> if you were to go against your duty as the head of NASA, Carl Sagan isn't going to rise from the grave and smite you for your transgression.
It's like swearing something 'on your mother's grave'. That's not something done because zombie mothers will rise up to enforce anything. It's supposed to signify that you hold great reverence for your mother and that your conviction is as strong as that respect. Swearing on the grave of your mother and lying would be dishonoring her and betraying the reverence you supposedly held. Swearing on Carl Sagan's book is expressing that the new director has great respect for Sagan (or at least that particular work) and that she'll treat her oath with the same level of respect. I think it's pretty appropriate given the role.
> That's not something done because zombie mothers will rise up to enforce anything.
This was done in cultures where people really believed their deceased ancestors were watching them and judging their every move, and that in the future they’d either see their ancestors in paradise, or they wouldn’t.
We just kept doing it long after those beliefs became uncool, like a lot of other vestiges of our religious past.
> It's like swearing something 'on your mother's grave'.
But they don’t swear people in over their mothers grave. If they did I hope everyone would agree that it’s meaningless, unless that person actually believed in some power of his dead mother.
People definitely do not agree with what you’re saying. Not everyone thinks that swearing an oath on something is only meaningful if that thing has some kind of power.
To elaborate on this, if I swear on my mother's grave, I'm pinning my respect for the oath to my respect for my dead mother. If I violate the oath, I'm also violating something I consider sacred. My mother never has to find out for me to feel the consequences.
Probably this doesn't work on everybody. Even if it only works on 5%, it's essentially free so why not?
Yes, and I think if we follow that scenario further, we can imagine ways it would play out. “Alice swore an oath on her mother’s grave, and then violated that oath? Wow, Alice really can’t be trusted.”
The oath is a symbolic ritual that communicates something to other people around you.
It's like swearing something 'on your mother's grave'. That's not something done because zombie mothers will rise up to enforce anything. It's supposed to signify that you hold great reverence for your mother and that your conviction is as strong as that respect. Swearing on the grave of your mother and lying would be dishonoring her and betraying the reverence you supposedly held. Swearing on Carl Sagan's book is expressing that the new director has great respect for Sagan (or at least that particular work) and that she'll treat her oath with the same level of respect. I think it's pretty appropriate given the role.