Festive ecology explores the relationships between the symbolism and the ecology of the plants, fungi and animals associated with cultural events such as festivals, processions and special occasions.

Holly, ivy and mistletoe, plants traditionally associated with Christmas, have had special roles in earlier religions and past cultures. Houses were decorated with evergreens and bunches of holly were given as tokens of friendship. When this festival was absorbed into the Christian calendar, holly and the other evergreens were absorbed as well.

The main areas in which belief comes to play in respect to Christmas decorations are which plants can be used and which are forbidden, when they are put up and taken down, and what happens to them later and whether they should be burnt or not.

Artificial decorations were not introduced until late Victorian times and do not seem to have gathered any beliefs of their own.

The Axis Mundi describes a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. The symbol originates as a perception that the spot one occupies stands at the center of the world. It is found in cultures utilizing shamanic practices, in major world religions, and in technologically advanced urban centers. Every inhabited region has an Axis Mundi, a place that is sacred above all.

The space serves as a microcosm of order because it is known and settled. Outside the boundaries of the Axis Mundi lie foreign realms that, because they are unfamiliar or not ordered, represent chaos, death or night. From the center one may venture in any of the four cardinal directions, make discoveries, and establish new centers as new realms become known and settled.

A universally told story is that of the healer traversing the Axis Mundi to bring back knowledge from the other world. It may be seen in stories from the Garden of Eden and Jacob’s Ladder to Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel. The stories relate the hero’s descent and ascent through a series of structures that take him from the depths of hell to paradise.

Because the Axis Mundi is an idea that unites a number of concrete images, places and landmarks, no contradiction exists regarding multiple spots as the center. The symbol can operate in a number of locales at once. The ancient Greeks regarded several sites as places of centering, notably the oracle at Delphi, while still maintaining a belief in a cosmic world tree and in Mount Olympus.

Govinda is a name of Krishna, referring to his youthful occupation as a cowherder. The ancient text Sri Brahma Samhita describes him as the source of all that is and the original cause of all causes.

The sages call Krishna “Govind” as he pervades all the worlds, giving them power. The Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata states that Vishnu restored the earth that had sunk into the netherword, so all the devas praised him as Govind, protector of the land.

In the Harivamsa, Indra praised Krishna for having attained loving leadership by saying, “So men too shall praise him as Govinda.” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, states that Govinda means “master of the senses”.

A famous prayer called the Bhaja Govindam states; “If one simply worships Govinda, one can easily cross this great ocean of birth and death.” This refers to the belief that worshipful adoration of Krishna can lead believers out of the cycle of reincarnation, or samsara, and into an eternal blissful life.

In psychology, preparedness is a concept developed to explain why certain associations are learned more readily than others. For example, phobias related to survival, such as snakes, spiders, and heights, are much more common and much easier to induce in the laboratory than other kinds of fears.

This is a result of our evolutionary history. Organisms which learned to fear environmental threats faster had a survival and reproductive advantage. Consequently, the innate predisposition to fear became an adaptive human trait. Because early humans that were quick to fear dangerous situations were more likely to survive and reproduce, preparedness is theorized to be a genetic effect that is the result of natural selection.

Fear can sometimes create the condition we commonly call disease. Realistically, mammals all develop disease throughout their lifetimes but they remain unaware of this fact because the immune system recognizes the threat and eliminates it. The long term effect of chronic fear on the immune system can be extremely damaging.

For some, becoming aware of fear and changing the response to it has brought about a lessening of disease. By taking a deep breath, pausing and reflecting, one can identify a negative belief system and replace it with a positive, loving belief system that can remedy problems before they escalate.

The Asch experiments were a series of studies published in the 1950s that demonstrated the power of conformity in groups. Experiments led by Solomon Asch asked groups of students to participate in a “vision test.” In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates of the experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the others’ behavior.

The participants, the real subjects and the confederates, were all seated in a classroom. They were asked a variety of questions about lines printed on cards, such as how long is line A compared to the an everyday object, which line was longer than the other, which lines were the same length, etc. The group was told to announce their answers to each question out loud.

The confederates always provided their answers before the study participant, and always gave the same answer as each other. They answered a few questions correctly but eventually began providing incorrect responses.

Asch hypothesized that the majority of people would not conform to something obviously wrong. However, when surrounded by individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, participants provided incorrect responses on a high proportion of the questions. Seventy-five percent of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.

Variations of the basic paradigm tested how many confederates were necessary to induce conformity, examining the influence of just 1 confederate and as many as 15 confederates. Results indicate that 1 confederate has virtually no influence and 2 confederates have only a small influence. When 3 or more confederates are present, the tendency to conform is relatively stable.

The egg of Li Chun refers to a Chinese folk belief that it is much easier to balance an egg on a smooth surface during Li Chun, the official first day of spring in the Chinese lunar calendar which usually falls on February 4 or 5, than at any other time of the year. Balancing fresh chicken eggs on their broad end was a traditional Li Chun ritual in China.

In 1945 Life magazine reported on an egg-balancing craze among the population of Chungking, on that year’s Li Chu. That article and its follow-ups started a similar egg-balancing mania in the United States, but transposed to the astronomical vernal equinox in March. Japanese newspapers picked up the story in 1947. In 1978, New York artist Donna Henes started organizing egg-balancing ceremonies with the stated goal to bring about world peace and international and harmony.

As far as science knows, no physical influence of other celestial bodies on the egg can affect its balance as required by the folk belief. Gravitational and electromagnetic forces, in particular, are considerably weaker and steadier than the forces created by the person’s hand and breathing.

In 1947, Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya verified experimentally that eggs in fact can be balanced with ease at any time of the year. He noticed that the shell of an egg usually has many small bumps and dimples, so that, by turning the egg in different directions, it can be made to touch a flat surface on three points at once. It is not hard to find an orientation such that the triangle spanned by the three contact points lies right under the egg’s center of mass, which is the condition for balancing any object. Of course, balancing an egg on a rough surface is easy too, for the same reason.

Martin Gardner also observed that if you are convinced that an egg will balance more easily on a certain day you will try a little harder, be more patient, and use steadier hands. If you believe that eggs won’t balance on other days, this belief is transmitted subconsciously to your hands.

Technological singularity refers to the hypothesis that technological progress will become extremely fast, and so make the future unpredictable and qualitatively different from today. Although technological progress has been accelerating, it has been limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain, which has not changed significantly for millennia. However, with the increasing power of computers and other technologies, it might be possible to build a machine that is fundamentally more intelligent than humans.

If such a machine were built, then the machine itself could build a more intelligent machine. If the machine is more intelligent than humans, then presumably it would be better at building a more intelligent machine. The more intelligent machine would then be better at building an even more intelligent machine. This process might continue exponentially, with ever more intelligent machines making bigger increments to the intelligence of the next machine.

Superhuman intelligences could have goals inconsistent with human survival. When we create the first superintelligent entity, we might make a mistake and give it goals that lead it to annihilate humankind, assuming its enormous intellectual advantage gives it the power to do so. For example, we could tell it to solve a mathematical problem, and it might turn all the matter in the solar system into a giant calculating device, in the process killing the person who asked the question.

Many prominent technologists and academics dispute the plausibility of the notion of a technological singularity. Belief in the idea is based on a naive understanding of what intelligence is. As an analogy, imagine we had a computer that could design new computers faster than itself. It might accelerate the rate of improvements for a while, but in the end there are limits to how big and fast computers can run. We would end up in the same place, we would just get there a bit faster.

A perspective is the choice of a context or a reference, or the result of the choice, from which to sense, categorize, measure or codify experience, cohesively forming a coherent belief, typically for comparing with another. One may further recognize a number of subtly distinctive meanings, close to those of paradigm, point of view, reality tunnel, or worl view.

To choose a perspective is to choose a value system and, unavoidably, an associated belief system. When we look at a business perspective, we are looking at a monetary based value system and belief. When we look at a human perspective, it is a more social value system and its associated beliefs.

In social psychology one would talk in terms of the other person’s point of view when soliciting or motivating the other person to do something for you. Being able to see the other person’s point of view is one of Henry Ford’s advice towards being successful in business. “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own”.

Perspection, a related concept, signifies the ability to inspect one’s own perception, or the perceive another individual’s inspection.