Yes, you’re extremely intelligent. I’ll admit it. You knew from the very start that, like most of the Homo Sapiens family, I’d be the first to welcome you into my house.
The host for your tingling hints that I’m right. That my opinion ought to count as the correct one. I don’t even want to imagine how my life would have gone if I questioned everything critically. How unpleasant and annoying would that be?
Yes, I’m the easiest to deceive, and the first in line. And no, that’s not just my opinion. These are the results of groups of scientists who asked themselves one question: who falls for you, and who gives in fastest?
Oh man, what a brutal insight — and not just in one study.
Do you know how good life feels when your own opinion is taken as the truth? Well, it was and is pleasant for me, because comfort is a pleasant way to live. The highway of the false assumption has many lanes, and it’s fast.
And now I’m supposed to part ways with you, Deception? I’m supposed to undeceive myself, voluntarily?
Oh, damn it!
Can you even begin to imagine how tiresome my life will become because of this? These constant doubts, this mistrust toward my own opinions or my own assumptions — how treacherous is that. Or not?
I didn’t pick my opinions from the tree of knowledge. No, they grew organically. The ingredients: a conversation over breakfast, a headline, a feeling that felt right. I listen, read, discuss, and let the whole thing simmer for a while, until it’s pleasant enough for my palate to savour. What could possibly be wrong with that? After all, you taught me this culinary art over the decades. The mush of feeling-based assumptions is always a spa with delightful scents and massages for the mind.
But then they came strutting around the corner and spat in my mush of contentment. The critics. The scientists. The devil’s advocates.
Their weapons were nasty and passive-aggressive, to say the least. Sometimes they’d spent years preparing for our meeting. Especially the scientifically-minded ones never held back on the facts. They’d band together, toss a question into the lab, and pounce on it to find answers. Anyone who sciences long enough will eventually find something.
That’s annoying and unsettling for my everyday life, my dear friend, whom I’d like to part ways with.
Hey, hey — calm down. OK? We had a solid, feel-good relationship, and we shouldn’t poison it now with negative adjectives. Agreed? Of course we’ll stay friends, but you’re no longer my great love. I’ll still invite you over now and then, to exchange a few words. Though — I never shared anything with you, or taught you anything. We had a pretty one-way relationship, don’t you think?
Who’s my great love now?
That I certainly won’t tell you straight out, dear Deception. I know you and your character a little too well now, and that makes me cautious. I know — or assume — that you’ll make a move on my new flame right away, to deceive her too.
Well, you’ll break your deceiver’s teeth on this one, my dear. Because my new love is armed to the teeth.
What, what her weapons are?
She belongs to the group of the undeceived — though she doesn’t yet know I’m about to call her by name: Science. And that gives her an extreme amount of work. But she doesn’t mind, because she has a passionate relationship with work. For her, it’s not some negatively charged chore, but her engine, her passion. She tests, discards, starts over again — and doesn’t call that a setback, she calls it Monday. No, she’s never among the frustrated when she’s fallen for an error. Quite the opposite. She leans back smiling and says, “Oh, thanks for the insight.”
Now, how positive is that, my dear?
Alright then, I’ll let you in on who’s won my heart: Engine Science.
One day, a long time ago, I asked myself why the people working there — these scientists — keep getting deceived, over and over. That’s one thing. But what they do on top of that — oh man — they even admit it publicly. Masochistic, I thought at first. Until it dawned on me: that’s not self-harm. That’s the punchline.
The door of the mysterious.
I see scientists as little children who rescued their curiosity all the way into adulthood. They belong to the group of the eternally-questioning. But asking alone is nowhere near enough for them. Otherwise they’d just be grumblers.
They take on the not-knowing and start digging. Why. How come. What for. How else. And similarly motivated words belong to their daily repertoire. If they get the funding to keep researching these questions, then things really take off.
Ooh, isn’t it fantastic, when people get paid to sink their teeth — skin, hair, and mind — into one thing.
But they don’t just do this in the lab or the study. No, they trumpet their findings out into the world. Once, all around the globe. These trumpet blasts get handed out to other scientists.
Good, right?
Wait, it gets better. Then they invite each and every one of these scientific addicts to take their theses and findings under the magnifying glass, the microscope, and their own insights — to criticize them, or tear them apart.
What on earth are they trying to achieve? Did I already use the word masochism?
Why don’t these people just keep their findings to themselves? Why do they work together with complete strangers who share a similar passion?
What?
Ah, they don’t want to be deceived by their own results? And they want to get to the bottom of the truth — the facts?
These researchers of the international kind are the most joyful among the curious. They want to unriddle riddles and un-deceive people. In the best sense of eliminated deception.
Sorry, my dear, that just had to be said.
Yes, we’ll stay friends. Distant friends.
And if you do reach out to me again: I won’t open the door as quickly as I used to.
Christian
Swiss-Canadian Storyfinder.
