Could you imagine General Dwight Eisenhower—Supreme Allied Commander during World War II—not invading the beaches of Normandy because a soothsayer saw bad omens in the bloody liver of a sacrificial goat, or not fighting a battle on a particular day because it might offend the gods? Nobody at West Point ever explained to me why the Spartans were so superstitious, but my journey to unlock the mysteries of the human condition has increased my understanding and empathy for the Spartans and all human beings.
Many American soldiers find comfort in prayer, but the modern American army does not practice animal sacrifice to appease the gods, which was common in the ancient Greek and Roman armies. Describing the Persian invasion of Greece, the Athenian general Xenophon discussed the use of animal sacrifice to win divine favor: “The Persians and their friends came with an enormous army, thinking that they would wipe Athens off the face of the earth; but the Athenians had the courage to stand up to them by themselves, and they defeated them. On that occasion they had made a vow to [the goddess] Artemis that they would sacrifice to her a goat for every one of their enemies whom they killed, but, since they could not get hold of enough goats, they decided to sacrifice five hundred every year, and they are still sacrificing them today.”20
Although animal sacrifice to appease the gods is not as common today, the modern world is still filled with superstitious rituals. What is the underlying cause of this superstition? I have heard people say, “Human beings are superstitious because they are stupid,” but science shows that an underlying cause of superstition is not stupidity, but lack of control. One of the most disturbing experiences we can have as human beings is feeling helpless in a stressful situation.
Superstitious rituals give people the illusion of control, and conspiracy theories give people a “personified evil” where they can direct their anger over feeling helpless. In an article in the Chicago Tribune, Jeremy Manier discusses how lack of control is an underlying cause of superstition in baseball and many other areas of life:
Baseball may be the most superstition-filled sport, with bizarre traditions that range from players who insist on chewing the same gum each day during a hitting streak to the Chicago Cubs’ yearly reminder of the infamous billy goat curse. Now a new study by Northwestern University researchers has found that all such superstitions may have a common source: the feeling of a lack of control, which spurs people to concoct false patterns and meaning from the noise of life’s chance events.
The Chicago group found that making experimental subjects remember a time when they lacked control actually changed the way they viewed the world, and created a temporary need to see patterns where none existed.
The study in Friday’s edition of the journal Science represents the first experimental confirmation of a link that psychologists long suspected was behind superstitions, conspiracy theories, rituals and even some aspects of religious belief … “Most of the time the groups you see with vast conspiratorial theories are those that don’t have much control over the outcome of something,” said [Jennifer] Whitson, now an assistant professor at the University of Texas’ department of management …
In baseball, experts believe superstition and ritual pop up most often around tasks where players have the least control. Batters and pitchers often develop elaborate preparation routines, in part because their success often depends on random factors such as where a fly ball lands or whether the batter anticipates a pitch correctly. Anthropologist George Gmelch once wrote of a pitcher who insisted on washing his hands after every inning in which he gave up a run.
Fielders, by contrast, maintain few rituals—perhaps because a pro player’s success in fielding a ball is so high. “Unlike hitting and pitching, a fielder has almost complete control over the outcome of his performance,” Gmelch wrote in a 2000 article called “Baseball Magic.” “He knows that, in better than 9.7 times out of 10, he will execute his task flawlessly. With odds like that there is little need for ritual.”
Gmelch said in an interview that he grasped the possible link between religious rituals and the ingrained routines of ballplayers during college, when he also was a minor league baseball player. “In both cases you’re looking for confidence, some sense that you have control over things,” said Gmelch, professor of anthropology at the University of San Francisco … Baseball rituals can be calming even if they’re irrational, Gmelch pointed out.21
What do the superstitious rituals in war and baseball have in common? They both result from humanity’s craving to understand underlying causes, along with the discomfort we feel when lacking control in stressful situations. Our craving to understand underlying causes gives us a powerful survival advantage when we discover the actual causes of our problems (such as the discovery that plagues are caused by microorganisms rather than angry deities). But when we are unable to discover these underlying causes, we may invent one in the form of a superstitious ritual. For example, if the Spartans could not figure out why they lost a battle, it was easy to invent a cause. A Spartan could reason, “The underlying cause of losing the battle was angering the gods, and to prevent the gods from being angry at us in the future we must conduct more animal sacrifice.”
Another feature war and baseball have in common is they both involve a lot of luck. Carl von Clausewitz, arguably the most influential military strategist of all time, said, “There is no human affair which stands so constantly and so generally in close connection with chance as War. But together with chance, the accidental, and along with it good luck, occupy a great place in War.”22
Thucydides was an ancient Greek who thought differently from most Greeks of his era, because he attributed unforeseen disasters in war to luck rather than the Greek gods. Born in the fifth century BC, Thucydides was a general, historian, and veteran of the Peloponnesian War. He tells us that during the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian tried to discourage the Spartans from invading Athens by saying, “Think, too, of the great part that is played by the unpredictable in war: think of it now, before you are actually committed to war. The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to depend on accidents.”23
When Thucydides wrote about the Spartan army surrendering to the Athenians at the Battle of Sphacteria in 425 BC, he discussed how being killed by an arrow had less to do with one’s amount of bravery and more to do with luck. Thucydides explained:
The general impression had been that Spartans would never surrender their arms whether because of hunger or any other form of compulsion; instead they would keep them to the last and die fighting as best they could. It was hard to believe that those who had surrendered were the same sort of people as those who had fallen [in battle]. Indeed, there was an occasion afterwards when an Athenian ally in order to insult one of the [Spartan] prisoners from the island asked him whether it was the ones who had fallen who were the real Spartans. The reply was that “spindles (by which he meant arrows) would be worth a great deal if they could pick out brave men from cowards,” a remark which was intended to show that the ones who died were simply the ones who came in the way of the stones and the arrows.24
Most action movies make it seem like the strongest and bravest soldiers survive in combat, but many military strategists and veterans know that war has more in common with Russian roulette than a Hollywood film. Vietnam veteran Gene Dark said, “I arrived in Da Nang, with thirty-five marines. Only four of us were left, and all but one had a Purple Heart. I was so fortunate to be alive. Why had I survived? Was I faster, smarter, or tougher than the other marines? Of course not; in fact, the opposite was probably true. Was it just fate? I felt guilty that so many braver men than me had died. Every marine who ever fought a war feels the same way. Ask him and he will tell you about the guilt that he carries deep down inside for surviving when so many others died.”25
When people lack control in war, baseball,