Monday, May 17, 2010

The amazing ability of otherwise rational people to be fooled by magical thinking

You might think from the title that this is an anti religion post. It's not.
I am gobsmacked on a daily basis by folks who think that things like national borders and money are real, concrete things. They are no more real than the words i am typing are. These words are symbols, they represent an unspoken agreement between you and i in order to share ideas. But that doesn't make them real. I could type the word sportscar or steak or toothbrush, but none of those things will appear. You can draw whatever lines on a map you want, but it wonk make an impenatrable crack in the earth appear. If people think the piece of paper with a dead president on it is just a piece of paper, then it won't spend anywhere.
Perhaps that is the point. If we hold on to magical thoughts like 'i have x amount of money' or 'my country, sweet land of liberty' then they don't have to admit to the giant con game we've all been played by.

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