From Darrell's Desk
By Rev. Darrell Maguire
I had an interesting discussion some time ago with my first cousin Terry, who just happens to be a retired dentist living in northern Ontario. I was mentioning to Terry, that my daughter Rachel worked at the time in a dental office in Brantford where they offer popcorn to the waiting patients, which Terry and I both agreed was kind of counter intuitive. I mean, how many people have broken a tooth on an unpopped kernel. “At least”, Terry said, “you are already at the dental office”. I went on to explain that the popcorn, I was told, was there not to make work for the dentists, but to cover up the antiseptic chemical smells that are present in a dental office. This, I have learned, and many other strategies are now used by dentist to make our anxiety-ridden experience to the dentist less stressful.
My cousin Terry then went on to tell me that a little-known fact is that Orville Redenbacher, the famous popcorn maker, was a dentist. He said this with a complete straight face and then smirked, and I realized he was pulling my leg. He then expressed that if you make something sound plausible, however untrue, someone will believe you.
Perhaps that is why urban legends end up getting traction among us. Stories that seem fantastic but have a ring of probability to them. One such story is the one where a valuable car (low mileage and rare) is being sold by a grieving mother, or widow, because someone died in a war, (the war changes depending on the generation telling the tale) all for a ridiculous price. These tales are also quite entertaining, so we enjoy forwarding them on to others. One giveaway that the story you are being told is an urban legend, is when the storyteller begins with something like “I heard it from a friend whose second cousin etc….”
The Internet and social media have ushered in what is truly a golden age of urban legends. Almost weekly my email inbox has a story, often warning of a new danger, scam, or rare opportunity to make oodles of money. All this information comes without fact checking, or any discernible original source. And like the Orville Redenbacher yarn, if the story seems plausible enough, people will buy it. I have even heard more than once from someone that “if it's on the Internet, it must be true.”
I mention this because I personally am struggling to make sense of our recent national election campaign. The news stories, party literature, and even just casual conversations, all seem to contradict each other. Promises are made by all parties that, when examined closely, are economically unfeasible, or not even within their jurisdiction. Statistics are being bent to serve the political aspirations of the parties, and when they are called to account by the media, charges, a la Donald Trump, are made of “false news”.
Promises made that things will be better when they are elected, are sounding more and more like urban legends. As people who have “itchy ears”, we want some of these promises and some of the stories we hear to be true. Maybe it's our longing to believe that traps us into buying into the untruth. Clearly there has developed in us an intellectual laziness, that allows us to just become passive receivers of information no matter what its veracity. In schools and neighbourhoods, work environments, and even in churches we are sorely tempted to sit back and wait for someone, anyone, to tell us what to believe.
If we default to such a position, then we deserve the outcome of whatever falsehood we chase, and no matter who is spouting it. In the meantime, I heard it from a friend of a friend, that “Colonel Sanders was actually allergic to chicken”.
