"Holy Fool"

Every time we hear of a spy who operated successfully for far too long, or a fraud who swindled people for ages, we wonder, “How could everyone have missed all the signs?”. But, as Malcolm Gladwell writes in Talking to Strangers:

“In real life… lies (told by people we know and interact with very often) are rare.”

This makes sense, because if we thought folks around us were liars or crooks, we wouldn’t be with them, would we? Ironically then, this blinds us to the odd cheat/ liar in our group. No wonder, says Gladwell, that for people we know, we “default to truth”, i.e., we accept (or come up with) explanations for stuff that is suspicious. It takes a lot of counter-evidence before we change our opinion.

 

Gladwell then describes something from Russia:

“In Russian folkfore, there is an archetype called yurodivy, or the ‘Holy Fool’. The Holy Fool is a social misfit – eccentric, off-putting, sometimes even crazy – who nonetheless has access to the truth. ‘Nonetheless’ is actually the wrong word. The Holy Fool is a truthteller because he is an outcast.”

Most people stop there and conclude that the world needs more Holy Fools.

 

But that is too simplistic. Gladwell analyzes things further:

“The statistics say that the liar and the con man are rare. But to the Holy Fool, they are everywhere.”

Imagine the counter-factual:

“We can’t all be Holy Fools. That would be a disaster.”

Why? How? Gladwell quotes Ted Levine on that:

“What we get in exchange for being vulnerable to an occasional lie is efficient communication and social coordination.”

 

In a world full of Holy Fools, your boss would never trust you. You wouldn’t trust your maid. Parents wouldn’t trust teachers. Which is why the world is the way it is, trusting and tending to “default to truth”, says Levine:

“Sure, we get deceived once in a while. That is just the cost of doing business.”

 

If we agree that “society cannot function” without trust, Gladwell says our reaction to those who failed to notice a breach in that trust, even when it has horrific consequences (staff that didn’t realize children were being molested at a school, or a spy agency failing to spot a traitor), “deserve our sympathy, not our censure”.