Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

554 J HOW THE MIND WORKSof a dominant-submissive or celebrity-fan relationship are always there,but neither party may want the relationship to go in that direction. Bydeprecating the qualities that you could have lorded over a friend or that afriend could have lorded over you, you are conveying that the basis of therelationship, as far as you are concerned, is not status or dominance. Allthe better if the signal is involuntary and hence hard to fake.If this idea is correct, it would explain the homology between adulthuman laughter and the response to mock aggression and tickling inchildren and chimpanzees. The laughter says, It may look like I'm tryingto hurt you, but I'm doing something that both of us want. The idea alsoexplains why kidding is a precision instrument for assessing the kind ofrelationship one has with a person. You don't tease a superior or astranger, though if one of you floats a trial tease that is well received, youknow the ice is breaking and the relationship is shifting toward friendship.And if the tease elicits a mirthless chuckle or a freezing silence, youare being told that the grouch has no desire to become your friend (andmay even have interpreted the joke as an aggressive challenge). Therecurring giggles that envelop good friends are reavowals that the basis ofthe relationship is still friendship, despite the constant temptations forone party to have the upper hand.THE INQUISITIVE IN PURSUITOF THE INCONCEIVABLE"The most common of all follies," wrote H. L. Mencken, "is to believepassionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation ofmankind." In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives onafter death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine thetruth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits,ghosts, saints, fairies, angels, demons, cherubim, djinns, devils, andgods. According to polls, more than a quarter of today's Americansbelieve in witches, almost half believe in ghosts, half believe in the devil,half believe that the book of Genesis is literally true, sixty-nine percentbelieve in angels, eighty-seven percent believe that Jesus was raised fromthe dead, and ninety-six percent believe in a God or universal spirit. Howdoes religion fit into a mind that one might have thought was designed toreject the palpably not true? The common answer—that people take