Almost every NT that I have ever met has had magical thinking.
They always believe that correlation is inextricably linked to causation. Even those who are supposed to be scientists and doctors.
A good example: Several years ago, in my early twenties, I was told by a couple of doctors that I could not have autism, because it is usually diagnosed in children. The reason that I was never diagnosed as a child was because I did not have a responsible parent or guardian who would recognise a problem and care enough to attempt to have it treated, and I was simply punished, neglected and abused for being a weird little bastard, instead.
It did not occur to these people that a child who was not taken to a doctor could not possibly be diagnosed as a child. It did not occur to them that a neglected and undiagnosed child could possibly grow into an adult who continued to suffer from their undiagnosed disorder. As far as these people were concerned, their books told them that it was almost always diagnosed in children, and as I was clearly not a child, it was practically impossible for me to have autism.
As far as they were concerned, being diagnosed as a child is what makes a person have autism. It is nothing to do with the structure or functioning of their brain, it has nothing to do with the symptoms that they exhibit, it is solely down to being diagnosed as a child, and no amount of logical reasoning has the power to change this magical fact. Not unless one of their shamanic High Priests gave them a new magical book which told them that the evil spirit known as autism had magically evolved into a demon which affects adults too.
The existence of adults with autism, who were diagnosed as children, and grew up to still have it, must have been absolutely mystifying for these people.
I find that by far the most common form of magical thinking, is the belief in the validity of doing things just because "they have always been done that way", even though the person has no idea WHY it is done. I'm sure everyone here knows what that is like. People doing things simply because everyone does them, rather than doing things for a legitimate reason which the participants actually know and understand. Many people have no idea why they need to dress a certain way, like wearing a tie, or why they need to eat dinner before dessert, or ask people how they're doing while knowing that neither one of them really cares.
They generally do not think using any kind of actual reasoning, and simply feel that the validity of a belief comes from the number of people who believe in it, and how convenient it is to agree, rather than its validity coming from how much sense it actually makes when you analyse it closely.
10 Feb 2012, 9:23 pm
