Brain Food #749
Not everything has to be taken seriously
Thoughts of the day
At some point in the tale of Pinocchio, the fairy tells the wooden boy:
“Lies, my dear boy, are found out immediately, because they are of two sorts. There are lies that have short legs, and lies that have long noses. Your lie, as it happens, is one of those that have a long nose.”
The fairy implies that the short-legged lies will be outrun by the truth, the long-nosed lies will be obvious to everyone and ridicule the person that lied. Lies will, eventually, harm the liar.
Lying is one of the most universally condemned acts across cultures and religions. Brain imaging studies suggest it takes more cognitive effort to lie. Instead of simply sharing a truth, we need to think of the truth and come up with a plausible alternative to it.
Still, we lie on a daily basis (though the exact number of lies we tell daily varies depending on the research one looks at, ranging from 2 to 200). We have declared this the post-truth era. And there are also the lies we tell ourselves, though this topic is probably something that can be saved for some other post.
What is the point, then, of a day that permits lies? If lying is an inevitable yet unfortunate part of human nature, that is considered unethical, immoral, deceitful, then it becomes something suppressed within us. So today, April Fools’, simply becomes a day to have fun, and to remember that not everything has to be taken seriously.
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