The Grand Illusion
“Magic Thinking” is the idea that belief can change the physical world. Now, I’d be the first to admit that someone’s beliefs can motivate them to accomplish great things, but in the end it is the accomplishments that can change the world, not the beliefs. Belief is the first step, and at least in my experience, the easiest.
Yet today, all over the United States, we’ve had a resurgence of “magic thinking” totally divorced from reality.
How can a culture that promotes Viagra, movies and television with intense sexual content, that supplies its young people with private transportation and funds, and that now has the largest gap between the age of physical maturity and financial and social maturity honestly believe that abstinence is going to be practiced for ten years or more by a significant fraction of the young population? It isn’t; and the facts show it, but legislators across the country continue to push abstinence as the solution and to reject any form of realistic sex education. But then again, perhaps Twitter or TikTok might increase abstinence, but not the rhetoric of rightwing fundamentalist legislators.
Thirty to thirty-five percent of the American population continues to believe that the 2020 Presidential election was “stolen,” despite study after study, audit after audit, and election officials from both major parties declaring that it was a free and fair election and that the results are accurate.
Scientific study after study has also shown there’s no significant difference in overall mental ability of human beings linked to skin color, but significant percentages of populations in the U.S., Japan, China, and elsewhere believe such a difference exists, when all the evidence links the vast majority of differences to nutrition and income.
There’s a simple fact that all too many “magic thinkers” don’t understand: The strength of one’s beliefs does not make something so. All the denying in the world isn’t going to change physical facts. Unfortunately, magic thinking can lead to riots and storming the Capitol, or to unwanted and neglected children born out of wedlock, or to massacres of people who are different.
Unfortunately, these magic thinkers need this magic nonsense in order to function. The realization that they were wrong about their magic would cause them to crumble like the poor family who committed suicide because they didn’t want to live in a world where the former president wasn’t in charge. These people can’t deal with a world where they aren’t better than others because of an insignificant trait.
The hard part is how to move them to a different space where they don’t need so much magical thinking to survive. I wish I knew the answer. For most it seems once they embrace magical thinking they can’t go back. The hardest part is that they teach it to the children.
In addition to the list of temptations, add delinquent parents that don’t do anything to keep some of those away, probably set a bad example themselves, and fail to emphasize the PRACTICAL negative consequences of ignoring traditional values.
For the vast majority of people that engage in any sort of problematic behavior, odds are their parents did not effectively teach them not to, esp. in the first five years. So of course the socialists want to begin their indoctrinations at about 3 or 4, which will probably not lead to better outcomes than kids that lack proper parenting, let alone those who have it.
And I think we need to double down on consequences in many areas (not just this one) rather than trying to make it easier to escape them, as with the nutty DAs that don’t want to incarcerate, as if everyone (or at least everyone in that meets ideologically rather than criminologically defined criteria) can be rehabilitated. NYC with zero-tolerance wasn’t too bad, but with free-for-all, is not looking good at all. Repeat for most big cities.
So long as police are effectively above the law (because of qualified immunity combined with the blue line), zero tolerance policies have resulted in racist policies, harassment, and violation of civil rights (how was stop-and-frisk not “unreasonable search and seizure).
If qualified immunity was completely removed, that would make the situation a bit better, and maybe zero tolerance could work, but I would propose a second change to really make sure. Update the jury trial process so the jury has three specific options: (a) unanimously guilty, (b) non-unanimous not-guilty, (c) unanimously not-guilty. If (c) is the verdict, the arresting officers and prosecutor are automatically guilty of the crimes they tried to push on the accused, and have to be sentenced accordingly. That would try to balance the absolute power officers of the law hold, where they can take a human life, and maybe that would push us back closer to 1769 doctrine of “the law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer.” Because if you can’t convince 1 out of 12 jurors that the charges have merit, then the state shouldn’t have pushed it forward.
I like the concept, but the verbiage would cause issues. Not guilty doesn’t mean that you think they are innocent, just that you think it is “possible” they are not guilty. Civil cases have a different burden of proof. Perhaps a “unanimously innocent” verdict would accomplish the stated goal.
Depends on how you implement zero tolerance. Simply being there is not a crime, but ANY crime is a crime, and unless there are clear mitigating circumstances (of which being poor or a member of a disadvantaged group is NOT one, but neither should it be treated as itself suspicious), nobody and no crime should get a free pass; and simply trusting to appear for everything less than the most serious crimes is crazy (although a mere ticket for jaywalking is ok).
If there isn’t enough prison space, build more prisons; and change the law or amend the Constitution or whatever it takes so that ALL violent felons given an exceptionally high standard of evidence (beyond a reasonable prospect of future contradiction) can be executed, preferably publicly. Execution may not be a deterrent if it’s not a predictable consequence, but probably would be if it were; and either way, the dead are permanently removed from society and have zero percent recidivism. If you have to wait until you have a straight white male death row person to execute with each batch to prove what it’s NOT about, that’s fine, I’m ok with executing more crooks whether or not they look like me if they’re actually guilty.
“For fear of his yasa and punishment his followers were so well disciplined that during his reign no traveller, so long as he was near his army, had need of guard or patrol on any stretch of road ; and, as is said by way of hyperbole, a woman with a golden vessel on her head might walk alone without fear or dread.” (in the Mongol Empire) NOT to condone authoritarianism, but with a manageably understandable (not huge) set of laws, that would be the ideal outcome of consistent enforcement (possible if the resources required to enforce matched that which there was to enforce, little executive discretion needed, at least prior to trial; clemency later remains if a different understanding emerges), that any non-criminal could safely be in any public place even if they were an obvious target of opportunity.
Crushing the criminals would provide HUGE opportunity for the honest poor and under-included; underserved education would improve, jobs would return to underserved communities, etc.
Being religious vs. magic thinking is the difference between faith and blind faith.
Sorry, but I do not see any difference.
I know some religious people who exhibit rational thought.
Many people exhibit rational thought…until it comes to their pet delusion.
Okay then.
Belief can make it so. The Placebo effect is a recognized reality in drug effectiveness trials. It has been rigorously tested via statistical analysis. It is not, however, magically based.
Placebo effect is more likely based on Hope rather than magic thinking or belief.
To quote the late, great Robert A. Heinlein, “The fact that a person is willing to die for something does not make it true. And vice versa.”