We Believe What We Believe to Be Real, Not What is Real

I am starting here by posting a call for Airplane Behavior from you. I've not done this before, so you can be sure I am serious. No inappropriate laughter and no tantrums. When we fly on an airplane, we act like big boys and girls. Period.

For those who don't know, when a parent demands airplane behavior it is Defcon 1: the this-is-not-a-drill moment for childhood restraint.

The parent cannot cry wolf with this. And the child must know that sitting still is the scheduled activity for today. Temper tantrums, attacks of shpilkes and repeated importuning will bring Old Testament style punishment as surely as the tide will rise. No appeals to angels will be honored. Sorry.


When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal there was a rash of vigilante murders. Mobs roughing up thieves was not frequent, but it was also not unusual. Deadly beatings were extremely rare. So the murders were notewothy, as was the accused crime: penis theft. (Airplane behavior!)

Looks like it isn't unique to. From an article in Reuters, -

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Nothing in my experience suggests that the alleged crime is possible. This is clearly immaterial.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

The author says the accused were arrested for their own protection. Congolese police wanted to prevent the lethal frenzy that overtook Ghana a decade ago when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs.

The social dynamic here should be familiar to anyone who has heard of the Salem Witch Trials. Witch frenzies were often an expression of insecurity brought on by xenophobia. Creepy old women. The insufficiently pious. Foreigners. People wearing gold rings. All it takes to rally a torch bearing mob pretty much anywhere is confrontation with the strange and an accusation of crime that is as horrible as it is difficult to verify.

Following cultural conventions is a valuable adaptation in social animals. As we saw in the post about Williams disease, incomprehension of normal cultural conventions can even be sign of disease.

So when the herd begins to run, what will keep the proto-human from running too? What insulates a person from susceptibility to suggestibility? I would prefer that the wee-one never participate in beating a man to death for any reason, and especially so for the impossible crime of penis theft (Impossible short of a Lorena Bobbitt type intervention of course)

But...

If the herd spooks and the future proto-human stands there in the middle of the veld going, "Now guys lets not lose our heads. It might be a lion, or it might just be wind or a shadow. There's no way he could be stealing penises," that isn't too bright either. Nine times out of ten you may be right. But one time you may be dinner.

So I figure the important task is learning balance and discretion. But I don't think evolution is on our side here. Which do you think is more likely: evolution favors those who conserve their energy when the herd tries to burn the penis thieves or evolution favors those spill their energy in the soil every time they see a shadow or a gust of wind jostling some branches?

If history is a guide, there is torch bearer inside you, me, all of us, waiting to be unleashed by rumors of a penis thief.