The TrueTalk Blog: Hanging Skepticism

What do we know about stories?

We know that they are not true...that they are lies.

We know this and yet we spend most of our lives listening to them. Telling them. Believing them.

Why?

Because we need them. Like we need air, water and food.

Well, jeez, what prompted this outburst?

Couple of things.

First, the Kentucky Derby. The Run For The Roses (was there ever a better name for a story than that?) was supposed to be a race between a few colts who'd proven their mettle this spring. Bellamy Road, the favorite, had romped to victory by unprecedented margins and logged the fastest time of any hopeful in Derby history, a remarkable 120 Beyer. Afleet Alex, marvelous as a two year-old, had overcome difficulties and shown himself ready for the Churchill challenge. Others loomed, but these two seemed head and shoulders the best.

The story's end?

The unheralded Giacomo won the Derby and delivered dizzying rewards to his backers. He gave them a return of $102.60 for a $2.00 win wager (the second greatest ROI in Derby history).

But if one had the foresight to pair Giacomo with the equally-surprising Closing Argument in a $2 Exacta bet (in which one predicts the first and second finishers of a Thoroughbred race), one would have collected an astonishing $9,814.80!

The even more prescient, who'd determined that these two unlikelies would finish ahead of the third-finishing Afleet Alex, and backed that belief with a $2 Trifecta ticket, would be in for a life-altering shock. That bet would have been rewarded with a $133,134.80 payoff!! Staggering.

But the best was yet to come.

The biggest single-race allure at the racetrack is the Superfecta. This diabolical exotic was created to seduce the bettor into believing that he or she could actually predict the correct order of finish for the first four (!) horses in a race. Not just determine which would win. Not only guess which'd finish second. Not only to predict the third choice. But also to divine which of these (in this case) 20 animals would stumble across the Finish Line fourth. Absurd.

Today, that happened to be a nondescript three year-old named Don't Get Mad. A few spectators (how many, I'm not sure) determined that this son of Stephen Got Even and Class On Class would, indeed, finish in fourth in this noble event. And they backed that determination with a $2 Superfecta ticket.

The result?

$1,728,507!

Is that a great story, or what?

Second, I just finished watching the HBO film, Warm Springs. The film portrayed incidents from Franklin Roosevelt's life immediately after being stricken with polio in 1924.

It brought tears to my eyes.

Why? Because I believed what I saw.

What did I see? A man overcoming a life-shattering tragedy, a man I knew to have later become one of a handful of the most influential people of the 20th century (along with his overwhelmingly strong and courageous wife, Eleanor.)

These two stories share some important elements, and differ in others.

Like all stories, they both require something extradordinary: in order to appreciate and enjoy them, we must suspend our disbelief. Suspending disbelief is a complex cognitive task. Here's what it requires.

In the case of today's Derby, we must have been able to imagine that the unlikeliest of events are possible; that the future can be different than the past; that the meek can inherit the earth.

In the case of FDR, we must have been able to believe that a moneyed dillettante could overcome the effects of a paralyzing disease and rise to the task of conquering the most concentrated form of evil ever to threaten modern civilization.

Both were longshots.

Both are lies.

Both of them came true.

Here's the truth: we need these lies to keep us alive.

If we strip ourselves of them, what do we have left?

PS - Like Hugh says.