From: Jasper
Date: 5/9/03
Time: 3:55:05 AM
Remote User:
Charlie,
I seized on the phrase “choose to believe” because it gave me the chance to say something I’ve wanted to say for years, not because I didn’t understand what YOU meant. Please forgive me for not even trying to make THAT clear. I was referring to the phrase itself. When most people use it, that’s what they mean and they don’t give the implications of it a second thought.
As for the excuses…
When I was in clay modeling school I did an experiment with a classmate named Rodney. Like everyone in the school, Rodney scored exceptionally high on the test that got us there. He said that he always did well on written tests because he was psychic. He said that he had been tested for ESP and he did exceptionally well on that test, too. His best success was with is sister who also scored high on the ESP test, but he said that he could usually do it with anyone that he felt he was in tune with.
Rodney and I got along great so I asked him if he would try it with me. He said that there were actually several tests. The fastest and easiest one in our situation was for one of us to draw something and the other one to see if he could reproduce it without looking.
We sat at opposite ends of a table and stacked some objects in front of us. I drew a box house with windows and a door. Rodney drew a dead tree and a door. I drew a table. Rodney drew a table. Then I thought, maybe that’s what everybody does and he knows it, so I decided to draw something that he could never deduce. I decided to draw a pig.
Rodney looked up at me and frowned. “Do something else,” he said, “I can’t draw pigs.”
That did it for me but the people around us came away exactly where they started. The believers were convinced. The non-believers weren’t. One of them concluded that we had staged the test because Rodney’s drawings were TOO accurate. One said that his drawings weren’t accurate because he didn’t draw a house the first time and because he could have made a lucky guess with the table because we were sitting at table. The pig didn’t count because I didn’t draw it. I don’t remember all of the EXCUSES the none-believers used for remaining none-believers, but you get the idea.
Ten years later I repeated the experiment with a none-believer named Stan as the receiver. I was again the sender. I drew a push broom. Stan drew a house painter’s brush. He called that trial a miss. I drew a wagon wheel. He drew a wagon wheel. He called that one inconclusive because we were in a studio full of cars. I drew a lit candle in a holder. He drew a lit candle. He called that a miss because he didn’t get the holder. I drew a closed book. He drew an open book (how ironic!). He turned red, declared that it was a silly test and walked away upset.
Stan couldn’t choose to believe that what had happened didn’t happen. But he could choose not to think about it. That’s what he did. –Jasper