Open Writing

What do a monkey saving a puppy during a recent explosion in China, the mysterious windshield pits of Seattle in the 1950s, and the biting nuns of 15th century Germany have in common with the News Miner's own Dermot Cole?

The first three are all collective delusions, which is defined as "spontaneous, rapid spread of false or exaggerated beliefs within a population at large, temporarily affecting a particular region, culture, or country" in a Skeptical Inquirer article titled "Mass Delusions, Prominent Cases over the Last Five Centuries." The same article described how the rumor of nun's biting each other in the 1400s caused widespread biting in nunneries throughout Germany and Holland.

There's nothing delusional about Dermot, but he did recently write about the Russian's collective delusion that the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) installation near Glennallen is manipulating the weather over Western Europe instead of its avowed purpose of studying the non-weather related ionosphere. That's as accurate as the puppy-rescuing monkey urban myth, which has appeared on the Internet several times in various contexts, dating to 2006. And the sudden rash of windshield damage that people noticed in Seattle in 1954 turned out to have been caused by the media spreading the stories of mass windshield damage and everyone with a car rushing out to check their vehicles.

"The culprit, it now appears, was nothing at all," according to the excellent online diverter FutilityCloset.com, which cites "glass expert James Ashley saying 'this seems to be wholly psychological. Certainly there are some marks found on windshields. But there always have been. If after hearing rumors you hurry out to examine your own windshield closely, you stand a fair chance of being able to find some pits.'"

Paraskevidekatriaphobia, the morbid, irrationalized fear of Friday the 13th is another collective delusion, but not for you and me, right? Admittedly, events occurred on the 13th of this month, a Friday, that might lead some towards superstition, including work crews laying water lines cutting the North Pole Branch Library's telephone and computer lines, and other workmen set up a smoky generator near the main air intake of Noel Wien Library's air conditioning system.

Those small, transitory concerns don't compare with being guided by a pack of lies simply because many people espouse it. Thousands of people died needlessly in the London cholera outbreak of the 1850s, because the authorities, and nearly everyone else, thought disease was transmitted by miasma, or smells instead of being caused by waterborne germs, and they ordered the cities cesspits dumped into the Thames near the -intake pumps of major city water suppliers.

The number 13 has long been considered unlucky, and many believe Friday's an unlucky day. So Friday 13's a double whammy, according to an online article on paraskevidekatriaphobia by David Emery titled "Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky." Paraskevidekatriaphobia, also known as "paraskavedekatriaphiobia," was coined by psychotherapist Donald Dossey, who thinks as many as 21 million Americans suffer from it. Not so in ancient China and Egypt, where the number 13 was judged particularly lucky, and Vikings considered Friday the most fortunate day of the week.

Emery says scholars speculate "that the number 13 may have been purposely vilified by the founders of patriarchal religions in the early days of western civilization because it represented femininity. Thirteen had been revered in prehistoric goddess-worshipping cultures, we are told, because it corresponded to the number of lunar cycles … As the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar with the rise of male-dominated civilization, it is surmised, so did the 'perfect' number 12 over the 'imperfect' number 13, thereafter considered an anathema."

Some people still cling to the myth that the Internet's rise means the demise of libraries, but this ignores crucial aspects of the Internet and libraries. For example, the free part of the Internet is a mile wide and an inch deep, and its expensive parts are often the most useful. And the functions of libraries - collecting, organizing, protecting, and disseminating important information – hasn't changed throughout recorded history. But as the 19th century author Christian Nestell Bovee put it, "No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities."