Let Me Tell You A Story

Now, there are undoubtedly thousands of amazing tales with wondrous heroics, triumphs over seemingly insurmountable odds, and life-changing wisdom. Such fascinating stories of lives that are called “inspiring” or even “miraculous.” These are the ones that can be turned into books, perhaps even movies.

This story, however, is average, by most standards. It is unique since this life has only been lived by one person in all of history, but that can be said about all lives. It offers no promises of grand revelations or inspiration, nor suspense.

I need to know he’s okay. And him. And them.

In a recent court case, jurors disregarded evidence of abuse because they couldn’t believe a human being could do something so heinous to another. This, experts say, is human nature. If something is so hard to understand/believe as possible, we decide it simply cannot be despite evidence or generally believing the witness otherwise. It stretches from abuse to assaults to illness. It is unfortunate, but oddly understandable.

We construct our own realities, with rules of what can/cannot be. It allows us to function— everything works within our own laws of logic/nature. When something happens far beyond our accepted laws, it threatens our very realities— we’d have to reconstruct our known reality to accommodate the info.

It’s much easier to deny, then reconstruct especially when the info makes our reality more grim or difficult to navigate. Now any human could be a monster like Hitler. Now any human could be abusing children. Now any human could be assaulted without provoking another. Now any human could have an invisible, hindering illness without strict triggers. Now any human could treat another with such malice/disregard.

So our realities have rules; it can’t be simply “any human” or “any situation” or “any illness functions.” It’s humans with “this” upbringing or incidents because the victim was “wearing this” or humans “exaggerating” how the illness affects them.

It’s never that we don’t believe the evidence or witness, truly. It’s when it threatens our reality. Because that person could never do that. Because something had to have provoked the sexual assault. Because the human body can’t be that messed up. Even because “I can’t be racist/ableist/sexist/misogynistic/bad” despite doing something that is exactly that, regardless if it’s minor or major.

Again, experts say this is understandable human behaviour. We protect ourselves and that means protecting our perceived realities. Unfortunately, it also means denying truth, denying reality and ultimately hurting another human being because their reality clashes with our own.

I don’t know a good solution to this. No expert seems to provide a great answer— our realities need rules and structure; we can’t believe everything without some skepticism. But critical thinking is already biased. It often comes down to “why would the witness/evidence lie” and can we live with our new reality?