Vern Bryk

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I do not reside in the ivory tower, though I occasionally visit to fix the elevator. 

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A simple man's credo: Fix more things than you break and you're good.

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Some years ago, a news story told of a freshly whitewashed church wall that had been streaked by rain. The pattern suggested the image of a man's face that some locals presumed to be Jesus. Further investigation proved that there was indeed the likeness of a long-haired, bearded man on the wall. The workers had painted over a Willie Nelson concert poster.

Context matters. Had the image been seen on the side of a music hall instead of a church, the initial assumption might have been different. At least in this case, the image itself was real and not imagined. The only error was in identification.

In the case of the Apache Head Rocks photo above, the face is wholly imaginary. It exists only in our minds. And from a different angle it doesn't look like a face at all. The tendency to envision faces in things is known as Facial Pareidolia. Entering the term in a search engine will yield many more examples.

Some think this predisposition correlates with a paranoid personality. Seeing things that aren't really there. Like a conspiracy theorist imagining non-existent connections to explain events. More likely is that we all see the face, but only some of us see it as sinister.

Artists have long had fun playing with our inclination to see faces, deliberately embedding them into illustrations and paintings.

A 1590 painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo shows a basket of fruit that looks like a human head when turned upside down.

A 1937 painting by Salvador Dalí titled Paranoiac Face shows African villagers sitting around a hut. Rotate the image 90 degrees, and it becomes a face.

A more recent example can be found in the logo for the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium, which at first glance shows just a tree. Looking more closely, one sees the negative space at the left forming the head of a gorilla and the space to the right forming the head of a lioness.

Whether intentional or otherwise, both cases share a common feature. Once you have seen the face, you will not fail to see it on subsequent viewings. It becomes unforgettable.

This can be troublesome for those inclined to see a sinister face lurking in the fabric of events. Will the distorted perception become a permanent perspective?

The poem above poses the question. Can the mind erase what the heart has drawn?

Unfortunately, the common thread among those afflicted with some degree of paranoia is that they don't perceive it as an ailment in need of remedy, so they don't seek any. It remains the unresolvable conundrum of misperception. You do not seek corrective clarity when you believe you already possess it. 

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We don't see things as they are, but as we are. Our perception is influenced by our emotions. If you're smart, you already know that. And if you're really smart, you assume that your awareness of the foible protects you from it. And that assumption of immunity likely makes you less vigilant and more susceptible, which is not smart.

It seems counterintuitive that being intelligent can make you unwise, but there are several good reasons for it. One is that your intelligence improves your ability to argue your intuitive position, not just to others, but to yourself. When you believe you have arrived at your position by reasoning, you don't see it as intellectual arrogance. You see it simply as being correct. Besides, you're a nice person. Affable and self-effacing. It's just not possible for you to be imperiously dogmatic. You're just plain right, and unassailably so.

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If you were to reveal the details of your alien abduction back in the conformist Fifties, that admission might have earned you a stay in a psychiatric hospital and possibly a lobotomy. That same disclosure in the Eighties might have won you a book contract. Today it might lead to a popular and profitable podcast.

What caused society to reverse course and embrace the weird? The Sixties.

The counter-culture assault on traditional mores and folkways was the Big Bang of nonconformity that loosened social standards for attire, behavior, speech, and thinking. For better and for worse, the Great Unfettering generated a broader acceptance of alternative ideas, some enlightening, some controversial, and others bizarre. The latter included a wide range of paranormal beliefs and wild conspiracy theories.

Should we care? Does it matter what people believe so long as they remain law-abiding, self-supporting citizens?

When does a peculiar, improbable belief constitute a serious break with reality? When does eccentricity cross the line into genuine psychological disorder? Can that line be defined by objective standards that stand the test of time, or is "normal behavior" merely a protean cultural artifact that follows fashion?

The answers to those questions may be hazy, but one thing remains clear. After more than a half century, the Great Unfettering remains in full bloom and its effects continue.

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Imagine a mystery novel featuring Alexander the Great as the investigator. What might that look like? His handling of the Gordian Knot suggests a certain impatience with untangling things, so we can assume story would be brief.

Young Alex was a man of action, not deliberation. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not. And those opposing concepts set up a dynamic tension in how we handle our affairs, both at the personal level and at the larger level of nations.

A rational person should be deliberative, but not too much so. We don't want to be a dithering Hamlet in an urgent crisis, yet we desire complete information before taking irreversible action, lest a grave mistake be made. The problem is that perfect information is rarely available.

Impulsive people are more of the Alexander mold, their sword ever-ready to solve knotty problems. They are primed to act because they understand that opportunities for decisive action are often fleeting, that one must seize the moment before it disappears.

So how do we determine when the threshold of knowledge has been met? How do we know when it's time to launch? Action yields consequences. So does inaction.

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