Regardless of your feelings about the International Flat Earth Society, they were certainly not the first, nor the last, to engage in motivated reasoning. Throughout history, seemingly rational people have used motivated reasoning to explain myths. For example, the Viking warriors wore horns on their helmets, sharks don’t get cancer and tomatoes are vegetables (all not true by the way). One myth that invoked my own youthful motivated reasoning was the notion of a genie in a lamp – that somehow a very small 2,000 year-old magic woman could live in a bottle, reappear outside the bottle looking as a youthful, normal-sized Barbara Eden, and be able to provide the owner of the bottle with anything imaginable.
Laugh if you’d like but there were five seasons of superbly acted reruns to persuade a certain kindergartener of the possibility that even though he seemed small, there was a way to gain some control over the big world.
But eventually the kindergartener grows up and magical thinking is set aside in favor of that which is rational and determined. Still one can’t help but have fleeting moments when the thought of a genie’s magic would be...well, very helpful. A moment thinking, “if only…” and then a magical, irrational idea to follow. If only spinach tasted like apple pie…if only I knew then what I know now…if only Miami Beach was next to Osage Beach.
In the spirit of motivated reasoning and magical thought, I ask you to imagine that for one day there is a Mercy genie who could grant you a single wish. The wish can only happen within our hospitals and clinics and must make your job or our Ministry better in some way.
I'll help you get started. “If only…” Email me the rest at alan.scarrow@mercy.net (unless you are a member of the International Flat Earth Society in which case you can send me an encrypted letter – just to be safe).
