People who grow up believing certain things,
even if they later stop believing them,
may not quite realize how the beliefs sound to outsiders...
(SCENE: A small cottage in Nazareth.)
Joseph: Mary, my dearest fiancée, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about.
(Mary's shoulders slump. Slowly, as if under a heavy burden, she turns around to face Joseph.)
Joseph: You seem to be getting fat around the waistline, and throwing up in the morning, and, er, not getting any periods. Which is odd, because it's sort of like -
Mary: Yes! I'm pregnant! All right? I'm PREGNANT!
Joseph: How is that possible?
(Mary's shoulders slump further.) Mary: How do you think?
Joseph: I don't know, that's why I'm asking you. I mean, you're still a virgin, right?
(Mary looks up cautiously, and sees Joseph's face looking blankly puzzled.)
Joseph: Well?
Mary: God did it.
Joseph: You had sex with -
Mary: No! Haha. Of course not. I mean, God just snapped his fingers and did one of those miracle things and made me pregnant.
Joseph: God made you pregnant.
Mary: (Starts to sweat.) Yes.
Joseph: Mary, that is just so... completely...
(Mary's eyes squeeze shut.)
Joseph: ...COOL!
(Mary opens her eyes again, cautiously.)
Mary: You think so?
Joseph: Of course! Who wouldn't think so? Come on, we've got to tell everyone the news!
Mary: Maybe we should keep this between just the two of us -
Joseph: No, no, silly girl, this is way too important! Come on!
(Joseph grabs Mary's wrist and drags her out of the house. SCENE: The gathering square of Nazareth. A dozen well-dressed men, and the town's head rabbi, look on Joseph and Mary impatiently.)
Rabbi: What's this all about, Joseph? I trust there's a good reason for the fuss?
Joseph: Go ahead, Mary! Tell them what you told me.
Mary: Um... (She swallows.) God made me pregnant.
Rabbi, looking stern, yet understanding: Now, Joseph, you know you're not supposed to do that before -
Joseph: No, no, you don't get it! She's still a virgin! God made her pregnant directly!
(There's a long pause.)
Man #1: So, what you're saying here, basically, is that Mary tells you she's a virgin.
Joseph: Uh huh!
Man #2: And you haven't had sex with her.
Joseph: Uh huh!
Man #3: And now she's pregnant.
Joseph: Precisely!
Man #4: So you think that God did it.
Joseph: What other explanation could there be?
Rabbi: Joseph, that is just so... unbelievably...
(Mary holds her breath.)
Rabbi: NEAT!
(Mary exhales.)
Man #5: A miracle! A miracle right here in Nazareth!
Man #6: Wow! I thought that miracles only happened in Jerusalem!
Man #7: Come on! Let's spread the good news!
(They depart. SCENE: Mary is alone with her friend, Betty, in Betty's house.)
Betty: "God did it."
Mary: I panicked! It was all I could think of!
Betty: So who's the real -
(Mary lifts an eyebrow significantly. There's a brief pause.)
Betty: Ah. So that's why the rabbi went along with it.
Mary: Well, he thinks he's the father, anyway. Why, does it matter?
Betty: It puts some things in a different light.
Mary: Like what?
Betty: The rabbi has been telling all the pretty young girls that you, Mary, are the ultimate embodiment of feminine virtue, and when they grow up, they should be just like you -
Mary: I just feel so awful about the whole mess. What kind of thing is this to have hanging over my child's life?
Betty: You've got to put things in perspective, dearie. You told one little white lie. It's not as if you caused the fall of the Roman Empire.
Mary: But what if the Romans hear about it? I don't want my baby to end up being crucified!
Betty: No one's going to obsess about it that long. In a couple of months this whole thing will blow over.
Mary: I hope you're right...
(Exeunt Omnes.)
Perhaps this post needs to be rehosted at http://www.sufferingfrombias.com for it gives no suggestion or hypothesis about overcoming bias. Here are three.
ONE: Friendships with people from different cultures helps one to realise that stuff one was brought up to accept sounds deeply weird to those who first encounter it as adults.
TWO: There are tells: little warning glitches. The trouble is that from the inside the tell doesn't make sense, but human memory depends on embedding items in networks of meaning, so the tells will not embed and get forgotten. An example from my personal life is reading about the recent shooting spree in Finland that left eight dead. On comment on this was that it was a big shock because the standard Finish murder involves a man going on a fishing trip with his best friend, knifing him during a drunken row, and, overcome by remorse, turning himself in.
I found the standard Finish murder incomprehensible. I could never imagine doing anything like that. Recently I've come to realise that I'm the odd one out. Perhaps I have an attachment disorder. I'm terrified of rows with friends because I see relationships as fragile, easily destroyed by a petty quarrel, and the breaking of affectional bonds as unbearably painful. (Notice that my beliefs are internally inconsistant: if breaking affectional bonds is as painful as I fear, my friends are clearly not going to inflict that pain on themselves by dropping me over a petty quarrel. Whoops!)
Here is the general interest bit: rows within marriages, love affairs, and close friendships, are a well known phenomenon (is this the understatement of the month?). So I've spent 30 years noticing this and forgetting it without realising the implications, noticing and forgetting, noticing and forgetting, over and over, without ever holding it in my awareness for long enough to say "Hey! Wait a minute..."
Suggestion two is to keep a little black book of the stuff that keeps getting dropped on the floor. So it one was brought up a Christian one might notice when a daughter or fiancee unexpectly falls pregnant this never raised hopes of a second coming or a new relevation. After a while one realises that one never follows this thought anywhere, even though there is something odd about it. Into the black book it goes.
Later you can look through the book and start trying to worry out what is so slippery about the thought. Write down the stuff that doesn't make sense so that it has a chance against the much more easy to remember stuff that fits into your world view.
THREE: Fine distinctions of sarcasm. When one of one's favorite views is attacked by a sarcastic comment it sometimes irritates and it sometimes stings.
Sometimes the humour depends on an oversimplification. Perhaps the humour priviledges the ex post perspective over the ex ante perspecitive. This irritates because the attack is short and funny and the repost is long and dull, and yet ex post is not inherently better than ex ante, the argument is being decided by structural matters independent of the merits of the case.
Othertimes the humour lies in the fact that the sarcasm cuts through the bullshit and the defense mechanisms and pierces to the heart of the matter. This stings. The only defence is to remember all the worthless sarcasm that depends on distortion and irritates rather than stings and to pretend that this sting is also an irritation.