Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Assumptions and Proxies

Assumptions and Proxies

Since Deadwood went off my wife and I watch the Mini Series “Justified.” It is by the same writers and directors and contains many of the same actors. It is a great series worthy of both study and enjoyment.

My favorite character is Boyd Crowder, the son of a criminal kingpin in Harlan Kentucky, who claims to have had a conversion to Christ, however the audience is left hanging as to whether or not that is really true.

Anyway the Protagonist, Marshal Givens, is having a relationship with a woman who was married to and killed one of the Crowder brothers. Marshall Givens has many enemies in his own right and one night as the two are in bed, someone enters and tries to kill them. The Marshall assumes it is one of the Crowders and goes to the penitentiary to talk to Boyd to find out who it is.

Boyd tells him to reexamine his assumptions……That maybe the assailants were not after her but after him…..This turns out to be correct and raises a great question about the complexity of human beings and our motives for how we frame the constraints that shape our world view.

Sometimes we use assumptions as proxies to explain to ourselves why we feel the way we do. Our brain is stupid and believes anything our awareness tells it. We can literally convince it of anything, often without realizing that there are factors at work that go well beyond the scenarios we have fed into its CPU….or had fed into it by others, for that matter.

I know this sounds obscure so let me give an example. When I was a kid in Korea my mother had a house maid and one day gave her some brocade silk cloth to take to the dressmaker. On the way to complete the errand the young girl took a shortcut across the paddies and was raped by a thug. When my mother heard the news she was stunned and felt guilty that her request led in part to the rape and took action to insure the girl received the proper medical attention. That afternoon when she expected the girl to be in the hospital being treated she showed up with her mother and other family members with the ruined material pleading they not be asked to make restitution for the bolt of cloth.