Feng Shui

[Kjell201]

Just read a book on feng shui, which i reviewed on my blog (businessandpoker.com).

In short, I wrote that I believe in the fact that how your room looks can be linked to how your life. I believe that changing stuff in your home, for example getting your desk more organized, can change your life somewhat.

However, I have a problem with all the "paranormal" stuff that Feng Shui is. The author basically says that cleaning up certain areas of your home is going to increase your chances of winning the lottery. Somehow I don't believe that a little mess in the corner of my room is going to make me lose set under set more often. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

So, do you believe 100% in Feng Shui, just some of the stuff, or do you think it's 100% bs and that the way your home/rooms look have no relation whatsoever with your life, etc.

[jstnrgrs]

I agree with everything you just said.

[sightless]

http://imdb.com/title/tt0672530/

When this show talked about it, they did a good job exposing it as [censored] O_O

[Blarg]

I think that it's a mixed bag, like a lot of Chinese pop religion/philosophy. There are strong insights mixed with some baloney and sometimes elaborated into the preposterous.

Some things match Western examinations of human psychology, about how people respond positively to balanced proportions and find a lack of balance unsettling and offpputting. This is an understanding of design principles mixed with an understanding of some of the psychology behind some of those principles.

For instance, feng shui frequently recommends placing a desk so that it faces a door or has a balanced place in a room with visibility to all its areas. Western psychology has found that males have a very strong tendency to try to sit facing open doors, on the one hand, and having their backs to walls, on the other. There are reasons for this that you can probably intuit easily on your own, and feng shui is strong on intuitions about how many feels most comfortable in his surroundings. You can describe that in terms of psychology, design, or "energy" or "chi," however you like, but we're dealing with the same thing basically. And in participating in its own way in that discussion, feng shui can have some interesting insights, if you can get past their elaboration into things like five-element theory, the paqua, and the like.

Sometimes it seems like Chinese mysticism has a surprising amount of good in it, but it's so often buried in near impenetrable layers of tradition and baloney -- which the traditional Chinese can worship at least as much as any underlying truth -- that it can become almost unrecognizable and maybe even forget or not care about the vitality of the insight that originally propelled it.

So in short, different types of feng shui can be more or less buried in bullsh*t, but there are some very strong and workable insights into design and human psychology buried there, if you're willing to dig. But I wouldn't blame anyone if they weren't.

And, there are different schools of it, some which seem a lot hokier than others.

[sushijerk]

Feng Shui was introduced to the west so interior designers and decorators can pry large amounts of money from white people during the tech boom. I'm pretty sure they're still making good cash catering to hipster restaruants and stores.

The origins of feng shui is that it was a tool used by ancient architects to explain the benefits of efficient design and utility to the masses who might otherwise not understand it. Many underlying principles were the are the same ones used in architecture and real estate selection today, but explained through the guise of "aligning chi" and whatnot.

Any claim that "feng shui-ing" the objects on your desk will shift certain fundatmental forces in your favor is total BS. Not even Chinese grandmas will fall for that crap. It is a shame that the western market is so easily seduced by eastern mysticism.

[prohornblower]

a lot of feng shui is legitimate

[fearless]

" [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]organized people are to lazy to look for stuff"