| Mockery and Lies Day |
[01 Apr 2008|11:10am] |
If one created in fiction a day each year on which the residents of some alien culture deliberately engendered distrust, discomfort, and disappointment in their friends and fellow residents for their own amusement, it might be difficult to be convincing. Yet here we are. I've hated the first of April since childhood. It is a day on which cynicism is celebrated, trust is redefined as gullibility, and the gentlest and most innocent among us are made objects of mockery and contempt.
Oddly it never occurs to me, if a lie is told me in all earnestness, to distrust the teller no matter how much I mistrust his data. Consequently I am, as you may imagine, convinced the teller believes the lie, even if I don't. This has, more than once in the course of a long life, made me a laughingstock ... and it's worse because I cannot always see the humor in having believed that someone was not deliberately lying. (The joke seems funnier to most people if the victim of it has actually gone to some trouble or expense because of his confidence in the teller. Fortunately I've always caught on before I could be that amusing.)
There are amusing aspects, and Onion-style articles published that would have no existence without this uncomfortable tradition, but while I have quite enjoyed a few of them, I'm not sure they balance the pain I know the day is causing too many too-trusting innocents.
|
|