What more proof do we need? Sure, he lost his license to practice medicine and his findings have been proven false by every scientist who looked into the matter, but, isn’t that just proof of the conspiracy? Plus, there’s that one doctor who said vaccines cause autism. Thousands of clinical studies and the tens of millions of lives saved pale in comparison to the word of Jenny McCarthy. Vaccines may have won the war against smallpox, but they are no match for our well-researched ignorance. We entrench ourselves with a commitment to narrow-mindedness - a skill we can readily demonstrate with a few case studies. Our irrational realities are impervious to facts. Like a cartoon, its unreality allows astrology to make up whatever it wants. And next time you fail at anything, take comfort in the knowledge that it wasn’t your fault, it was just an unfortunate lunar motion. When there’s tension in the workplace, we know it’s because Mercury is in retrograde (it has nothing to do with Karen’s pissed disposition). This, despite stars being randomly located massive balls of perpetual nuclear fusion separated from earth by trillions of miles of space. We believe that the position of the earth in relation to the stars at the time of our births has cosmic relevance to the rest of our lives. We know so much, in fact, that we haven’t had to change our thinking on anything in decades.

Our feelings and beliefs are of greater value than inconvenient or unsettling facts dredged up by the evil forces of science and reason. Irrationality lets us be right all the time.

Malibu Motel by Chaunceton Bird