I Might Be Wrong About This

In my life I guess I’ve seen dozens of products come—and go—promising extraordinary results with weight-loss and weight-management. Fitness devices and programs and special shakes, vitamins and supplements, hypnosis audiotapes and herb-injected waist belts—the list goes on—make grandiose claims and lots of us fall for them. Thousands of books have been written and self-proclaimed gurus go on motivational speaking tours garnering sold-out audiences of easily-conned humans searching for a magical method for making and keeping their bodies healthy—without the burden of willpower or self-control.

Yet, when you talk to anyone about the subject, most people—even the overweight ones who are perpetually hopeful for the existence of a holy grail solution to it all— recognize that a program of diet management and regular exercise is actually the only reasonable answer.

Also, enough evidence exists to show the overwhelmingly horrendous odds of anyone winning the Powerball or some other mega-lottery, yet millions of people spend money they don’t have, in stubborn defiance of the statistics, week after week, hoping for the miracle of a financial windfall. Many who win ultimately arrive back at the daily grind—or worse—unable to comprehend that, no matter what the amount of the winnings, it is not an infinite cash supply. Yet, people continue to play.

Con-artists like Bernie Madoff and Gary Gauthier fleeced millions from greedy—but unsavvy—“investors,” people who supposedly have reasonable knowledge of what they were getting into. Blinded by the lure of even greater fortunes, lots of wealthy people lost everything they had to these types of promotional wizards. But risky financial investment is at an all-time high.

Why are so many of us eager to believe in fairy tales?

We live in a society rife with competition. Beginning at an early age, we are taught that there are lines that establish for us how we should live our lives. Good versus Evil is the big one, and the variety of religions on planet Earth exist largely to identify these elements and to provide a road map for our lives that will help us avoid, presumably, Evil. Devoid of any evidence to support the stories and claims contained in these religions’ ancient texts, they are nonetheless pounded into our immature heads, creating a confusing and insecure realm whose sole existence relies on the majority of us believing it. Most followers don’t actually practice what is preached, but they sure as hell believe it.

As such, “Good v. Evil” stands at the pinnacle of the struggle of Life On Earth, and is the overall theme in Literature, Theater, the Arts in general, and Television and the Movies. Early on, these artistic media relied heavily upon religious influence for their text and subtext, with heroes who win and villains who either have a change of heart or suffer the consequences. As these media have evolved, we habitually search within them for the “whodunits” and compartmentalize the players according to their position on the “Good v. Evil” scale. The lines are frequently blurry.

And at the heart of it all is blind belief in a mythical idea with serious implications at the end of This Life.

Given that “foundation,” when added to diminished and diminishing societal importance placed on critical analysis or deeper thought, it’s easy to see, for me, how we can be so effortlessly manipulated when it comes to all these other scams.

But what is more puzzling is the reaction to cognitive dissonance by one who steadfastly believes, and it has to do with both pride and a comfort zone from which few are courageous enough to emerge.

When we stubbornly continue to believe something in the face of overwhelming evidence, we are exhibiting an emotional response that is tightly tied to our primal need for security and survival. Once we become accustomed to acting or thinking or believing a certain way—and we have our continued survival and even prosperity upon which to stack it—anything that is outside our established pathway is suspect.

One way to get people onboard something new is to stretch your arm out and ask one to survey the multitude of others who, like you, also had reservations but were brave enough to step out and take a chance, all with satisfying results.

The herding mentality.

And deep in the confines of your unconscious, you are reminded of all those about you when you were young who behaved in similar fashion, with identical habits that led to acceptable outcomes, and you decide to take a bite.

At some point in the future, after you’ve shelled out your money and devoted your much-more-valuable time on some scam or false prophet, you discover that there is no multitude, there is a handful of actors who’ve been paid or otherwise manipulated to lie to you. You realize you’ve been had. Do you stand up before the world and say, “Yes, I was lied to and I believed it and that makes me stupid.” Nope. You rationalize your behavior. You embellish your own story to your friends and family. You say the same lie to yourself. You may, in terrible need of approval, try to get others to believe the lie.

And it’s not just about weight-loss or the lottery or big-money investing. It’s in politics and the education system and the economy and immigration and war and the media and international relations and life in general. In a competitive civilization where “winners” are celebrated and “losers” are vilified, even when we observe that we lost we say we won. Even in the face of irrefutable evidence and statistics that prove we lost, we say we won. We’re winners. We say the evidence and statistics are wrong or originated from a biased source or are somehow “rigged” against us.

Which is not only silly, but actually an impediment to our own future actual success. Because success—winning—teaches us nothing; it is only through failure that we learn. I call failure a luxury, and describe it as people having had the good fortune to fail. And I’m not the only one. History points to myriad inventors who were very transparent about the journey to success through failure. We could all learn an awful lot if we found a way to drop our defenses, admit when we’re wrong and concede that another was right.

But that’s a tough sell in a world made up of thin, healthy people who already know everything.