the dark is related to avoiding potential existential dangers.
When night falls, humans in the wild can no longer rely on visual vision to find predators, and are easily attacked by beasts lurking in the darkness, so people have a lingering fear of darkness.
Advocating that the lights on the promenade are always on, does not it also reflect the jealousy of the darkness?
In the face of all kinds of situations that require vigilance, in the face of all kinds of disturbing situations, people may choose to avoid, or they may come up with certain solutions.
In order to improve the survival chances of the group, they also need to pass on these dangerous situations and corresponding treatments.
However, they often only observe the appearance, and do not understand the principle behind the phenomenon, how to effectively pass on the survival wisdom accumulated by the individual?
Superstition may be the good way they have found.
They attribute these inexplicable phenomena to supernatural forces and process them into various myths or legends.
In this way, everything becomes clear, concise, and understandable, and stories tend to be more interesting than pure natural phenomena, more conducive to memorization and sharing.
It is worth noting that the survival wisdom related to superstition has a spiritual level in addition to the material level.
For example, people also long for answers about life and death, about reincarnation, about future lives, about reunion.
Ancient Chinese had the idea of ghosts and gods, and distant Westerners also had visions of heaven and hell, and almost every religion answered questions about the afterlife.
While these answers may be a conjecture and do not really solve the problem, people take comfort from religion.
Most religions convince believers that they can receive kindness after death through good deeds in their lifetime.
This means that the otherwise uncontrollable afterlife world can be artificially controlled, so people don't have to fear death so much, and they can cope with life now.
This is also an important "cognitive" contribution.
With the development of scientific knowledge and the improvement of human education, at the macro level, superstition has gradually declined around the world.
However, to this day, death is still in the unknown category, and no one can explain what an individual will face and feel after death.
How can we laugh at the fear and superstition of the ancients?
Perhaps, we should sympathize with those superstitious people and discover the cognitive value behind superstition, and then we can strive to replace the cognitive value of superstition with other scientific methods.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" >03 Superstitious social values</h1>
In addition to the fear of the unknown world, people may also use the power of superstition to achieve the purpose of governing society, typically the divine judgment practices of ancient Chinese society.
The divine trial is to test the parties with all kinds of unscientific but extremely deterrent methods, and if the parties successfully pass the examination, they are considered that he has not committed a crime, and vice versa, he is considered to have committed a crime.
There are many ways to test a suspect, such as tying up the suspect's hands and feet and throwing him into the water, and if he is not drowned by the water, he proves his innocence.
The suspect is ordered to put his hand into a pot of boiling water to retrieve something, and if it is successfully completed and the hand is not burned, it is not guilty.
The idea behind this system is that people believe that the gods will participate in the trial and shelter those who have not committed crimes.
Today, this seems absurd, so why did people choose this way at that time?
In fact, if you think about the ancient technical environment, you can understand that in the absence of overwhelming cameras, it is difficult to use modern technical means to investigate various physical evidence.
It is very difficult to prove that a person has actually committed a crime, in short, in the judicial adjudication of cases, the human capacity is no longer enough.
However, if no suspects are tried and punished, criminal activity within a community is likely to increase.
After all, if the crime is difficult to catch or prove, most people will inevitably have a fluke mentality.
Therefore, the ancients came up with the method of divine adjudication, and this judicial adjudication method was also used not only in China but also in other countries in ancient times.
Putting aside the superstitious component, this can also be said to be a tactic that weighs the cost of justice and the choice of human psychology.
First of all, under such a harsh means of proof, it is difficult for ordinary people to have the courage to commit crimes.
After all, once you are suspected of committing a crime, you must prove your innocence and innocence in an extremely deadly way, otherwise you will not be re-accepted by your own community, which is a high cost.
Second, when people truly believe in the existence of gods because of this judicial system, the constraints of faith will also make them less inclined to commit crimes to avoid psychological torture.
In addition, psychological guilt about the "gods" may also make the suspect show his feet and help the judicial personnel solve the case.
Therefore, under the conditions of underdeveloped society, judicial personnel actually use the superstitious atmosphere to borrow the power of the gods to complete things that cannot be achieved by human beings.
This also provides us with a useful perspective for analyzing the causes of superstitious activities – the social value of superstitions.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" >04 Superstitious emotional value</h1>
Speaking of the word "superstition", we who have been educated in materialism may immediately scorn it, confidently saying that we will not be involved.
But the truth is that we who live in modern society still consciously or unconsciously participate in various superstitious activities.
However, because most of these superstitious activities are harmless and harmless, there is no great social harm, so the rejection of them by members of society is not strong.
Many superstitious activities have become part of traditional culture or social customs.
For example, even highly educated atheists, during the Spring Festival, will habitually paste a "blessing" on the door of their home to pray for the arrival of the "blessing" of the new year.
When sending red envelopes to each other, we will also try to send some auspicious numbers and avoid some unknown amounts.
These can all be considered superstitions – because there is no causal link between these actions and the so-called "blessed" qi.
These traditional activities demonstrate the role of cultural identity and cultural connection.
When everyone in a cultural circle follows a certain tradition, the drive for identity and belonging may have far exceeded the drive of superstition itself.
Although the Internet is an absolute product of modern advanced technology, the superstitious activities of "long history" are still seen on digital platforms and are everywhere.
Many people can't help but scan an unfamiliar QR code shared in a certain group, and use their own names and faces to measure their future fortunes or destinies.
There are also people who are obsessed with astrology, twelve constellation commentary, tarot cards, Zhou Gong dream interpretation, feng shui... Keep a blogger's commentary on time.
Even people who are not superstitious in general may engage in superstitious activities at some point.
They may not believe in their hearts that engaging in superstitious activities will really help them, but in the end, they may do so.
The reason for this is that people are afraid of the unknown and uncertain about whether they have enough power to deal with the unknown.
Under such pressure, superstition shows its third value, which is also the bottom line value - emotional value.
That is, even if superstitious activities really don't really work, at least they relieve our stress and increase our sense of control over our lives on a psychological level.
Many times, it is not real life that overwhelms us, but our negative perception of life that places an unnecessarily heavy burden on us.
We may inadvertently exaggerate the difficulty of our situation, resulting in excessive psychological stress and inability to cope normally.
Engaging in superstitious activities can often send us strength on a psychological level, and we are willing to believe that it is true that superstitious activities predict that good things will happen to us in the future.
We tend to think that superstitious activities at least give us some future information and help us cope better.
Therefore, superstitious activities do not exist solely because of ignorance, but because they themselves provide cognitive, social, and emotional values, and we need to have a deeper understanding of them.