How Mexicans feel about duendes too.
True. Most Irish people, as Norwegians do with Trolls, will happily let the 'fairies' be a thing to make tours for tourists and idle threats to make children behave. Most Irish people will have a very normal and mature explanation of fairies as a common folk mythology that expresses some dimension of Irish culture but are not, obviously, to be taken literally.
And most Irish people, if you ask them to move a stone from a fairy circle will immoveably, flatly respond with 'absolutely fucking not'.
Construction projects have had to halt and be abandoned for it.
At work me and a couple coworkers (black, white, and mexican) had a fun discussion on whether there are more ghosts at a hospital or a cemetery.
everyone individually took a moment to specify that ghosts probably aren't REAL real. then weighed in on where and why.
for the record my position was that there's probably way more ghosts in hospitals because that's where people die horribly, but since you can only see ghosts in dark, solitary conditions, graveyards at night is where the majority of ghost sightings occur. hospitals are usually well lit and busy, so even if they're crammed with ghosts the living are too damn busy to see them. meanwhile if a cemetery has even one ghost that followed her corpse there from the hospital, she'll be spotted because that's where all the ghost hunters go to look.
this theory was received as extremely sensible, and a coworker drew the conclusion that that's why abandoned hospitals are even scarier than graveyards. once the place gets abandoned then you can tell how much ghosts got built up.
we all liked this explanation a lot and explained it to everyone else all night. and of course, none of us believe in ghosts.
Disenchantment of the world is never complete, and never will be
Disenchantment of
the world is never complete,
and never will be
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Honestly this is my relationship with anything religious or supernatural, preternatural, etc.
Like, do I really truly believe? No.... But do I want to bring a dog with me when I go house hunting because if the dog won't go in I don't want the house because it's clearly haunted? Yeah....
This was our philosophy when house hunting but with a neighbor's cat that outright refused to go into a cellar on the property. It was friendly and went in the house and it was practically showing the house itself and then came the cellar (with the big double doors on the side of the house) and this cat took one poke under the cellar door (there was a cat sized cap) and noped out of there. Even though the house was in our price range (rare for Bloomington), we passed on it and found a perfect and only mildly haunted house. It's only haunted by my grandfather who showed up by way of a family mirror I inherited--I knew what I was getting too, my mom was like "You want the big haunted mirror or the pretty art deco one?" Big haunted mirror all the way. My grandfather has been dead for 20 years and it is nice to see him around occasionally.
Vaguely relevant quote from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather:
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
