The Uses of Delusion: Why It's Not

Always Rational to be Rational Stuart

Vyse
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The Uses of Delusion
 The Uses of Delusion
Why It’s Not Always Rational to be Rational
STUART VYSE
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
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© Stuart Vyse 2022
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vyse, Stuart, author.
Title: The uses of delusion : why it’s not always rational to be rational / Stuart Vyse.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021046186 (print) | LCCN 2021046187 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190079857 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190079871 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197621547 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Defense mechanisms (Psychology) | Delusions. | Self-deception.
Classification: LCC BF175.5.D44 V97 2022 (print) | LCC BF175.5.D44 (ebook) |
DDC 155.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046186
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046187
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190079857.001.0001
 In honor of
Howard Rachlin and Daniel M. Wegner
 Contents

1. Ridiculous Reason
2. A Bright Future in Sales
3. I Feel Fine
4. Things Unseen
5. Soul Mates
6. The Living Dead
7. Bedtime Stories
8. The Gangster Within
9. The Mind’s Best Trick
10. Odysseus in Rags

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
 1
Ridiculous Reason

To develop a thought’s meaning we need only determine what conduct it is

fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance.
—William James, “The Pragmatic Method”

In 1972, as I was starting graduate school, a friend died in a car

accident. He was a troubled man, a Vietnam veteran who never
quite settled into life after returning home from the war. Late at
night while his wife Susan slept in their bed, his car crashed into a
tree many miles away from where he should have been.
In the weeks that followed, a group of us spent a lot of time with
Susan. We took her out and taught her how to get drunk. We
hugged her. We tried to make sure she was with other people as
much as possible.
Susan worked in the university library. Her desk was at a window
seven floors up, and before her husband died, at the end of each
day, she would see him down below, walking to the library to pick
her up from work. Catching sight of him was her signal to put away
her things and go home.
One evening, months after his death, Susan told me that she still
looked down to the street near the end of each day, expecting to see
her husband walking toward the library. It wasn’t just a habit. She
was unwilling to accept that this man who survived a war had
somehow slipped away from her once he was safely back home.
“Sometimes I think he’s just going to walk through a door,” she
said.
There are times when we need a little delusion in our lives, and
death is often one of those times. In her memoir The Year of
Magical Thinking, Joan Didion described her experience of mourning
the sudden death of her husband:

On most surface levels I was rational. To the average observer I would have
appeared to fully understand that death was irreversible. I had authorized the
autopsy. I had arranged for the cremation. I had arranged for the ashes to be
taken to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.1

Yet Didion insisted on spending the first night after her husband’s
death alone, “so that he could come back.”2 Bringing her husband
back became the focus of the next several months, during which she
kept his shoes in the closet—because he would need them when he
returned.

To me, one of the most endearing of all human characteristics is our

propensity for paradoxical behavior. There is little doubt that we are
the most intelligent species this planet has produced, and yet, on an
hourly basis, completely normal people do things they know full well
they probably shouldn’t do. Others cling to ideas that they have
good reason to believe are false. Often, we have complete
awareness of our inconsistencies: “I know I probably shouldn’t do
this, but I can’t help it. I’m going to do it anyway.” In contrast, other
species seem enviably free of these conflicts. Dogs and cats do
things that seem utterly crazy to us, but their commitment to the
project is complete and uncomplicated. They don’t give it a second
thought.
This book is about some of these human paradoxes. It is about
beliefs we cling to and actions we take that don’t entirely make
sense—paradoxes that are, nonetheless, quite valuable because they
help us survive difficult times, navigate the social world around us,
and achieve our personal goals.
Like Didion, I am a rationalist most of the time. I am a behavioral
scientist who has published research on the psychology of
superstition and belief in astrology, and I write the “Behavior &
Belief” column for Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine “for science and
reason.” I’ve spent much of my career promoting the idea that logic
and evidence should be our guides. I believe our capacity for reason
has been essential to all of our greatest achievements and, if
humanity is to survive, we will need reason and evidence to get us
through. But slowly, over a period of many years, I have come to a
more nuanced understanding of truth and illusion. Human beings are
often biased, superstitious, and irrational, and usually these
characteristics are flies in the ointment. Most of the time we should
throw off our delusions and strive for rationality if we hope to
perform at our best. However, this book is about the other times:
times when we cannot—or should not—discard our delusions.
Useful delusions come in several varieties. Some of them seem to
be built in at the factory, as much a part of us as our teeth and
bones. In that regard they share an affinity with perceptual illusions.
Figure 1.1 shows the famous Müller-Lyer illusion. As anyone who has
taken an introductory psychology course can tell you, the two
vertical lines are the same length. I created this graphic on my
computer, and I made the line on the right by duplicating the one on
the left. So, I know they are exactly the same length. If you are
unconvinced, I encourage you to make your own measurements.
Figure 1.1 The Müller-Lyer illusion.

Despite the evidence, to most people, the line on the left looks
longer than the one on the right. The most common explanation for
the illusion is that, for those of us who have grown up around boxes
and cubes, the figure on the left looks like the inside corner of a
cube that is a bit farther away from us, and the one on the right
looks like the outside corner of a cube that is pointed toward us.
Finally, in judging the size of objects, our brain makes an adjustment
for their distance from us, boosting the apparent size of far-away
objects. This calculation keeps us from mistaking a distant oncoming
car for a toy car. Therefore, according to the common depth-
perception explanation for the Müller-Lyer illusion, the line on the left
looks longer because it appears to be farther away.
But telling you the two lines are the same length doesn’t
eliminate the illusion. Even measuring the lines and knowing about
the depth-perception explanation doesn’t help. The lines still look
different, and we are powerless to see them any other way. In a
similar fashion, some of the delusions in this book are just as sticky.
Knowing that we are under the sway of a delusion doesn’t help us
shake it off. These stickier delusions appear to be part of our basic
equipment. Other delusions are more amenable to modification. We
can allow ourselves to fall under their sway or not. But unlike a
simple perceptional illusion, all of the delusions we will encounter in
the following chapters have important implications for how we live
our lives. Although delusions sound like things we ought to avoid—
and usually they are—some delusions help.
Part of the problem is that we are so intelligent. Philosophers and
psychologists point to the human capacity for reason as an essential
trait that distinguishes us from other species. As far as we can tell,
humans alone have the degree of consciousness required to
appreciate and comment on their own lives. Indeed, existentialist
philosophers—never a cheerful bunch—considered reason and the
desire for understanding to be uniquely human burdens that
inevitably lead us to recognize the absurdity and meaninglessness of
life. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus put it this way:

If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a
meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this
world. I should be this world to which I am now opposed by my whole
consciousness and my whole insistence upon familiarity. This ridiculous reason
is what sets me in opposition to all creation. I cannot cross it out with a stroke
of the pen.3

Reason and the sheer processing power of our brains have produced
great cities, art, and technologies, but even without falling into
Camus’ existential despair, we can recognize that our intellectual
gifts are not without drawbacks. Among our many talents is the
ability to anticipate death—our own and that of our loved ones—and,
as a result, we experience illness and loss in a way that a tree or a
cat cannot.
Furthermore, we are not just of one mind. Science’s dominant
theory of human cognition suggests we have two separate
motherboards running in our brains at the same time—one thinks
fast and the other slow. System One (clever name!) is our quick
intuitive brain that helps us maneuver the world in real time without
having to engage the more powerful machinery. It uses our past
experiences and simple rules of thumb to process the billions of bits
of data that wash over us every hour of every day. In contrast,
System Two is a slower supercomputer capable of doing math and
figuring out the things System One can’t do. System One wants to
make a quick decision and get on with it; System Two needs a
minute to weigh all the pros and cons. When you are going on a
road trip, the methodical System Two figures out how to fit all your
family’s stuff into the back of the station wagon, and System One
probes your gut feelings to decide what to order for lunch.
Although there are many advantages to having two motherboards
processing information, there are disadvantages, too. The last four
decades of behavioral economic research have shown that System
One and System Two are often at odds with each other. Psychologist
Daniel Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for
work he did with the late Amos Tversky, a research program the
writer Michael Lewis called “The Undoing Project.”4 In a long series
of simple but clever experiments, Kahneman and Tversky showed
that quick-acting System One, while accurate most of the time,
sometimes made important mistakes—mistakes it would be best to
undo.
One of the most dramatic examples of this kind of conflict is ratio
bias, a phenomenon studied by psychologist Seymour Epstein.5
Consider the following choice. Imagine that you can win a dollar if
you draw a red jelly bean from a bowl, but you must choose which
of two bowls to draw from. In one bowl, there are ten jelly beans
total, one red and nine white. In the other bowl there are one
hundred beans in total, ten winning red ones and ninety white (see
Figure 1.2). The deliberate, mathematically inclined System Two
motherboard tells us that the chances of winning are exactly the
same in either bowl. You only get a single chance to pick a red bean,
so you should be indifferent between the two bowls. Flip a coin and
choose one. But, as you might suspect, the intuitive System One
motherboard is distracted by the ten winning jelly beans in the
larger bowl. Far from indifferent, System One often wants to draw
from the larger bowl because it appears to have so many more
winning red beans. When Epstein and his colleagues gave college
students these choices, as many as 80 percent of them chose the
larger bowl.

Figure 1.2 The arrangement of jelly beans in two bowls with equal probabilities
of choosing a red jelly bean.
Based on Denes-Raj and Epstein (1994).

So what? Yes, System One is biased in favor of the large bowl,

but there’s no harm in that. The chances of winning are the same.
But, of course, that wasn’t the end of the story. The researchers
went on to test the strength of System One’s ratio bias by removing
red beans from the larger bowl. They used the same small bowl with
one red out of a total of ten jellies, but now they paired it with a
large bowl that still had one hundred beans total but now contained
only nine red beans. In this case, the System Two motherboard was
able to determine that the chances of winning with the small bowl
remained at 10 percent, but the chances of winning with the large
bowl had dropped to only 9 percent (see Figure 1.3). To be certain
this fact was not lost on the participants, the experimenters pointed
out the probabilities of winning with each bowl before the students
were asked to make a decision, and they still found that 61 percent
of people chose the larger bowl despite the odds being worse. When
they dropped the number of red beans in the larger bowl down to
five—a 5 percent probability of winning, only half that of the small
bowl—they still found that 23 percent of participants went for the
long-shot larger bowl.6

Figure 1.3 The arrangement of jelly beans in two bowls with unequal probabilities
of choosing a red jelly bean.
Based on Denes-Raj and Epstein (1994).

Now you see the conflict. While the intuitive System One
motherboard was going for the big bowl, the more numerate System
Two motherboard must have been blowing its circuits. It knew that
as soon as the probability of winning in the big bowl dropped below
10 percent, the best choice was the small bowl. Choose the small
bowl! Furthermore, when confronted with choices like this, people
are often aware of the paradox of choosing against their better
interest, but the power of intuition is just too strong to get them to
do the right thing. A substantial number of very intelligent adults
kept choosing against their better judgment.
 Ratio bias is a kind of mental illusion, akin to perceptual illusions,
such as the Müller-Lyer. It is an illusion produced by our mental
processing motherboards. But ratio bias is different from perceptual
illusions in an important way. As we have seen, nothing helps the
Müller-Lyer illusion. You can tell us the two lines are the same length
as many times as you please, but the one on the left is still going to
look longer. There is no cure. In contrast, ratio bias feels much more
like a choice. People who knowingly choose the big bowl have a
sense of giving in to intuition. You can imagine that a bunch of
people who were safely under the control of their rational System
Two motherboards might be able to get together and try to convince
the System One people that it is better to choose the smaller bowl.
The Müller-Lyer illusion is sticky, but ratio bias and many other
mental biases are less so. You have the impression the error can be
undone in a way that perceptual illusions cannot.
Over the last few decades, much of behavioral economic research
has been of this nature. Psychologists have discovered biases in our
thinking—many of them conflicts between System One and System
Two—with the hope of undoing them. In the case of ratio bias, it is
easy enough to stand to one side and see the right path. Intuition is
often a very helpful tool, but in this case, it obviously leads some of
us to choose the wrong bowl. By shining a light on these quirks in
our nature, psychologists hope to nudge us toward a truer path.
This book is a very different kind of project. It is not about
undoing anything at all. Instead, the following chapters will describe
a number of equally paradoxical human characteristics that are
better not being undone. It’s not that all bets are off. It would be
unwise to abandon logic and reason in favor of intuition and blind
belief. But the following chapters will present a more balanced view
of human nature, revealing a creature who is capable of great
intelligence and clarity, as well as predictable lapses in rationality.
Furthermore, there is a growing recognition that some of our
irrationalities are features, not bugs—aspects of our hardware that
at times confuse one or both of our motherboards but are,
nonetheless, very useful to us.
 What’s a Delusion?
The word delusion often suggests something abnormal. The
American Psychiatric Association defines delusions as “fixed beliefs
that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence”7
and lists delusions among the features of schizophrenia, one of the
most debilitating of all mental disorders. But the word delusion was
around long before there were any psychiatrists, and it is commonly
—and quite appropriately—applied to healthy, nonschizophrenic
people. Our modern English word stems from the Latin verb
deludere, the root of which is ludere, “to play.” Deludere is to “play
with” or “make a mockery of,” particularly by instilling a false belief
in your victim. This sense of the word is used by Joan of Arc in
Shakespeare’s play Henry the VI, Part I:

O, give me leave, I have deluded you:

‘Twas neither Charles nor yet the duke I named,
But Reignier, king of Naples, that prevail’d.8

Merriam-Webster defines a delusion as “something that is falsely

or delusively believed or propagated.”9 This definition does not get
us very far, but the kind of delusion that most concerns us is holding
a belief despite good evidence that your belief is false. Although few
if any of them have schizophrenia, there exists a group of people
who believe that our planet is flat, despite considerable evidence to
the contrary.10 As a result, most of us would consider flat-Earth
belief to be a delusion. However, flat-Earth belief is different from
the delusions we will consider in the coming chapters, because—like
believing in ghosts or alien visitors—it has few practical implications.
Flat-Earthers are not a well-researched group, but they appear to go
about their lives neither helped nor harmed by their delusion—
except, perhaps, having to endure a bit of ridicule. The delusions
that concern us here are both more common and more
consequential—delusions that, somewhat paradoxically, we are
better off keeping than discarding.
 Delusions have something to do with the ideas or beliefs we hold,
but to be helpful or not helpful, these ideas need to lead to some
kind of action. Belief that your house is haunted by the ghost of a
previous owner is a kind of delusion, but unless your belief turns into
a debilitating fear, you are unlikely to do anything with it.
Alternatively, ratio bias is an intuitive delusion that can produce bad
gambling decisions, so, unless you like losing your money, it is
clearly a harmful delusion. As a result, our greatest concern is for
delusions that are not merely private beliefs but are likely to lead to
illogical actions. But before we can go much further we need to get
a bit deeper into how we weigh our beliefs and behavior.
Today, the value of a given action is sometimes judged by
whether it is rational or not. But what does that mean? Scholars in
several fields have described rationality and reason in a variety of
ways. For example, philosophers and cognitive scientists sometimes
divide the topic into epistemic rationality and instrumental
rationality.11 Epistemology is the study of knowledge, how we do
and should acquire it, and as a result epistemic rationality is
concerned with having good beliefs that are based in evidence and
logic and that describe the world accurately. Instrumental rationality
is about whether your actions are appropriate to your goals in light
of your beliefs.
Some of the most dominant theories of rationality have come
from economics. The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Adam
Smith proposed that humans are purely rational animals who usually
make optimal choices for a given situation. Smith saw people as self-
interested beings, making decisions that maximized their happiness
through the satisfaction of their personal tastes and preferences. In
the marketplace, individual buyers and sellers were thought to make
the best possible transactions to achieve their goals, and the beauty
of the theory was that this mutual contest of selfishness, when
loosed on an unrestricted playing field, benefited all.
This idealistic view of human decision-making became a basic
assumption of economics until the mid-twentieth century when The
Undoing Project got underway and Kahneman, Tversky, and other
researchers began to reveal our built-in decision-making flaws.
However, even as behavioral economics was tarnishing the image of
our unwavering brilliance, the traditional view of a self-interested
decision-maker was regarded as a standard that we should aspire to.
Indeed, the biases and reasoning errors revealed by people like
Kahneman, Tversky, and Epstein were so compelling because they
were obviously in conflict with what we should be doing. If you want
to win the dollar prize, there is no upside to drawing from the bowl
with the lower probability of success. It just doesn’t make sense.
Figure 1.4 A model of rational choice theory. Solid arrows represent methods of
appropriately grounding actions in beliefs, which, in turn, are based on the
available information. The broken arrow between desires and beliefs is an
irrational path by which beliefs are shaped by what the individual would like to be
true.
Based on Elster (2009).

Building upon philosophical and economic theories of thinking and

acting, rational choice theory emerged as a way of understanding
good decision-making. Figure 1.4 presents a schematic diagram of a
popular conception of rational choice.12 Actions that satisfy a
person’s preferences and desires are rational, and sometimes there
is little thinking involved. I like sharp cheddar cheese, and if there
happens to be some within arm’s reach, I can satisfy that desire
without engaging my powers of reasoning. However, in another
situation, satisfying the same desire might require some thought. For
example, if I am in a strange place far away from home when the
urge for cheddar strikes, it would be a mistake to stop at a car repair
shop. If I see that the only establishment nearby is a car repair
business, I might engage in a hopeful fantasy that it would fulfill my
cheddar desires, but any serious belief that the shop might have
what I need would not be based on an understanding of the
available information.
As in the cheddar cheese example, rational choice theory
suggests that many of our actions are based on beliefs about the
state of the world. The theory portrays us as brainy intellects who
think about things and then decide what to do based on the results
our motherboards spit out. To be rational, our actions must be
appropriately grounded in our best available beliefs. That’s all that is
required, which means that we can be acting in a perfectly rational
manner, even when we are dead wrong. Many of us grew up being
told you should never swim immediately after eating—an idea that,
as it turns out, was not based on solid data. The rule made a kind of
sense at the time, and so we spent many a frustrated hour on the
beach or poolside, just a few feet from where we really wanted to
be. We now know our parents were wrong. Drinking alcoholic
beverages before swimming is quite risky—and there is mortality
data to back up that conclusion—but eating lunch before jumping in
the pool is perfectly fine.13 So, the original practice of waiting an
hour before getting in the pool was rational, given the available
information at the time, but, when better information became
available, it turned out to be wrong. Our pool behavior today is no
more rational than in the past, but it is more reality-based. As long
as you don’t have a martini at lunch, it’s fine to get right in the
water.
 Another requirement of rationality, according to the theory, is the
responsibility to have good beliefs—to be epistemically rational. To
form good beliefs, you should value evidence and make a reasonable
search for relevant information. There are times when the
circumstances create obstacles to finding good information. Soldiers
on the field of battle may not be able to do much research before
choosing a line of attack because time is short. But a parent who
chooses an herbal remedy for a sick child based on the testimonial
of a friend is acting less rationally. Ideally, the parent should pursue
other sources of information about the best course of action.
Similarly, it is not rational to make a substantial financial investment
based on a hunch. In Figure 1.4, the arrows going both directions
from beliefs to information are meant to suggest that new
information can alter beliefs and that beliefs, once established,
should be supported by good data. The circular arrow indicates that
the search for information may need to be repeated until a solid
basis for belief and action can be established.
One of the most interesting aspects of rational choice theory—and
one that is particularly important for us—is the broken arrow from
desires to beliefs. This arrow represents one of the most common
paths to irrationality. According to the theory, it is never acceptable
to believe something merely because it fits your desires, because
you would like it to be true. This is the fallacy of wishful thinking,
which will often appear as a kind of delusion. Indeed, the broken
arrow points to the cases of my friend Susan and Joan Didion. On
some level, both women held on to the belief that their husbands
were alive—or would return—because they desperately wanted it to
be true, despite the available evidence.
In setting a standard of rationality, rational choice theory also
suggests a number of ways the system can break down, leading to
irrationality. As we have seen, allowing your desires to determine
your beliefs is a well-traveled road to irrationality. In addition, failing
to ground your beliefs in sufficient evidence is irrational, as is failing
to use good logic to move from information to belief or from belief to
action. In constructing their system of beliefs, flat-Earthers fail to
apply the logical principle of parsimony, also known as Occam’s
Razor, which suggests that, when evaluating two possible
explanations, the simpler one is preferred. Instead of accepting the
many photographs and videos gathered by NASA and other space
agencies, as well as the testimony of astronauts and cosmonauts,
flat-Earthers implicate an elaborate conspiracy that has created a
decades-long series of faked space missions and manipulated
satellite pictures, all aimed at concealing the Earth’s flatness.14
According to believers, this conspiracy has been so successful at
maintaining secrecy that none of the people (probably thousands)
involved in this ruse has come forward to unburden themselves of
the lies they told as part of a scheme to defraud the public. This
theory is highly unlikely, and believing it requires a failure of
epistemic rationality.
The idea of irrationality is much larger than delusion. For
example, the college student who has an important exam in the
morning yet spends an hour watching cat videos on Facebook
probably knows that this is not a good use of time. Similarly, the
shopper who puts a $300 pair shoes they can’t really afford on a
Visa card often does so with some awareness that this is a mistake.
These are examples of instrumental irrationality and, in particular, a
kind of irrationality that Aristotle called akrasia or weakness of will.
Given competing interests, we often have a failure of self-control and
choose a smaller immediate reward (amusing cat videos) over a
much more valuable delayed reward (a good grade on the exam).
Akratic behavior is central to many of our most important social
problems (e.g., indebtedness, obesity, addiction), and in some cases
it does involve a kind of delusion or self-deception. The shopper
pondering the $300 pair of shoes may try to rationalize that the
purchase really does fit into the budget. It will all work out
somehow. This is another example of broken-arrow wishful thinking
in the rational-choice diagram. But many failures of self-control
involve less thinking than this and are driven by impulsive System
One decision-making. As a result, for the most part, this book will
not be about the varieties of irrationality that come from lapses in
self-control.
 Finally, many have interpreted Adam Smith’s classic economic
model as a justification for cold-blooded selfishness, but Smith knew
better. We often aim our efforts outward toward other people. In his
1759 book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he wrote:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles
in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their
happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the
pleasure of seeing it.15

Of course, if you think about it, this moral sentiment can apply to
helping people you will never know, and even to helping other
species. When we give money to charities or volunteer for a service
organization, we need not experience “the pleasure of seeing” the
happiness of others. We can imagine it, and that is often enough.
When considering rational choice in an economic framework, we
tend to think of narrowly self-interested goals, but even the father of
self-interested economics understood that some of our personal
goals are not about us at all. They are selfish only in the sense that
we are interested in the fortunes of others. A number of the useful
delusions in the chapters ahead involve these other-directed goals.

What Should We Believe?

The rational-choice model is based on the assumption that people
act on their beliefs, and as a result the quality of our beliefs is
important. When should we allow ourselves to believe something,
and when should we withhold belief? A classic debate on this subject
was carried out by William Clifford, a British mathematician, and
William James, an American psychologist and philosopher. In 1877,
Clifford published an essay called “The Ethics of Belief,” in which he
carved out the hardline skeptical position: “it is wrong always,
everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient
evidence.”16 Clifford used the example of a shipowner who was
about to send his vessel out to sea filled with people emigrating to a
new land. The ship was old, and he began to have doubts about
whether it was seaworthy. The shipowner’s doubts made him
worried and unhappy, so he chose to push the troubling thoughts
out of his mind. Having done so, the shipowner was comforted as
the ship left port:

he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the
success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his
insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

Clifford went on to argue that, had the ship sailed safely, the owner
would remain just as guilty of unethical behavior. The outcome of
the trip was irrelevant to the ethics of the shipowner’s behavior. In
either case, he would be just as wrong for holding a belief without
adequate justification.
Taking the point further still, Clifford argued that even holding a
completely private belief that was not supported by evidence was
unethical. Even if the person never expressed the belief or acted on
it in any way, the mere act of holding it could lead to a general
gullibility:

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things,
though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose
the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back
into savagery.

Clifford’s view is what philosophers would characterize as an extreme

evidentiary position. Beliefs can only be ethically held if evidence
supports them, and where there is insufficient information, the
individual is obligated to “test things and [inquire] into them.” The
implications of Clifford’s stance for religious belief were clear, and he
made them quite explicit, quoting this passage from the poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge:

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving
his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end loving himself better
than all.17
 Nineteen years later, the American psychologist and philosopher
William James responded directly to Clifford’s challenge in an
address given to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown
Universities entitled “The Will to Believe,”18 which was later
published as an essay. James was a rationalist and a scientist who
agreed with Clifford in many respects, but he also described Clifford
as “that delicious enfant terrible” who expressed his viewpoint “with
somewhat too much of robustious pathos in the voice.” In most
cases James and Clifford would agree, signing on to a style of
reasoning consistent with modern rational-choice theory, but James’
essay was designed to drill a tiny hole in Clifford’s “Ethics of Belief”
large enough to pull God through. To do this, James outlined three
special conditions that made it acceptable to allow passions to
determine belief—in other words, he was making a special case for
mending the broken arrow from desires to belief. James’ special
conditions were:

• Living hypothesis: a living hypothesis is one where the belief

and its absence (or opposite) are both still plausible and under
consideration. James’ example of a pair of living hypotheses
was “Be a Christian or be an agnostic.”
• Forced question (not avoidable): the question under
discussion cannot simply be left hanging and put off for
another day.
• Momentous (not trivial): there must be something at stake in
the acceptance or rejection of the belief.

For some people in the nineteenth century—just as today—the

existence of God was not a living hypothesis, but for James it was.
Furthermore, the question could not be delayed because there was
too much at stake. James’ case was built on the foundation of
Pascal’s wager, an argument made two hundred years earlier by the
French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Simply put,
Pascal suggested that living a Christian life was a good bet. The
value of everlasting life in Heaven was infinite, and so if you
neglected to live a Christian life and lost out on Heaven, the forgone
reward would be enormous. In comparison, diligently living a
Christian life, only to discover there was no Heaven after all, would
be a relatively minimal loss. James and others have pointed out that
Pascal’s wager did not say much for God’s valuing of genuine belief
over self-interested calculation, but nonetheless James endorsed
Pascal’s basic argument. He believed that, when the three conditions
he outlined were satisfied, it was acceptable to base a belief in
passion. In stark contrast to the skeptical Clifford, James proposed
that, in the special case of religion, belief built on passion could fill
the gap left by reason. As Pascal put it, “Le cœur a ses raisons que
la raison ne connaît point” (The heart has reasons that reason
doesn’t understand).19
William James was an unusual man for his time. When Mary
Calkins, a Smith College graduate, wanted to get a doctorate in a
psychology, Harvard University refused her admission because she
was a woman. James invited Calkins to sit in his classes, and
although she never received a degree from Harvard, she excelled as
a student, completed all the requirements for the degree, and went
on to become the first woman president of the American
Psychological Association.20
James was also not afraid to turn his scientific investigations to
topics that opened him up to criticism from his contemporaries. He
rejected what he considered the two opposing dogmatisms of
religious belief and scientific skepticism, and he had a long interest
in psychic phenomenon, motivated in part by his belief that the soul
survives beyond death. James was a founder and vice president of
the American branch of Society of Psychical Research, and he
attended many seances with spiritualists and mediums of the day—
exposing a number of them as frauds. He was particularly impressed
with a famous Boston trance medium, Leonora Piper, whom he
became convinced had true psychic powers. Five years after
publishing “The Will to Believe” James would give a series of lectures
that were published as one of his most famous books, The Varieties
of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. In The Varieties
James criticized his fellow scientists for ignoring the study of
religious experience, which he considered as worthy of investigation
as any other aspect of human nature. His former student, the
philosopher George Santayana, claimed the book had a “tendency to
disintegrate the idea of truth, to recommend belief without reason
and to encourage superstition.”21
Clifford and James represent two ends of a spectrum. They were
both rationalists who looked at the world through the lenses of
science and evidence. Indeed, despite his enthusiasm for
spiritualism, James established one of the earliest psychological
laboratories in the United States at Harvard University.22 However, as
we have seen, James parted ways with Clifford, arguing that certain
“live hypotheses,” including religious experience, could be believed
without sufficient evidence. He endorsed a kind of wishful thinking
that many contemporary theorists in psychology and philosophy
would say is not rational.
As we encounter various forms of delusion in the following
chapters, we will find some ideas that both Clifford and James would
agree are false. For example, I suspect they would agree that ratio
bias is a false belief—a kind of nonpathological delusion—and that
deliberately choosing a lower-probability gamble is a bad idea. In
other cases, we will encounter beliefs that are more in the James
camp—beliefs for which evidence is either lacking altogether or
somewhat tipped against the hypothesis. Yet there are good reasons
to believe. However, the particular forms of delusion we are
interested in are not merely examples of people being stubborn and
sticking to favored ideas; they are false beliefs that we adopt
because they help us in important ways.

Looking Ahead
The subtitle of this book, “Why It’s Not Always Rational to Be
Rational,” is something of a play on words, but in one sense, it is an
accurate description of the book’s viewpoint. The delusions in the
following chapters may not meet the standards of the rational-choice
model, but they are rational in the sense that they meet an
important goal. The psychologist Jonathan Baron expresses a similar
view in this passage:

The best kind of thinking, which we shall call rational thinking, is whatever
kind of thinking best helps people achieve their goals. If it should turn out
that following the rules of formal logic leads to eternal happiness then it is
rational thinking to follow the rules of logic (assuming that we all want eternal
happiness). If it should turn out, on the other hand, that carefully violating
the laws of logic at every turn leads to eternal happiness, then it is these
violations that we shall call rational.23

This view is consistent with the philosophy expressed by William

James, Charles S. Peirce, and other American pragmatists of the
1870s: the proof was in the pudding. James put it this way:

If there be any life that is really better we should lead, and if there be any
idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then it would be
really better for us to believe in that idea. . . .24

As always, James was concerned about religious belief and saw the
practical value of religion as a possible response to “tough-minded”
philosophers who were empirical, materialistic, and irreligious. And,
similar to belief in religion, there are some delusions in this book
that will not appeal to everyone. For example, many people love
their spouses very deeply but, when tragedy strikes, do not—and
could not—entertain the kind of magical thinking experienced by
Susan and Joan Didion. Grief takes many shapes. In contrast, some
helpful delusions are impossible to avoid. But, in every case, the
delusions we will encounter have a pragmatic value that justifies
their existence.
The examples of beneficial delusions in the following chapters are
not meant to be an exhaustive list. There are undoubtedly many
others. But the delusions presented here are some of the most
important and valuable delusions we possess. They are ridiculous
bits of unreason that are, nonetheless, central to our humanity.
 2
A Bright Future in Sales

Every man who is 5’7” earnestly believes he is 5’9.”

—Tweet by @evepeyser1

In my sophomore year of college, I satisfied a general education

requirement by taking an introductory course in the Communication
Department. Although there was a standard curriculum for this class,
our graduate student instructor proposed that we put it aside and
form an encounter group. During the late 1960s and early 1970s of
my college years, encounter groups were all the rage. In 1969,
Journey Into Self won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
The film presented highlights from an encounter group made up of
eight adults and their leaders, Carl Rogers and Richard Farson.
Farson would go on to be president of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur,
California, the center of the human potential movement and a
gathering place for all manner of popular psychology.2 Rogers was
an important humanistic psychologist, the developer of person-
centered therapy, and a proponent of encounter groups.
The eight members of the Journey Into Self group had never met
before, but for sixteen hours they sat in chairs arranged in a circle,
drank cups of coffee, smoked cigarettes, and shared some of their
most intimate thoughts and feelings. At one point an Asian-American
woman cried out, “I don’t want to be a goddamned lotus blossom!
I’m a real person!” The balding and bespectacled Rogers guided the
participants with a calm, avuncular manner, and both men and
women wept at regular intervals. Even Rogers cried briefly. The
documentary was quite moving, and viewers came away thinking
something very important had happened to these eight people
during their time together.
Despite having little idea what we were in for, our class agreed to
the encounter group idea. I suspect we were secretly calculating
that this plan might involve fewer tests and assignments than the
standard material, which turned out to be true. Some of us later
speculated that the instructor was studying us as part of his doctoral
dissertation research. I don’t remember much about the actual
group sessions. I’m not sure whether anyone cried. But I recall that
I started a small rebellion, organizing a subset of our class to meet
at an apartment off campus to discuss something that bothered me
about the sessions. When we later confessed to the larger group
that we’d met separately, rather than being upset, the instructor
could hardly contain his delight. At the next class, he came in waving
a journal article in the air that he claimed predicted that defections
like ours might happen in some encounter groups. His reaction
further cemented our impression that we were his research guinea
pigs.

Self-Flattering Delusions
The Journey Into Self encounter group had been given two
questions to examine:

1. What is it like to be oneself?

2. What are other people like when they are themselves?

As these questions suggest, an important goal of the encounter

group process was for members to understand themselves better.
Rogers believed that, in a successful group, individuals would drop
their defenses and share their true thoughts and feelings. This, in
turn, would lead to greater self-knowledge and improved functioning
in everyday life.3 All of this makes perfect sense, but making sense is
not always the most important goal.
Encounter groups have largely gone the way of bell-bottomed
pants and disco music, but Rogers’ person-centered approach had a
lasting impact on clinical psychology. Indeed, much of the stereotype
of the supportive therapist comes from the humanistic approach he
pioneered: “How did that make you feel?” But in the 1980s, as social
and cognitive psychology began to have greater influence on
psychotherapy, a different idea emerged to challenge the standard
view that clear-eyed self-understanding was the best medicine.
In a classic article, psychologists Shelley Taylor and Jonathan
Brown argued that most people engage in daily self-deceptions that
they’re better off keeping than shedding.4 No encounter groups
required. In particular, Taylor and Brown identified three categories
of self-flattering delusions:5

1. We have an unrealistically positive view of ourselves.

2. We believe we have more control over events than we do.
3. We have overly optimistic views of our futures.

I’m amazing. The first of these delusions, sometimes called the

Lake Wobegon effect, is the popular view that we are all—or, at
least, most of us—above average. In a famous study published in
1980, 87.5 percent of Americans surveyed said they were above-
average drivers with respect to safety.6 This is, of course, a
mathematical impossibility. Sixty percent of the respondents said
they were in the top 20 percent of drivers—also impossible. In the
same study, Swedish drivers had a slightly less inflated view of
themselves, with 77 percent saying they were above average. In a
study of college students’ impressions of their popularity, one and a
half times as many students said they had more friends than
average as said they had fewer. Similarly, three times as many
students said they had more friends than their friends had,
compared to those who said they had fewer.7 Both of these results
are at odds with reality. Due to a mathematical phenomenon known
as “the friendship paradox,” the average number of friends your
friends have tends to be larger than the number you have. Some
people really do have more friends, but thanks to a numerical quirk I
will explain in a footnote8 but not here, on average, most people’s
friends have more friends than they themselves do. Nonetheless, we
tend to see it the other way around.
I’m in control. If you happen to be a gambler or you are at all
superstitious, you likely have experienced a psychological
phenomenon known as the illusion of control. Human beings
generally crave control. Unfortunately, many important things in life
are not under our control or can’t be controlled as much as we
would like. For example, health. Most of us know someone who
appeared to be bursting with vitality and yet was suddenly struck
down by disease. Marathoner and author of The Complete Book of
Running, Jim Fixx, dropped dead of a heart attack during his daily
run at age fifty-two.9 Often we want something very badly—a job, a
romantic partner, a healthy baby—and yet we can’t be completely
certain it will happen. At these times, many people do something—
anything—in an effort to increase their chances of success.
Merely taking some kind of action makes us feel like we’ve gained
a bit of control—even when control is impossible. In a classic study,
college students were invited into the lab for what they were told
was an experiment on psychokinesis—mind over matter.10 In a dice-
rolling exercise, two participants were asked to concentrate on a
single die and try to influence the outcome. One participant rolled
the die, while the other merely looked on. Although it was
impossible to influence the die under these circumstances—dice are
random number generators and, of course, psychokinesis doesn’t
exist—the participants who actually tossed the die were more
confident in their ability to influence the outcome than the passive
participants. Greater involvement in the task produced an illusion of
greater control. In many situations, normal people believe they have
some influence over things that are uncontrollable.
My future looks great. My children will tell you that, in the
course of their upbringing, I repeated a number of maxims they got
tired of hearing. At the top of this list of Annoying Dad Phrases was,
“Everything takes longer than you think it will.” In general, people
have unrealistically optimistic views of how the future will play out.
Our health will be fine; we will do well in school; we will get a great
job; and we will have a wonderful life.11 We think our futures will be
better, both in comparison to other people’s futures and in
comparison to an objective standard of what we should expect.12
These happy delusions about the future are not mere idle
daydreams. They tend to be somewhat grounded in reality and
based on our current plans. Nonetheless, in general, our view of the
future tends to be rosier than we have any right to expect.

Why Are We So Optimistic?

For obvious reasons, we are motivated to be optimistic. It feels
good. Life is a more pleasant enterprise if we see happy times
ahead. The alternative would be no fun. It is also reassuring to
believe our lives are just a bit better than the next person’s. So, once
we are driven to be optimistic, a number of predictable reasoning
errors—commonly known as biases and heuristics—kick in to help us
maintain our pleasant outlook. One of the most common biases
involves the way we explain successes and failures. Whenever we
achieve some good outcome, we are quite happy to accept whatever
praise comes our way. The college student who receives a good
mark on a term paper thinks “Yes, I am an excellent writer, and I
worked really hard on that assignment.” But when they fail, suddenly
all the surrounding obstacles come to mind: “Well, I had a bad cold,
and I couldn’t get any decent sleep because my roommate was
partying every night.” This is known as the self-serving attribution
bias. We take full credit for successes and blame external factors for
our failures.13
We are also quite unbalanced in the way we confront positive and
negative feedback. Most people savor praise and skip over criticism.
If we linger on negative feedback at all, it is in an effort to pick it
apart and minimize it, whereas we accept positive feedback on its
face. Similarly, the past is often better on reflection because it is
easier to remember the good bits than the times we screwed up. In
addition, when we compare ourselves to other people, we have a
tendency to make downwards comparisons with those who aren’t
doing as well as we are,14 and when we consider the future, we
believe it will work out better for us than for others.15
We don’t overestimate our status in all situations. For example,
when working in groups, people are more clear about where they
stand in relation to the other members, probably because in a group
we get regular feedback about social ranking, making it more
difficult to overestimate your position.16 Bob Slocum, the main
character of Joseph Heller’s novel, Something Happened,
demonstrated this kind of clarity in his obsessively detailed view of
his place among his coworkers:

In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. Each
of these people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of
twenty, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total
of one hundred and twenty people who are feared by at least one person.
Each of these one hundred and twenty people is afraid of the other one
hundred and nineteen, and all of these one hundred and forty-five people are
afraid of the twelve men at the top who helped found and build the company
and now own and direct it.17
—Something Happened by Joseph Heller

But in situations that are lacking immediate feedback, we often slide

into a reassuring posture of self-flattery. Everything will be just fine.

Is All This Optimism Good for Us?

In general, people have an unrealistically inflated views of
themselves—of how much control they have over events, and of
their prospects for the future. Is all this rosiness a good thing? The
honest answer is a definite, “Yes and no.” It is not difficult to come
up with examples of optimism that led to disastrous outcomes. The
Great Recession of 2008 was caused by bankers who believed that
they had devised a way to take the risk out of investments built on
shaky mortgages and by homebuyers who were overconfident about
their ability to pay for their mortgages. Both beliefs were supported
by a housing market that had been strong for several years, but the
result of this unwarranted optimism was double-digit unemployment,
the worst economy since the Great Depression, and a very slow
recovery. In more than one instance, US presidents have launched
wars they thought would be quickly won, only to have them drag on
for many years and, in the cases of Vietnam and Afghanistan, end in
defeat.18 But overconfidence about war was also common during the
Crusades, when Christian armies were convinced that God would
lead them to victory. They were frequently surprised by humiliating
defeats.19
In addition, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger have
identified the now-famous overconfidence effect that bears their
names. It is one thing to be routinely overconfident, but according to
the Dunning-Kruger effect, those who perform the worst are the
most likely to be overconfident about their abilities. For example, in
one study, students who had the lowest scores on an exam thought
they had ranked in the sixtieth percentile when they had actually
scored at the fifteenth.20 Students who scored the highest on the
test slightly underestimated their performance.
Similarly, seeing is believing, but believing is not always seeing.
Over several decades, there has been extensive research on the
accuracy of eye witnesses to various crimes, and the evidence points
to two important conclusions. First, eyewitnesses are often wrong.
Although the practice seems to have gone out of fashion, for many
years, professors staged a mild disturbance in their introductory
psychology classes. Midway through class, someone might burst into
the room, shout at the professor or a student, perhaps throw
something, and run away. At some point, well after the actor has left
the scene, students are asked questions about the intruder. Was he
wearing anything on his head? Did he have anything in his hand?
What did he say? Typically, the students were remarkably bad at this
exercise. Despite their power to sway juries, eyewitnesses are
notoriously unreliable.
Second, the degree of confidence expressed by the witness bears
little relationship to their accuracy.21 In a trial, if a witness points at
the defendant and says, “I am one hundred percent certain he is the
killer,” the statement of confidence may influence on the jury, but
research suggests it shouldn’t. In a study of 250 convictions that
were overturned with DNA evidence, 70 percent involved a mistaken
eyewitness who was very confident.22
When psychologist Daniel Kahneman was asked what single
human error he would most like to eliminate, he said
overconfidence.23 At the time he was asked that question, US
involvement in the war in Afghanistan was in its fourteenth year, and
the memory of the Great Recession was still fresh. Without question,
when being wrong could lead to disaster, overconfidence is
something to be avoided. But the evidence shows that, most of the
time, a general attitude of moderate overconfidence leads to
important benefits.
Research in depressive realism provides some of the most
frequently cited examples of positive delusions helping us get
through the night. According to the evidence, the difference
between people who are depressed and those who are not
depressed is the difference between a realistic and an unjustifiably
rosy view of the world. Rather than seeing things in a darker hue
than is warranted by the facts, depressed people see themselves
realistically. For example, in a laboratory test, depressed and non-
depressed people pressed buttons to try to turn on a light. Rather
than have each press turn on the light—as we might normally expect
—the experimenters varied the probability that a press would turn
on the light, and on occasion the light came on when the
participants hadn’t pressed at all. For example, in one condition only
25 percent of presses turned on the light and 25 percent of the time
the light came on when the participant hadn’t pressed. When the
experiment was over, each participant was asked to estimate how
much control they had over the light. Moderately depressed
individuals were remarkably accurate in their judgments and non-
depressed participants substantially overestimated how much control
they had over the light. The depressed button-pushers showed
depressive realism. They were sadder but wiser.24 Although the
results showed only a correlation between mood and accuracy, this
research suggests that optimism—and not the realism of the
encounter group—is a component of good mental health.
One of the most often mentioned examples of dangerous
optimism is starting a business. By some estimates, approximately
50 percent of small businesses make it to their fifth birthday.25 If you
live in a place long enough, you get to witness the natural selection
of various local businesses, and in hindsight it often seems obvious
why some didn’t survive. In my little town, I can recall the
restaurant that substantially misjudged the palates and pocketbooks
of the neighborhood, as well as several specialty shops that were
just too precious for a place with limited foot traffic. But each of
these shuttered establishments was someone’s American dream, and
hopeful entrepreneurs put all they had into chasing it. Furthermore,
even when successful, starting your own business often doesn’t
make economic sense. According to one analysis, on average people
who entered self-employment made 35 percent less than if they had
remained a paid employee.26
Overconfidence among entrepreneurs comes in at least two
forms. People make overly optimistic predictions about their future
prospects, and they make inaccurate assessments of their skills
relative to others.27 In other words, we are overconfident in both the
absolute sense and relative to the competition. Because the dire
statistics about entrepreneurial failure are widely known,
overconfidence about your prospects versus those of the other
schmucks seems particularly relevant. In a simulation study,
business school students played a game in which they chose
whether to start a business in an environment with a known number
of competitors. When the game was designed such that income was
based on the player’s skill rather than random luck, the students
inflated their own capabilities and failed to adequately account for
the skills of their competitors.28 They thought that their competitors’
profits would be negative, whereas theirs would be positive.
Similarly, in a large multi-national study of entrepreneurs and non-
entrepreneurs, the strongest indicator that a person would start a
new business was the strength of their belief that they had the skills
to succeed. Unfortunately, across all countries in the study, the
entrepreneur’s self-confidence was not related to the ultimate
success of the business.29
Starting a business involves much risk. If successful, the new
business can produce reliable income, but if not, it can lead to
substantial losses. Furthermore, in most cases, the outcome of the
decision will not be known for some time. Buying a house is a similar
gamble. Signing the mortgage is an act of faith that you will have
sufficient future income to keep making payments for many years.
Home ownership has generally been considered a reasonable
gamble, in part because mortgages are backed by a valuable asset,
but as we saw in 2008, housing prices sometimes fall, leaving the
homeowner “under water”—owing more money than the house is
worth.
Despite his stated wish to eliminate overconfidence, in an article
written with his long-time collaborator Amos Tversky, Daniel
Kahneman proposed a more nuanced view.30 Not all uses of
overconfidence are the same. For example, starting a new business,
launching a war, or buying a home are decisions that have some
features in common. First, they are rather discrete choices. There is
a moment of decision, and once you have passed it, it is difficult—if
not impossible—to go back. In addition, as mentioned earlier, the
outcome of the decision is delayed. It may take a year or several
years before you get clear feedback about whether it was a good
idea or not. Finally, each of these decisions risks a substantial
downside: financial failure or, in the case of war, massive loss of life.
Kahneman and Tversky recognized that overconfident optimism
was dangerous in these situations. When setting a goal or launching
a new enterprise, too much of a warm glow can have disastrous
consequences. Unfortunately, overconfidence at the moment of
decision is common. All of the reasoning errors and biases discussed
previously encourage us to remember our successes and forget our
failures. So, our prediction of the outcome is likely to be rosier than
it should be. This kind of delusion is decidedly not constructive.
 But Kahneman and Tversky also observed that optimism often
carries us along when we are beyond the decision point and in the
throes of executing the plan. In our daily effort to get ahead,
optimism—even to the point of overconfidence—can be a big boost.
Sports competitions are a good example because playing with
confidence may both sustain an athlete and intimidate the opponent.
In competitions that have a time limit, often the game will reach a
point where it is physically impossible for the trailing team to catch
up. If your basketball team is behind by twenty points with thirty
seconds left on the clock, there just isn’t enough time for even the
most skilled team to score that many points. But until the moment of
doom arrives, overconfidence can sustain a team’s effort. You never
know when a star player on the opposing side will sprain an ankle or
be ejected from the game. It can happen.
Interestingly, the absence of a clock makes confidence and
resilience in the face of adversity much more important. In 2016,
during David Ortiz’ final season, I managed to get a ticket to a
Yankees-Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston.31 For several
innings the Yankees were ahead, 5 to 1. In the eighth inning, Boston
added another run, but, with the score 5 to 2 entering the final
inning, most of the fans headed for the exits. As luck—or optimism—
would have it, in the bottom of the ninth the Sox added two more
runs on singles by Ortiz and Mookie Betts. Finally, with two outs and
two men on base, Hanley Ramirez hit a 441-foot home run to center
field to win the game 7 to 5. When I looked around me after the
game ended, there were very few fans remaining, but the ones
who’d stuck it out were very happy. Many die-hard baseball fans
have similar stories of games won long after most of the fans had
given up. Obviously, the players never gave up.
Similarly, tennis is known for its unlikely comebacks. In the 1984
French Open Final, Ivan Lendl was soundly beaten in the first two
sets against John McEnroe, 2-6 and 3-6, but he rallied to win the last
three sets 6-4, 7-5, and 7-5. It was Lendl’s first Grand Slam win, and
at the time, McEnroe had won two Wimbledon and three US Open
titles and was ranked number one in the world.32
 Because there is no time limit, winning a baseball game is never a
physical impossibility until the last out. The longest game in
organized baseball was played in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on the
evening of April 18 (first night of Passover) and the morning of April
19 (Easter), 1981. After eight hours and twenty-five minutes of play
the International League Pawtucket Red Sox beat the Rochester Red
Wings 3 to 2 in the bottom of the 33rd inning.33 Both teams played
under extremely difficult circumstances. The Red Wings catcher
played for twenty-five innings and batted eleven times. But neither
team gave up until the end.
Similarly, until a tennis player wins the last point of their third set
(for men) or their second set (for women), it is never physically
impossible to come back and win. Under these circumstances,
confidence is likely to help a team or a player take advantage of any
opportunity to turn things around. “I saw hope as soon as I broke
him,” Lendl said. “I felt that once I could break him, I could do it
again.”34

Bluffing Yourself
I’m a terrible poker player. For years, I’ve played with a group of
friends, and we all know who the good and bad players are.
Fortunately, the stakes are quite low (nickel ante; quarter limit),
making it possible to win as much as $20 but difficult to lose more
than $5—although, on occasion, I’ve managed to do so.
Part of the reason I’m bad at poker is that I’m not a good bluffer.
Although there is a lot of luck in poker, successful play involves the
skillful use of a number of strategies, one of which is bluffing. If you
have been dealt a bad hand, in some cases, it is still possible to win
by giving off signals that you have a strong hand. For example, you
might raise the size of the current bet, forcing others to choose
between risking more money and folding. In an ideal scenario, the
bluffer succeeds in convincing the remaining players to drop out and
wins the pot with a very weak hand. But if the bluff is to work, your
competitors must be sufficiently concerned that you might be
holding a full house and not a pair of queens.
Of course, in everyday non-poker life, we often encounter people
who lie and engage in various forms of deception. Sales people lie
about their services, politicians lie, children lie to their parents and
teachers, and parents lie to their kids. Unfortunately, evidence
suggests that we are bad at detecting lies, and as a result there are
still many con artists among us.35 In what seems like a natural
career path, Maria Konnikova, a psychologist, science writer, and
author of The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time,
is also a professional poker player.36
But lying is rational. The person who lies is not deluded. Liars
know the truth but present a different picture in order to gain
something of value. Of course, lying is often frowned upon, but if
you are more interested in getting ahead than protecting your public
image, lying can make sense and be completely rational. Indeed,
non-human species lie in a number of ways. Insects, fish, and land
animals have evolved camouflage that allows them to escape
predators by blending into the background, and nut-burying squirrels
will dig and cover empty holes to confuse those who might want to
steal their reserves.37 Humans have the ability to reason and make
plans, and if you knowingly lie or dissemble, it is often a rational
decision whose potential costs and benefits you’ve taken into
account. In which case, you are far from deluded.
The problem with lying is that it is difficult to do well. Family and
friends who know our tricks can often tell when we are trying to pull
a fast one, and if you have been socialized to feel guilty about lying,
evidence of your discomfort may leak out in your tone of voice or
non-verbal behavior. You may stop making eye contact, start twirling
your hair, raise the pitch of your voice, or talk more quickly. Finally,
liars have to remember their lies and tell a story that is consistent
with the tangled web they’ve woven. Although most people are bad
at detecting lying, choosing to lie entails considerable risk. For all but
the conscienceless sociopath, being an effective liar is no walk in the
park. Self-deception makes it easier.
 If we are going to reap the benefits of unwarranted optimism, it
helps if we believe our own hype. The evolutionary biologist Robert
Trivers has argued that humans have acquired the ability to deceive
themselves, in part, because it makes us more effective at deceiving
others.38 Take, for example, the overconfident athlete. Presenting an
air of confidence—no matter the odds against you—will be more
effective if it isn’t an act, if you truly believe you will be successful
and don’t have to talk yourself into it. Your confidence may not be
entirely rational, but if you believe it nonetheless, you can’t be
accused of lying. You are operating under a kind of delusion.
Alternatively, according to Trivers, if you are just acting and are not
convinced that you can win, your rival may detect your inner
weakness and be encouraged rather than intimidated. Just as liars
who believe their own untruths are more persuasive, people who are
authentically overconfident will not encourage their opponents by
revealing hints of weakness.39
Over the years, I have watched a number of tennis players go off
on explosive tirades when things went wrong, sometimes directing
their anger at rackets or umpires, but often directing it at
themselves. Commentators frequently explain this behavior as the
athlete’s attempt to get “psyched” into playing harder and better, but
research does not support this view. In individual sports like tennis,
in particular, negative mood prior to the match is associated with
poorer performance, and self-confidence is the strongest predictor of
winning.40 But even if the sports commentators were right, they are
not considering the effect of these displays on the opponent. If I
were in the middle of a difficult match, nothing would boost my
confidence more than seeing the person on the other side of the net
explode into a tantrum. A much more effective signaling strategy
would be to simply keep moving ahead with determination, even as
you make errors or fall behind. The zombies of The Walking Dead
and the cyborgs of the Terminator movies are terrifying because, no
matter what you throw at them, they just keep coming at you. You
have to admire the determination of those zombies and cyborgs.
 When trying to present a strong front, there are other reasons
why believing in yourself may bring benefits. If you recognize that
you’re putting on an act—that you don’t really feel as powerful as
the image you are projecting—you may experience cognitive
dissonance. This famous psychological concept suggests that, when
our actions and our values or beliefs appear to be in conflict, we
often reduce the resulting uneasiness by changing our beliefs. The
original demonstration of the concept involved participants in a very
boring experiment who were paid a sum of money to tell the next
participant that the study was actually enjoyable. Some were paid a
small amount of money and others a larger amount, and those who
were paid just a small amount later rated the boring task as more
fun than those who were paid a large amount.41 According to theory,
cognitive dissonance was created by the participants saying
something that they presumably did not believe in return for such a
small sum of money. Being paid a larger amount to lie provided its
own justification, resulting in less dissonance. But those who heard
themselves say the experiment was fun in return for a small reward,
could only eliminate the conflict between their actions (reporting
that it was a fun experiment) and their prior beliefs (that it was dull)
by changing their beliefs (actually, it was kind of fun). As a result, if
you resolve any dissonance about your strong approach by changing
your belief about yourself—“I really can do this!”—it can only help,
but if the dissonance goes unresolved, it can have a detrimental
effect.
In the current service economy, many people spend their work
days painting a smile on their faces for the benefit of customers and
employers. This is sometimes called emotional labor, and studies of
service workers show that “surface acting” can lead to emotional
exhaustion and job dissatisfaction.42 The negative effects of surface
acting are particularly pronounced when the employee places great
personal importance on being authentic. According to cognitive
dissonance theory, this inner conflict is sometimes relieved by
changing your self-concept. Service workers who resolve their inner
conflict by changing their attitude toward their jobs and learning to
enjoy their contact with customers have greater psychological well-
being. Furthermore, research suggests that customers can detect
fake emotions, which can be reflected back on the employee in the
form of unpleasant customer interactions.
In some cases, there may be a middle ground between conscious
faking and true delusion. One college summer, I worked in the
machine shop of a factory that fabricated bleachers for use in
gymnasiums. The raw steel we worked with was covered in carbon,
and each night I came home with soot in my nostrils and hands that
never got clean. But I was a middle-class town kid, a summer hire,
and the regular employees, some of them my own age, came from
poor rural areas outside of town. I was just starting college, but
even then I spoke differently than they did. Despite this being the
upper Midwest, my coworkers had the drawl of farm people and
used colloquial expressions I’d never heard before. I liked the work
but was aware of being a kind of minority in this world of the
machine shop, and I wanted to fit in.
Over time, I found myself adopting their way of speaking. Today
it might be called code switching. I learned what vowels to extend
and started using some of their expressions. At home, I would revert
to my usual manner of speech, but at work, I spoke their language.
And it helped. No one ever mentioned the change in my speaking
style, and I think my coworkers felt more comfortable around me. I
know I felt more comfortable around them. I was faking a kind of
persona that was not my own, but the work environment supported
my charade and rewarded me for it. As a result, I did not experience
putting on a work personality as labor, because my code switching
reduced a conflict between my natural behavior and that of the
people in my work environment. Similarly, a study of flight
attendants found that those who were the healthiest in their jobs
had learned to regulate their emotional displays.43 They offered all
passengers a basic level of friendliness which they did not extend
further unless their customers reciprocated. This ability to adapt to a
supportive or non-supportive environment prevented them from
feeling emotionally beaten down by their jobs.
 But in the case of overconfidence in a competitive environment,
Trivers’ theory suggests that we will be more effective if we truly
believe our own overly optimistic story. While no one wants to be a
sociopath, a zombie, or a cyborg, in competitive situations such as
sports and business, being consistently and boldly optimistic without
a visible chink in the armor is more likely to bring success.
There is also evidence that overconfidence is rewarded in a
number of social environments. For example, confident
entrepreneurs are more resilient during setbacks and more likely to
take on subsequent ventures after an initial failure, but they are also
able to draw more committed and motivated people to work with
them.44 Furthermore, in group settings, people who are
overconfident about their abilities are granted higher social status,
and—somewhat paradoxically—when their actual level of
performance is revealed, they are not penalized by the group and
they maintain their high status. In a series of experiments people
were recruited to answer some general knowledge questions,
sometimes alone and sometimes working together with others.45
After working both alone and together, group members privately
ranked each other on status, influence, and leadership ability. As had
been shown in other research, confident participants were given
higher status by fellow group members. Next, each person’s
performance during the individual testing was revealed to the group,
which meant that, in some cases, people who had expressed great
confidence were revealed to have been overconfident, with scores
no better than other group members. The surprising result was that,
in subsequent secret ratings by fellow group members, these
overconfident test-takers maintained their high ranking from the
other group members, despite achieving scores that were no better
than participants who were given lower-status scores. So, in this
case, overconfidence paid off and was equally or more important to
group status than actual performance.
In a direct test of Trivers’ theory, researchers in Munich, Germany
placed participants in a job interview context. Prior to the main
experiment, half the participants were led to believe that they had
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
fronte do vulcão. Os barcos amarrados entrechocaram-se com
lúgubre ruído e as cordas muito apertadas gemeram dolorosamente.
Daí a nada a chuva começou a cair em enormes bátegas sibilando
como flechas,—parecia que o cáos queria reapossar-se da
natureza, confundindo-lhe de novo todos os elementos».

Mas, há realmente jettatori? ¿Há alguêm que acredite nisso, no

século das maravilhas? ¿Não será a jettatura como o rabinho no
remate do espinhaço por onde se conheciam os judeus, segundo
aqueles Pedro Lobo e Bartolomeu Lobo, que Camilo tomou à sua
conta no Judeu, o romance da vida de António José da Silva?
Talvez. O que é certo, porém, é que esta superstição
abracadabrante tem muitos crentes. E o Destino, às vezes, quando
se quere divertir ou mostrar o seu poder, encarrega os factos de
lhes dar razão.
¿Mas não haverá olhares carregados de desconhecidos gérmens
morbíficos, de elementos malfazejos, funestos e ameaçadores?
Abro o último número do The Strand Magazine, recentemente
chegado a Lisboa. É o número de Agosto. Aí a página 233 a
focinhuda e grave revista inglesa relata o estranho caso do
presidente do conselho de Itália, Giovanni Giolitti, um dos mais
funestos jettatori. O artigo chama-se «The Evil Eye» e é interessante
e certo, porque a revista inglêsa não iria turvar a sua gravidade
protocolária com uma invencionice de tal responsabilidade. As
vítimas de Giolitti são, na sua maioria, os seus próprios colegas do
ministério, a quem repentinamente sucede alguma cousa de grave.
Foi a insistência dêstes incidentes, sucedendo sempre em pessoas
ligadas a Giolitti, que pôs de alarme tôda a Itália e fundamentou o
artigo do Strand Magazine. Os ministros Majorama, Marquês
Prinetti, Balenzano, De Broglio, Wollamborg, Rosano, Tittoni,
Massimini e Gallo foram os que mais sofreram da influência funesta
da jettatura Giolitti. Um deles suicidou-se, outro endoideceu, e ainda
outro sofreu um insulto apoplético na própria Câmara. Os restantes
foram atingidos pelas doenças mais graves e mais exquisitas; um
ataque de reumastismo, doenças de coração, apoplexias, etc. O
olhar de Giolitti é pois uma verdadeira cornucópia de desgraças, e
como se vê não se pode atribuir à imaginação dramatizadora de
qualquer banabóia em cata de assunto o artigo em questão. Se o
magazine inglês alviçarou ao público o condão fatal do estadista, é
porque o caso tinha tôdas as provas de veridicidade.
Giolitti inspira já um verdadeiro terror. O seu olhar fantasmático e
fixativo tem a mais terrível lenda que pode ter um homem,
especialmente em Itália, o país do mau olhado, por excelência.
Quando êle passa, os lazzaroni entre-olham-se aflitos, os
transeuntes involuntáriamente fazem-lhe figas e todos fogem dele
como dum leproso. As companhias de seguros de vida, baseando-
se nos acontecimentos e factos, reputam o seu olhar um grave risco
e não efectuam os seus contratos com ministros do gabinete
jettatura senão a prémios absurdamente compensadores.
Oh! o mau olhado! o mau olhado!
Na jettatura acredita muita gente boa. As montres, em Nápoles,
cercam-se dum preventivo cordão de amuletos protectores, e os
espíritos mais fortes não se desdouram de trazê-los na algibeira.
Filipe d’Altavila, aquele conde inventado por Gauthier, era civilizado.
Fôra educado em Paris, falava inglês e francês; lêra Voltaire; cria
nas máquinas a vapor, nos caminhos de ferro, nas duas câmaras,
como Stendhal; comia macarroni com garfo; e, como se todos estes
argumentos não bastassem, é êle ainda quem confessa que usa
«de manhã luvas de Suède; de tarde luvas escuras, à noite luvas
côr de palha», prova incontestável de civilização.
Pois êste scéptico, êste civilizado, êste homem forte, conquistador
e espadachim—acreditava. ¿Porque não havemos nós de acreditar?
Êle, porêm, parece que tinha razão para isso, visto que, sendo um
dos melhores esgrimistas, tendo morto em duelo três homens e
ferido gravemente cinco ou seis, ninguém se batendo com êle pela
fama terrível que tinha, veio a morrer, estúpidamente, cravando-se
no punhal do jettatore.
¿Mas será o mau olhado incombatível? Não. O nosso homem
acredita tambêm que «com os chifres, as figas e os ramos de coral
bifurcado, se pode destruir ou pelo menos atenuar a sua influência».

¿Já repararam na série de desgraças que tem pesado sôbre o

país desde que é presidente do conselho o snr. João Franco? Pois,
caso singular, as desgraças sucedem-se e pode dizer-se que nunca
houve tantas.
Os políticos não andam seguros. Deu o filoxera, ou a formiga
branca com êles, desde que é presidente do conselho, etc, etc. Já a
gentana das ruas lhe vai atribuindo dotes maléficos e quando êle
passa, se lhe não chamam jettatore, vão-lhe fazendo figas.
Não tarda que, à semelhança do Strand Magazine, as gazetas
vulguem o caso ao falario dos seus leitores. E é caso para pensar,
acreditem!
Um dia, na Câmara, no acêso duma discussão, Hintze tem uma
síncope. Ao acompanhar o entêrro dum amigo e político, Hintze
morre repentinamente, e os médicos gaguejam vagas cousas...
farda vélha... o calor do chapéu... insolação. José Dias Ferreira, rijo
ainda apesar dos seus setenta anos, faz uma conferência desafecta
ao govêrno e é repentinamente atacado duma paralisia. Quando
menos se espera, morre.
O que mais assombra é o imprevisto com que a Morte tombou
êsses dois monarquistas de vélha rocha, que, apesar de
pontapizados no seu orgulho e nos seus anos de trabalho, ainda
resistiam, cheios de vida e de crença.
A revista inglêsa veio fazer luz. ¿Terá o snr. presidente do
Conselho o fatal condão? Será jettatore? Tudo faz crer que sim.
D’Aspremont, o jettatore do romance de Gauthier, uma vez que
tocou num cocheiro com uma leve bengala, matou-o
instantâneamente.
O nosso estadista, nos seus tempos de Coimbra, não podia
acariciar um gato, que o animal não morresse logo. Hão-de
concordar que é já ter mau olhado.
 Nenhuma dúvida resta. É jettatore. Os políticos entre-olham-se
finados de mêdo e com terror secreto pensam em quem irá agora.
Os indiferentes pensam em que novo desastre estará guardado à
nação sob o influxo funesto de tão funesto dom.
Não há dúvida. É necessário pôr um chifre atrás da porta e trazer
na algibeira os ramos de coral bifurcados, e as figas de azeviche.
Nada, que o seguro morreu de vélho.
Senhores da política, vamos.
 Os mineiros
LES mineurs chamou Roll, o poeta do carbonoso, a uma das suas
mais amadas telas.
«Les Mineurs» é o poema da gente que trabalha. Um crepúsculo
à hora do levantar da faina. A retirada dos mineiros, uma longa
bicha de gente taciturna e acabrunhada que regressa do interior da
terra. Ao fundo as altas chaminés vomitam fumo, o seu fumo
espesso e enovelado, carvão que o vento desfaz. E, sob o céu que
o vento escurece, a retirada vai-se fazendo lentamente, como um
exército estropeado que sai finalmente duma praça há meses
sitiada. E não tem fim, a escura procissão que sai da bocada negra
dos poços. Parece que nunca mais terminará.
O assunto que tentou a Roll e que a sua tela exprime com a
fidelidade duma fotografia, tem seduzido a muitos artistas.
Constantin Meunier consagrou-lhe um baixo relevo. Severine
escreveu as mais belas páginas sôbre «le pays noir» e Zola
dedicou-lhe um dos seus livros, êsse romance-estudo, brutal e
flagrante, cheio de verdade e cheio de observação, que é o
Germinal.
Porêm, de tôdas as composições artísticas que eu conheço, um
quadro há, que, nas minhas horas de scismar, se desenrola e
vivifica, e ante os meus olhos passa como uma scena da vida real.
A tela desapareceu, apagou-se suavemente e só ficaram as figuras
e o scenário. É um cortejo que passa. São rudes operários tisnados,
a pele encoirada de suor, caras sombrias de miséria e de
sofrimento. Abrem a marcha de mãos dadas cantando o Çá ira. Um
operário vélho, de blusa e boné, dá o braço à sua companheira,
uma envelhecida, que traz na mão um ramo de flores. Um garôto
traz às costas um tambor. O cortejo avança. Algumas das mulheres
trazem os filhos ao colo, outras, bandeiras de revolta. Mas a
procissão não tem ar insubmisso, tem um ar de protesto taciturno.
Um céu de bruma espesso e calado alumia a scena com os seus
tons mais lúgubres e na sua luz morrinhosa sinistríza os contornos,
e veste tudo, as figuras, a rua, os rostos, e até os petizes do bando,
com um ar de sofrimento intenso, de agonia intraduzível. É seu
autor Jules Adler. O quadro chama-se A greve.
A greve recente da mina de S. Domingos veio canalizar atenções
para o assunto. E S. Domingos, que aparecia entre brumas de
mistério, dá notícias suas. S. Domingos é uma feitoria inglêsa. Tem
polícia própria, armada de belas carabinas, carabinas último modêlo
para, emquanto os mineiros se estorcem de fome, ela patrulhar, na
soturnidade da noite, de dedo no gatilho, o sono dos senhores.
Os mineiros são 3:000. Trabalham uma infinidade de horas e o
salário é pouco. Como o salário é pouco e o trabalho muito, a
alimentação é má. E como a alimentação não presta, a saúde é
péssima.
Que querem êles? Melhoria de salário e um pouco menos de
trabalho. O mineiro, por via de regra, é sóbrio. Não tem desejos, não
tem ambições. É um animal de carga, pobre bêsta suada e indefesa,
e as minas são uma nova escravatura. Duvidam? Muito embora.
São ainda as gazetas que nos informam que essas reclamações
foram recebidas ... a tiro. Se isto não é escravatura, então...
A canalha revolta-se? Muito bem. Espingardeia-se. A canalha
parlamenta? Acutila-se. A canalha não tem nome, a canalha não
tem voz. A canalha é a canalha, nada mais.
¿Que ela um dia virá, quando o ódio se fizer avalanche, reclamar
o seu quinhão na festa? ¿Que ela virá escrever nas paredes da sala
o Mane, Thecel, Phares dos grandes cataclismos? Pura imaginação!
A canalha não virá. E se por acaso vier, sim! se vier, encontrará uma
muralha de baionetas e um cordão de metralhadoras. «La force
prime le droit!», não é verdade? Sejamos positivos. Mais uma vez o
direito ficará vencido.
¿Que a greve colheu a Emprêsa de improviso? De-certo. Pois a
Emprêsa julgava lá que êles soubessem pedir, que êles soubessem
falar!
 O que a Emprêsa sabia era a média de produção diária por cada
animal daqueles, por cada escravo, a que pomposamente
persistimos em chamar mineiros. A Emprêsa só tinha um fito: Que
cada homem trabalhasse o dôbro.
Que êles tinham Direitos? Que êles tinham estômago? Que
queriam Justiça? Deixem-me rir. ¿Que diabo se importa a Emprêsa
com isso?
A Emprêsa explora-os; os capatazes, seus mandatários,
esbofeteiam-nos. Oh! filantrópica Emprêsa! Pois êles só
esbofeteiam? Vamos lá. Podiam muito bem açoitá-los, crucificá-los e
esfolá-los. Só esbofeteiam!!!! Se na acta da assembleia geral lhes
não fôr exarado um voto de louvor, por tanta humanidade, hão de
concordar que é uma refinadíssima pouca vergonha.
¿Mas, realmente, os mineiros revoltam-se? Pior para êles.
¿Esquecem-se então de que a Emprêsa tem pelo seu lado a fôrça,
e que os esmagará irremediávelmente? Fazem greve? Mas a greve
termina aonde a fome principia. Quem ficará por baixo? O mais
fraco.
Ora quem capitula não impõe condições, aceita-as. A fome
principia e ei-los novamente escravizados. Então, como um exército
vencido que entrega os seus troféus e as suas bandeiras, os
grevistas entregam os seus direitos, os seus sonhos, as suas
utopias, as suas ambições. E voltam novamente ao escuro da mina,
ao ar irrespirável, à meia-fome, ao trabalho extenuante, emquanto
os directores da Emprêsa recomeçam a partida de bilhar
interrompida.
Courrières fêz 1:200 vítimas.
¿Sabem o que mais comoveu a Companhia exploradora? Não foi
a ceifa de mil e duzentos homens válidos, de mil e duzentos
cérebros e corações, de mil e duzentas vidas. Não foram os
lamentos de mil e duzentas famílias que se carpiam, que ficavam na
ruína e na mendiguez. O que a comoveu foi a ruína, a perda dos
poços, o ruir das galerias, os motores paralisados e torcidos, as
máquinas destruidas. Foram os lucros que não se realisaram, os
dividendos que não se distribuiram.
Um homem a quem roubaram a bôlsa pode lá preocupar-se com
a morte em casa do vizinho!
Oitenta por cento dos desastres é culpa das Emprêsas, que não
teem outro fito senão roubar à terra a matéria que as há de
enriquecer. A segurança dos operários só é assegurada quando a
falta dela pode prejudicar interesses de senhores. Os acionistas,
emquanto o dividendo corre, claqueam. E êsse rega-bofe é às vezes
interrompido pelo estalar dos travejamentos, pelo ruído das
derrocadas, pela grita dos feridos e pela lembrança dos que lá
ficaram no silêncio das galerias, irremediávelmente.
Pois apesar de tudo, possível é que os mineiros não sejam
atendidos. Para admirar será se o forem. Apesar do perigo que
correm, a doença à espreita, a morte perto, a velhice impossível, as
suas reclamações parecem absurdas aos Directores.
Se, como no Germinal, algum Maheu ignorado levanta a voz para
dizer «a sua miséria, a miséria de todos, o duro trabalho, a vida de
brutos, a mulher e os pequenos gritando de fome em casa»; para
dizer que é uma iniqùidade uns morrerem de fome e outros de
indigestão; para dizer que é uma torpeza uns morrerem de trabalhar
tanto emquanto outros bocejam à regalona, a Direcção promete
estudar. Não estuda nunca. Mas a voz dêsse Maheu, dêsse Maheu
ignorado, ficará no espaço acusando, e marcará com um ferrete de
infâmia o crime, êsse crime inaudito ratificado em uníssono por três
mil peitos; o crime deles andarem ali a 800 metros debaixo da terra,
arquejantes, famintos e ignorantes, para que Calígula, o doido,
ponha freio de ouro ao seu «Incitatus» e Nunes, o patife, mate cães
a tiro na quinta da Formiga.
O mesmo devia pensar aquele Suvarine, o russo, que nos
aparece como um herói, quando nas trevas, alta noite, suspenso
sôbre a fundura do poço, armado de trado e serrote, começa no
revestimento da mina a sua obra de destruição.
 Um sábio português
ERA inquestionavelmente um sábio êste pobre Ferraz de Macedo
dos crânios, sôbre quem o dr. António Aurélio da Costa Ferreira vem
de tratar num opúsculo sentido e sincero. Um sábio a valer, com
amor quintessenciado aos seus crânios, às suas medições, e a sua
admiração pelos snrs. Quatrefages e Manouvrier. Não vai o tempo
para sábios e êle ressentiu-se disso. Faltou-lhe a atmosfera de
carinho a que todo o homem tem direito. Em vida foi um misantropo
vivendo a vida sonhada de todo o cerebral que se sente distanciado
da sua época, um século adiante, perdido da sua tríbu e tendo só a
confortá-lo os seus cadernos de notas e uma fé, uma vontade, mui
digna de encomiar-se. De resto nem a atenção dos poderes
públicos lhe deu audiência senão à pressa, nem êle teve nunca
geito para o palavrear solerte dos vivedores profissionais.
Fortuna, emquanto a teve, houve por bem desbravá-la em todos
os justos e generosos empreendimentos. Publicou o Cancioneiro da
Vaticana e amorosamente coleccionou bem um milhar de crânios
sôbre que deixou curiosas notas e estudos preciosamente
documentados. Que, já Fialho de Almeida o disse, no seu artigo dos
Serões, não seria êle um sábio que farolizasse ignotas brumas da
sciência, mas foi um documentador paciente, um consciencioso
observador, cuja rigorosa análise tem crédito no mundo scientista e
profissional. Ribot confirma. Abaixo dos grandes criadores, dos que
descobrem, dos que trazem novos horizontes à humanidade, há os
talentos que explicam comentam e desenvolvem as verdades
descobertas e que pela sua experiência analítica são os que rotulam
com exactidão a categoria da descoberta e muitas vezes tambêm a
anulam. Seria um dêstes talentos Ferraz de Macedo. Mas que
robusta energia, que frondosíssima tenacidade a enchia! Só isso o
faria grande se êle já o não fôsse por trabalhos que tinham merecido
de Manouvrier a opinião de ser «um homem conscienciosíssimo, um
pesquisador infatigável e instruidíssimo, dotado de notável
tenacidade» (Progrès médical—15-vi-1889), e de Quatrefages os
melhores elogios na sua História geral das raças humanas. É inútil
dizer o resto. Morreu pobre, esquecido e crente. Nenhuma
indiferença, nenhuma ingratidão, nenhum desdêm pôde soterrar-lhe
a crença. Quem nos déra a todos nós a tranqùilidade espiritual e o
desdêm bondoso da sua alma. E tiro o meu chapéu. Não há
impugnadores de que êle fôsse um sábio, um verdadeiro sábio.

Esta separata agora publicada pelo dr. Costa Ferreira é uma bela
obra. Os nomes dos grandes mortos são como as plantas. Precisam
de jardineiros, cultores apaixonados, tratadores conscienciosos e
dedicados, senão breve vem a delir-se na memória das gerações e
o seu derradeiro pouso é nas páginas dos livros especialistas a que
lá de vez em quando um ou outro compulsor estudioso sacode o pó
e afugenta a traça. Precisam de quem buzine ao vulgo, para
escarmento duns e exemplo doutros, a sua vida e as suas obras.
Sempre assim se tem feito.
O nome de Ferraz de Macedo não podia encontrar mais piedoso
cultor do que o seu discípulo e médico Costa Ferreira. Possuido do
mesmo acendrado amor aos estudos antropológicos, amando o
mesmo ideal, Costa Ferreira dele recebeu as últimas vontades. Foi
êle o testamenteiro de «mil e tantos crânios, trezentos e tantos
esqueletos, de origem conhecida, reproduções estereográficas de
crânios célebres dos principais museus da Europa, tudo medido e
rigorosamente observado e, com êle, arsenal antropológico e
livraria» que Ferraz destinou ao Museu da Escola Politécnica. É êle
tambêm que, cumprindo um último prometimento, tomou à sua
conta o não deixar esquecer o nome do mestre e continuar-lhe a
obra apoteotizando-lhe o nome numa contínua e modesta
memoranda dos seus trabalhos.
Piedosa homenagem esta, tanto mais para encarecer quanto é
certo que, dada a indiferença geral e oficial, ninguêm tal encargo
tomaria. Morreu, acabou-se. Trate cada um de si e já não é pouco!
Auscultem um milhar de criaturas e digam-me se não é assim que
elas pensam!
Falho de senso prático como todo o cerebral, êle só tinha uma
única paixão: a sciência. Só ela o vulnerabilizava, babando-se
diante duma esquírola do homem terciário. Fora da sciência, não
vivia. Nada sentia que não fôsse passado pelo crivo dos seus
apontamentos e pela ideia dos seus crânios. E tão afastado o
traziam os seus estudos, da vida vívida, que breve iria à mendiguez
se mão provedora e amiga não fôsse, acordando o sábio do seu
reino encantado, cuidar-lhe da mantença.
Nessa abstracção tão funda viveu, com seus canários os
pequenitos da vizinhança, os seus crânios «como num celeiro o
grão que espera embarque», medidos, e, ensacados por êle, com
mão reminiscenciada dos seus tempos de aprendiz de alfaiate, e os
seus gatos, que morreu sonhando. «Depois de morto é que eu
viverei... Para os novos é que eu apelo. Êles que me continuem e
me vinguem». Tais foram as suas últimas palavras, erguendo-se
num repelão e visionando ainda uma visão acariciadora. Não voltou
a falar. Costa Ferreira tomou o encargo piedoso de o lembrar, de o
não deixar morrer de todo, na ingratidão indígena. Tal disse e tal
cumpriu.
O sábio morreu. Os jornais titubiaram, os amigos escapuliram-se
e, mais tombo menos tombo, lá ficou no seu coval, talvez ainda com
saudade dos seus crânios e dos seus apontamentos. Solitário como
foi em vida, assim o foi na morte. A sua apoteose não chegara
ainda. Os gazeteiros não carrilhonaram às multidões cretinizadas
nem sequer o «ilustre e o distinto» da cozinha trivial. E como
morrera pobre e modestamente se enterrou, tambêm não
panegirizaram a criatura com girândolas de adjectivos surrados pelo
uso e abuso da pindarização de todo o fiel bigorrilhas que morre e
deixa ôsso que roer.
Depois talvez fôsse assim melhor. ¿Que tinham que ver com êle
os adjectivos?
 Se agora a matula egoísticada bichanava sempre que o via um
apodo desdenhoso, que resvalava do seu arnez de indiferença pelo
que diriam, tão longe andava dos que com êle se acotovelavam, em
tempos idos não faltaria o ingranzeu das turbas e o rumor falaz das
vélhas macbéticas do sítio, taxando de pacto diabólico o seu estudo,
qual outro Cláudio Frollo.
Todavia êle sem se agastar da indiferença duns, da parranice
doutros e do criminoso egoísmo de todos, contente se dava com a
sua estreiteza e, não requerendo melhoria de sorte, cada vez mais
se apartava do mundo real para o mundo de sonho. O trabalho para
êle era tudo. Confinava a sua casa com as estrêlas, vista cá
debaixo, da cidade, sitando lá no alto, ponto negrusco zimboriando o
alto do monte. Uma árvore anciã, fronteiriça, foi sua companhia e só
ela talvez cogitou na sua labuta interior. Ventos brigosos
sinfonizavam óperas de tormenta, numa orquestração como só a
tem o infinito. Tudo as sentia. A árvore vélha bracejava agitada e
angustiosamente. A cidade lá em baixo era um torvelinho de cousas
indistintas. Só êle prosseguia, medindo, classificando, registrando. E
podia um vento mau terremotar a casa. Podia um tufão furioso ir
desmoronar as sacas de crânios e formar no adro a pilha de crânios
que é o quadro de Verestchaguine, aquele pintor russo que morreu
na guerra russo-japoneza a bordo do Petropavlosk,—Après la
bataille. Êle não sentiria, êle continuaria as suas notas, e só as
terminaria quando nada mais, nenhuma sutura, nenhuma bossa,
nenhuma asimetria, houvesse a notular.
Se nunca foi aos cornos da glória é porque lhe faltava a
destridade dos malabaristas do reclamo. A sua tratabilidade de
sábio raso, sem alardos de sciência, nem emprenhidões de basófia,
contumaz em lusas celebridades, de todos o tornaram querido.
Depois um quási nada de antropófobo, a antropofobia do sábio que
se ensimesma em lucubrações profundas, e gasta a vida à luz
estudiosa. Era esta que, pelas negridões da noite, brilhava sempre
no seu gabinete, como na sua mente brilhou sempre a fé, a fé numa
perfectibilidade do homem e uma consolação no estudo, que, estou
certo, afinal talvez nunca chegasse a encontrar, que o tornavam
quási um estranho a tudo, a todos os arruídos e quermesses que lá
ao fundo convulsionavam a cidade.
E quem sabe lá, a esta hora talvez êle esteja ainda contando ao
verme as palavras enternecidas dos snrs. Manouvrier e Quatrefages
e as saudades dos seus crânios muito amados.
Então da outra vida, pensam as almas crentes, o sábio abençoará
de-certo e tarefa bondosíssima, devotada e carinhosa do Dr. Costa
Ferreira.
 Emigrantes
PARO diante da reprodução dum quadro. É do Salon dêste ano,
intitula-se «Émigrants» e assina-o Paul Sieffert. Eu não conheço o
pintor. O assunto conheço demasiadamente. Se não viram o quadro,
eu conto. O quadro do sr. Paul Sieffert é uma gare ou cousa que o
valha. Cai neve. O horizonte é longínqùo e a perspectiva monótona.
Nem uma árvore, nem uma planta. Neve, montes ao longe, neve
sempre. Á direita vagons. Vagons de mercadorias, vagons que
esperam tempo de seguir, levando não se sabe o quê, ocupam
quási tôda a tela. No primeiro plano uma mulher sentada no chão
estende um peito à voracidade do petiz que manduca. O macho,
dorme ao lado, cabeça sôbre uma perna sua, braço estendido ao
longo do corpo. A mão é primorosa. O busto bem estudado. Na cara
—a cara é tôda uma psicologia—mostra a estereotipia de
inumeráveis privações. Parece repousar, ou sonhar, cavada a face,
bem vincadas as rugas que a angústia marca a baixo relevo no
rosto dos que sofrem. A mulher ao lado cogita. Parece olhar-nos.
Não olha. Ela não vê. Scisma! Em quê? Só ela o poderá dizer. Uma
trouxa mísera, junto, é tôda a bagagem. Êle tipo de operário, ela de
fêmea resoluta e sofredora. Vão partir. Vencerão? Quem o saberá?
Não sei porquê, são-me simpáticos estes tipos. Se pudesse,
protegia-os. Sucede muitas vezes a minha piedade ir de preferência
para os tipos que os meus pintores ou os meus artistas me
entremostram—tão pouco a merecem, os que a gente topa todos os
dias. Ao lado uma ranchada manduca, ainda. Mais longe, pequenos
ranchos, trocam esperanças. Um vulto, ao fundo ou quási, remexe a
maleta. E, como se o pintor os quisesse destacar, aparece-nos,
quási escondidamente, um vélho que sonha, pelas costas um vélho
capote, no olhar uma nostalgia feroz, contrastando com um homem
que, de bruços, rosto apoiado na palma, scisma. Não scisma em
sonhos. Scisma em realidades. A energia da sua expressão traduz-
se assim. É amargo. Êste homem sabe da vida. Há combates no
seu cérebro. Vencerá? Todos êles vão partir. Ilusões, quimeras,
esperanças, é a bagagem. Sabe-se lá quem vence?
Até aqui o quadro. Se a agente quiser realidade, apesar da tela
ser de Paris, temo-la bem perto. Nós somos do país da emigração.
O quadro de Sieffert é tambêm nosso, com a diferença de o nosso
ser de mais recrudescível agonia. O português é mais triste.
Todos os dias desembarcam nas estações, mangas de gente
engajada que sonhou e ainda vem sonhando. Vão até ao Brasil e
são o que se chama emigrantes. Então pagam a patente à
realidade. O emigrante, por via de regra, não sabe escrever. Soletra
às vezes, mas é mais frequente não saber. Não sabendo ler, não
tendo a confidência muda da escrita por derivativo, estes cérebros
deitam-se a sonhar como nunca sonhou ninguêm. As histórias das
princesas encantadas, as mágicas, os contos da carochinha e mil
belezas populares foram criadas de-certo por quem não sabia ler
nem escrever. O Sonho é a válvula. Ai daqueles pobres cérebros se
não tivessem o Sonho! Terminariam no suicídio. Mas o Sonho é a
miragem. Acreditou alguêm no Sonho? Sempre êsse alguêm pagou
caro a sua confiança. Porque é certo: Só quem teve pesadelo
acordou em realidade. Quem sonhou delícias acorda mais
brutalmente—como alguêm que tendo vivido dois meses em quarto
escuro o trouxessem de repente para a alacridade duma paisagem
batida da soalheira.
Sonham em Portugal, na solidão tranqùila da sua choça e quási
sempre vão acordar em longínqùas e estranhas terras. Olham em
volta. Quem? Ninguêm amigo. Indiferentes, criaturas a quem a dôr
alheia, à força de vista e assistida, embotou tôda a sensibilidade. A
saudade é o pior inimigo do emigrante. «Saudade gôsto amargo de
infelizes, delicioso pungir de acerbo espinho», diz Garrett. Mas a
saudade é tudo. Se se vê o mar, é um vapor que vem, porque vem;
se um vapor parte, ai quem déra ir com êle, partir tambêm com êle.
São os poentes, duma melancolia infinita, são as noites estreladas e
tropicais, são nuvens que passam correndo, farrapos de sonho,
recordações da infância, cousas dispersas. Tudo é saudade. E o
pobre animal, bêsta de carga, gaguejando comoções, tem nos olhos
uma angústia latente, uma tristeza intraduzível, mixto de resignação,
de sofrimento e dum consuntivo mal. Mas, parte. Armazenam-o a
bordo, num dêsses casarões flutuantes, âmbito estreito, muito
desabrigo, trato mercenário e uma grade que os enjaula num restrito
círculo de vida. Ali dormem, comem e sonham promíscuamente. E
naquelas longas noites de travessia, enxugadas as lágrimas da
partida, estranguladas as saudades da largada, só o mugir surdo
das vagas lambendo o casco e os ronquidos surdos da máquina
cumprindo o seu fadário. Pobres almas divagantes, vão tambêm
embaladas no sonho, confiadas, e não escutando, no marulho do
oceano, a sua raiva fria e hostil, mas um cântico embalador, que traz
de onda em onda, de vaga em vaga, as recordações distantes, a
misteriosa correspondência dos entes queridos que ficaram em
terra.

Chegados, caidos no vértice duma vida estranha, tudo lhes é

agressivo. Os dignos de piedade são intrusos. Que querem? Ganhar
a vida. Que sabem? E, quando os míseros mostram os braços, já
está lavrada a sua condenação. Como a Terra Mater é saudosa! E
começa a agonia de viver a vida que já viveram, porque não é outra
cousa a saudade. Mas viver só imaginativamente. Se beijou vai-se
para se beijar e estendem-se os lábios para o vácuo. Abraçou-se e
é só o espaço que se encontra. Passa a viver-se aflitivamente. Pesa
mais a enchada. A serra é colossal. E como a planta dos trópicos
que conduziram à Groenlândia, ou como o símio que julgasse a
banana definitivamente extinta da face da terra, a criatura
amarelesce e pende. Há um remédio—o regresso. Quando partiu,
se é sonhadora, padece, se é desprendida pode triunfar talvez. Mas
quantas lutas? Quantos esforços? É por isso que os brasileiros,—é
assim que se denominam os emigrantes que partiram cedo e foram
enriquecer ao Brasil—teem quási todos barriga grande. Porque se
acostumaram a armazenar o sonho no estômago. Saudades,
recordações, qual!—comer, beber, ganhar. Mas são raros. Os que
voltam veem desanimados. Os que por lá estão vão vivendo. Depois
o emigrante é sonhador e ignorante. Duas más qualidades. Há
ignorantes que fazem fortuna mas nunca ninguêm viu coalhar
dinheiro a um sonhador.
São ambiciosos? Alguns. Outros partem com o fatalismo trágico
de quem vai cumprir um destino. É o caso do vélho do quadro de
Sieffert. Os ambiciosos ficam por lá, raramente voltam e geralmente
o ambicioso verdadeiro é cosmopolita, não vive para a saudade nem
para ninguêm que êle não seja. Por isso vence. Os outros vão e
quási sempre ficam. Mas se voltam—pobres emigrantes—trazem
um saquitelzinho com desilusões,—o espólio dum sonho morto,—
um grande desânimo, a alma mais fenecida, o cadáver mais surrado
e uma grande ânsia de voltar—que é isto que quási sempre traz o
emigrante quando volta:—o saquitelzinho com o espólio dum sonho
morto e uma grande ânsia, aquela infinita ânsia do regresso.
 Gabriéllo d’Annunzio
MÃO carinhosa e amiga manda-me de longe a última tragédia de
Gabriéllo d’Annunzio. A edição é luxuosa e o livro chama-se La
Nave.
Exactamente no momento em que o correio me bate á porta, leio
eu Fradique Mendes na sua Correspondência. Não sei que destino
mau nos pôs frente a frente de novo. Os livros são conhecidos
vélhos e tambêm entre os livros, como entre os conhecidos, há
íntimos. Pois encontrei-me de novo com Fradique aquela manhã em
que dava uma volta pelas estantes, como se Fradique viesse
Chiado acima, neurastenizado e aborrecido e eu lhe propuzesse
uma cházada em comum. Devo declarar porêm, que Fradique não é
meu íntimo. Fradique é um aristocrata, snob um pouco, e muito
pretencioso. É tambêm um vencido da vida que se dá ares, mas
confesso-lhes, prefiro aos vencidos os vencedores. Ia eu
exactamente quando Fradique se revolta contra as «ideias feitas,»
fala daquelle Cornuski, ou que o pareça, e diz das angústias críticas
do russo. Diante das mais belas obras, Cornuski sentia a dúvida que
o minava. ¿Não seria êle que não sabia ver? ¿Pois era lá possível
que todos se tivessem enganado? E duvidando, achando as
grandes obras sofríveis borracheiras, ou quando muito toleráveis
banalidades, o desgraçado repetia para aturdir-se um pouco:
—«Como é belo!»
Agora estou eu assim diante do livro do escritor italiano. Eu não
tenho paixão por d’Annunzio.
Acho-o cabotino até ao infinito. O seu cabotinismo não se pode
medir. O seu talento êsse sim. E duvido. ¿Será d’Annunzio o grande
escritor que eu ouço dizer a todos? Debalde busco as suas obras,
debalde leio os seus livros. Que demónio! Não me admiro, não me
comovo, não rio, não choro, não sinto. Sim, porque nenhum dos
livros de d’Annunzio nunca me fêz chorar ou me fêz sentir. São bem
feitos, não resta dúvida. Mas que diabo! E dão-me ganas de o correr
das minhas estantes. Desconfio muito que seja um intrujão.
D’Annunzio é para mim um belo decorador. A sua arte é
scenografia pura. Há sempre flores e perfumes nas suas páginas. O
lilaz é talvez a sua flor preferida. O poente a sua hora predilecta. Os
seus heróis não amam, lirizam. Os seus personagens não falam,
murmuram; não sentem, representam. E, para que ocultá-lo, apesar
da sensualidade capitosa que os inunda, iria apostar que são todos
castrados.
Para d’Annunzio o amar é assim como que uma oração, como
que uma doce e suave embriaguez. Não é a rajada que passa,
dominadora e perturbante, não é um cataclismo, não é uma
tempestade. Não é. O amor nele é leve, muito leve, imaterial,
bizantino e todo espiritualizado. Há sempre luar e sempre músicas
celestes vibram psicologias profundas.
Mas eu leio d’Annunzio. Leio-o mesmo muitas vezes para ver se o
percebo. E no meu espírito fica uma impressão muito vaga de tudo
aquilo, muito vaga e muito dolorosa. Porque, decididamente, não
tenho olhos para ver aquelas belezas tôdas e o meu espírito não
pode, sem Bœdecker, penetrar naquelas regiões encantadas da
prosa.
Um livro há que eu guardo, que leio com prazer e tenho como
óptimo. É o seu Episcopo & C.ª e os seus contos. Êsses sim.
Ponho-o a par dos deliciosos de Guy de Maupassant. Ali há
sinceridade e eu sinto quando os leio. A operação feita a bordo do
lugre Trindade e o seu São Pantaleão de pedra, que esmaga a mão
a um dos condutores, que depois lha vai oferecer, são prosas
magistrais. Mas, declaro: O Fogo é qualquer cousa de ultra-humano,
de divino, do demónio que os leve, que não sei o que êle quere
dizer. Não me falta vontade para o compreender. Mas aquilo ainda
não é para mim. Linguagem para deuses só a deuses é
compreensível. E, à hora do poente que êle tanto prefere, o céu
lilaz, lilaz a terra tôda, a treva abraçando o mundo, vindo a curvar-se
num beijo sôbre o dia que morre, eu volvo desanimado:
-Deve ser essa a razão!...
 D’Annunzio representa o homem para quem o nó da gravata
todos os dias é uma tortura. Tenho a impressão de que êle se
perfuma e é incorregívelmente, viciosamente dandy. Da sua vaidade
não falemos. Deve ser infinita a vaidade dêste pobre diabo, contou-
me uma vez o Eclesiastes.
A sua prosa é tambêm assim. Não tem arestas. Tão harmónica,
que parece ter cópula com a música. Ricamente vestida, mas só
isso. É mesmo o que a caracteriza. Se o desideratum é agradar às
mulheres, d’Annunzio deve ter conseguido, porque às mulheres
agrada-lhes sempre o que não percebem. Depois, a feminagem
perfumada que impregna os seus livros faz com que seja buscado
com prazer e com prazer deixado. Daudet, na minha estante, está
perto. E, devo confessar-lhes, eu adoro Daudet. Daudet é o poeta
da vida. Objectam-me que d’Annunzio é um poeta. Mas Daudet faz
a poesia da prosa, com princípio, meio e fim. D’Annunzio é
indiferente. Leiam os senhores os seus livros por onde quiserem e
encetem a leitura por qualquer página. Isso não fará diferença. Faz
sempre sentido. Há lilaz em tôdas as páginas. Poeta foi Gauthier e
eu ainda hoje o leio com prazer. Tem muito de misticismo êste
Gabriéllo! diz uma dama. Pois bem, minha senhora, o lugar dos
místicos é no céu. Queira dizer ao seu d’Annunzio que mude de
feitio senão perdeu um freguês. E é que nunca mais o compro!...
Uma cousa curiosa que eu tenho notado é que entre os artistas
que não teem gravata e aqueles para quem o nó da dita é uma
preocupação, os primeiros teem sempre mais talento. Não sei
porque, mas creio que entre um Verlaine que morre no hospital e um
Gabriéllo que manda fazer o mausoléu em mármore, o do hospital
vale mais. Mas eu não discuto! Os senhores não se zanguem, ou
zanguem-se embora, que eu nada lhes levo por isso. Isto é comigo
sómente. Se eu lhes digo que prefiro o Baudelaire ao Torquato
Tasso!
Se d’Annunzio é poeta, é um parnasiano. Se é prosador, a sua
prosa talvez seja poesia. Pela abundância de imagens, pelo colorido
pouco vulgar, decoração e o não descrito, seja embora um poeta,
como prosador gosto dele nos contos. As suas novelas não as
entendo. Eis o que eu penso. De resto qualquer dos franceses ou