I’m not much of a numerologist. I know some people who are, and who ascribe mystical powers to numerical coincidences. There are a lot of reasons I don’t get into such things, but the most compelling reason I don’t is because dates and times are purely arbitrary things that humans have overlaid on the uncaring backdrop of natural events. There is no reason that today is “08/08/08″ instead of any other combination of numbers other than that an arbitrary “beginning” calendar date was set by some religious academics some thousand years ago or so.
I might be more interested in such numerical coincidences if calendars were tied to some sort of astronomical events or even human events. But since they aren’t, I pretty much find such arbitrary arrangements of numbers to be interesting, but not compelling.
5 users commented in " 08/08/08 "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI agree.
Chinese have always been big on “the eights”. The Olympic opening ceremonies started at 8:08 PM local. If an hour had 100 minutes instead of 60, they would have started it at 8:88.
One American nod to Chinese “eight-ness”: the new US Embassy in Beijing was dedicated by President Bush at 8:08 AM local – both on 8/8/08.
And, today was a massive day for weddings in that part of the world…
Well, on this side of the big pond we had a similar reaction to 07/07/07. And I had pretty much the same reaction to it as I have to 08/08/08. I know several people who arranged to have their weddings on 07/07/07 to get the “good luck” of that day. I would be willing to bet that in ten years you won’t see any significant statistical difference in divorce rates for folks who got married on that date and any other random date.
Part of the reason Chinese tend to be big on such things is that ancient Chinese believed in spoken spells, and “eight” sounds like “prosperity” in several Chinese dialects. Four, the unlucky number, sounds like “death” in Mandarin.
My (Chinese) wife is as agnostic as they come, but even she pays attention to these sorts of things, on the grounds that “it can’t hurt”.
She also sells businesses, so she has to pay close attention to lucky numbers in various cultures since many buyers want the day they buy their new business to be auspicious.
Foo:
I can understand all that, and it is completely rational to take other people’s irrationality into account in your own planning.
My only point is that I personally find it bizarre that people put such “faith” in odd, arbitrary arrangements of numbers (or letters for that matter).
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