The willing suspension of disbelief

Magic, of course, isn’t real. It requires cooperation from the audience and the magician to suspend critical thinking and skepticism to allow the trick to work. Because if we put on our lab coats, we can dissect and show the audience that the magician didn’t saw anyone in half. It was an illusion.

I love magic. Like most, I want to be entertained. But what we are seeing in our culture today is the continued suspension of critical thinking in exchange for distractions. Most don’t want the responsibility of being in charge, to be accountable, to look foolish when we make mistakes. Most of all we don’t want to be free. We often trade in compliance for safety, reliability, predictability and a pay check. Not everyone. But many will.

Indeed, it’s easy for human beings to be misled and manipulated by others. To be swallowed up by the extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. Each of us still has the fear of missing out. And we are not above mistakes of the past reguardless of the technology and history available to us.

Illusions are so seductive preciesly because we can suspend our reality. The true believer, in fact, has given their agency away because what someone is promising is better than the options in front of them. Which is how people are able to do unimaginable horrors of the world. “I’m just following orders.”

So the question I have is this: Which beliefs have we been taught are misleeding us? Which ones do you hold dear were handed to us and were never properly scrutinized? After all, we might have trusted these people to show us the “right” path to follow–it’s possible they got it wrong because they trusted someone else that showed them the way things are done.