Friday, January 23, 2015

“What makes you so sure?”

Some questions:

What attracts you to one person, but not to another? Why do you have “down” days when there’s nothing really wrong? What mechanism enables you to change your mind? Is morality built into your psyche from birth — knowing right from wrong — or is it something you acquire? How do your feet tell your brain that they’re tired?

Has mental telepathy any basis in science? Astrology? Clairvoyance? How does your brain distinguish chocolate from vanilla? Where do your conscious thoughts go when you sleep? How does time work to heal grief? Are the colors you see the same colors that other people see? Yes? What makes you so sure?
[From a letter pitching the magazine Psychology Today, many years old. I clipped these two paragraphs and kept them in a folder. I found and still find them funny. They sound to me like a parody of God in the Book of Job.]

comments: 5

Fresca said...

Heh. And they could add, "Why don't you do the things you want but do the things you hate?" (Paul, you know.)

Elaine said...

You know, those are all great questions!....just, that magazine didn't address them very well...

Anonymous said...

"...like a parody of God in the Book of Job." I don't see the parody. Given the various dictionary definitions, would there not be some intention to mimic via satire or humor in the questions? "What makes you so sure" alone seems more the role of Satan than God in Job, unless you read it differently than I just have done.

Michael Leddy said...

I don’t think there’s any intention involving the Book of Job. But it sounds to me like a parody — a barrage of sundry questions calling attention to the limitations of he one being questioned.

Anonymous said...

Okay, I'll dress up in my Sundry best. The delectable "limitations of he" makes me think of a possible parallel parody of "I am that I am." How about "he is what he is," a far more weak day Mundane and less than Sundry sermon.... As Beyond the Fringe sometimes said, "Same time next week?"