"People resist the disconfirmation of these things," Bradd Shore says. "They want them to be true”(Rosellini). What I consider that this quote means is that people want something to believe in. They occasionally dramatize events that were only miniature events. For example, Bigfoot, a 7 foot hairy ape like creature could only be a person in a suit smiling as you run away. Bigfoot's evidence, sightings, and reports are all a hoax. From pranksters, suits in ice blocks, and false evidence, Bigfoot will turn out to be a big bogus. Prankster Ray L. Wallace has been making artificial footprints of Bigfoot for 45 years! Ray with his brother Wilbur that helped him in this prank by crafting wooden feet and then created the Bigfoot feet in mud. Loggers
Many of us hold onto our beliefs or myths even when we are presented with evidence proving our beliefs to be false. In the article, “When ears don’t hear, truth is futile” by Leonard Pitts Jr. he states, “When people are determined to believe a lie, there is nothing more futile than the truth.” (para. 16) Why is that? As human beings sometimes it is easier to hold onto our fabricated worldviews, this allows us to stay and rest in our comfortable bubbles. If we were to appropriately assess truthful information presented to us, we might experience cognitive turmoil, our biased truths becomes lies, and ultimately we now have information that would either force a lifestyle change or we “bury our head in the sand” so to speak. In the article Leonard
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true” (Kierkegaard)- Misleading oneself by accepting things as true or valid when they are not is a common phenomenon of nearly every human being, especially when faced with life changing of threatening situations. Self-deception can therefore be considered an option to escape reality in order to prevent oneself from dealing with the weight of a situation. Basically, those strong influencing psychological forces keep us from acknowledging a threatening situation or truth. However, oftentimes people do not realize that they are deceiving themselves, for it is mostly the action of the subconscious mind to protect especially the psychological well- being. This psychological state is depicted and in Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. He shows that people try to escape reality and seek refuge in self-deception when confronted with life-threatening situations, through characterization, alternate point of view, and the fluidity of time.
People always think something's all true. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 2
Bigfoot also known popularly as the Sasquatch, Momo, Skunk Ape, the list goes on and on, is without a doubt, the most famous of all hairy man-like creatures. The following will make you a believer in this overseen creature, it made me one. Bigfoot is seen in every possible location throughout the North American Continent, mountains, swamps, forests, crossing desolate and some not so desolate roadways and on open farmland. While its demeanor varies from docile to curios to almost threatening, its general appearance varies. Bigfoot is a massive animal, its average height is seven and a half feet tall, its weight is said be between 400-500 pounds. It is covered almost completely in fur, and its fur ranges in color from the moist widespread dark red-brown to brown, black, red, gray and even white. It leaves its footprints behind as a calling card, almost taunting the researchers that reverently research this undiscovered animal. While its prints resemble mans, they are characteristically large in comparison, and instead of the weight distribution being concentrated under the heel and ball as in the arched human foot, the weight distribution is more evenly distributed over the flat, yielding Bigfoot foot. Most often the prints have five toes, occasionally however the tracks are apparently three toed. The three toed tracks can be theorized several ways; that there is a unique variety of Bigfoot in existence, while resembling the five toed Bigfoot closely, it retains a few distinguishing characteristics; another theory is that some soil conditions can cause the toes of Bigfoot to 'clump' together. The proportion of three toed tracks in comparison to the five toed tracks seems to indicate that three toes is the exception to the norm, and that it is the result of some environmental peculiarity. The main physical characteristics attributed to Bigfoot, other than size and foot shape, are that it is bipedal and upright, has wide shoulders and a heavy brow ridge. Its eyes are sometimes said to appear to be red in color, but are mainly reported as yellow. Although no discernible language has ever been placed with Bigfoot creatures, they are very vocal. Witnesses have reported high pitched wails and low, growling roars, either before and/or after visually spotting a Sasquatch. On some occasions the sounds have been heard from two or more locations at the same time, apparently in communication with one another.
This provides powerful insight into the role Bigfoot like creatures played in Native American cultures. Some tribes were not afraid of the creatures, considering them kind and helpful, while peacefully coexisting with them. Other tribes found them to be more violent and dangerous creatures. The fact that these tribes called the animals Stick Indians or Brush Indians seems to suggest that the creatures were simply other tribes they did not get along with opposed to a village of mythical creatures. Some examples of Bigfoot like creatures in Native American tribes include the Chiye – Tanka, the Lofa, the Maxemista, and the popular Sasquatch. The Chiye – Tanka was the Bigfoot like creature of the Sioux Indians (“Native American,” n.d.). This animal
Crucible that people should lie to preserve some things like life. In A Different Drummer,
In today’s world there are always people trying to come up with a new way to explain something. There will always be people trying to pedal a new product or story about an innovative new way to look at things. Some of these ideas will really be ground-breaking, but many of these will be false ideas. Many of them will just be honest mistakes, but just as many will be ideas from people trying to trick other people. Carl Sagan recognizes this and writes about it in his article The Fine Art of Baloney Detection. Within it he describes how he has been vulnerable himself wanting to believe things that people have told him that didn’t seem true, but was what he wanted to hear. He then goes on to talk about how people need to be skeptical about what they are told/read. He has developed a system using the scientific which he calls “Tools for Skeptical Thinking.” These are things that people can do when evaluating a situation or idea to check for “baloney.” I have picked six of these tools to explain in further detail.
Humanity became fascinated with the idea of evolution with the work of Charles Darwin and the Scientific Revolution. People began hunting for fossils that would prove that man had an ape derived ancestry (Weiner, 1955). After various years of searching, a piece of physical evidence was found in England that was said to confirm the theory of evolution (Weiner, 1955).This confirmation came from Charles Dawson’s discoveries from 1908, that were announced publicly in 1912 (Thackeray, 2011). Dawson was believed to have found the fossil remains of the “missing link” between ape and human evolution, the reconstructed skull of Piltdown man (Augustine, 2006). The material was found in stratigraphical evidence and animal remains that were, at the time, adequate enough to confirm the antiquity of the remains (Weiner, 1955). In 1915, another specimen, Piltdown man II, was found further proving this theory (Augustine, 2006). However, this was merely a hoax proven by fluorine relative dating in 1953; the artifacts and bone fragments discovered turned out to be altered to fit the proposed scenario (Augustine, 2006). The skull found was actually composed of a human braincase that was younger than the complimentary orangutan lower jaw (Falk, 2011). Both sections of the skull had been stained to appear to be from the same person of the same age (Falk, 2011).The perpetrator of this act was never caught and there are many theories proposed for the motive of this hoax (Augustine, 2006). Many people have been taken into consideration for this crime, such as Chardin, Woodward, Hinton, and Dawson (Augustine, 2006). Nevertheless, the evidence that proves that Dawson is guilty of this crime against anthropology is quite substantial compared to the evidence...
Clifford’s arguments for this conclusion is that if we are gullible enough to believe something without evidence then we are not only harming our individual credibility and intellect but also polluting the rest of society...
The theory of there being an ape like beast that walks through our wilderness all started with a 16mm film in Bluff Creek, California by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in 1967. The video displayed a tall, hairy human like figure trolling along a timber clearing walking briskly away from Patterson and Gimlin. The film ignited a craze amongst scientist and viewers to go on a conquest to prove Bigfoots existence. The 1967 film was never proven to be a hoax or real evidence and still today is a toss up.
Comparing The Earth on Turtle's Back, When Grizzlies Walked Upright, And the Navajo Origin Legend
It was Hayley and Paige’s favorite time of the year. Every year their Girl Scout troop goes on a camping trip on Mt. Bushwell. An immense campsite with a massive forest the size of two football fields. Paige and Hayley were so excited to go this year especially because on the news they said there were three Bigfoot sightings there. One thing Paige and Hayley love more than camping is exploring. Basically outdoors was their best friend. On the ride to Mt. Bushwell Paige and Hayley were planning
as being reality and very often there is a person making another believe in the
Kind and selfish, deep and shallow, male and female, and foolish and wise aren’t always words that are associated with each other, quite the opposite in fact. However, when it comes to the trickster tales of Native Americans, each word is associated with the other and describes more or less the same person or animal. To Native American people a trickster affects the world for an infinite number of reasons, including instruction and enjoyment. A trickster, like the name implies, is a cunning deception. A trickster can be a hero. However, at the same time he could introduce death. How is that heroic? Why would a group of people want to remember a person that brings punishments such as death? The function the trickster tales have/ had on Native American communities is still powerful today quite possibly because of their context, the lessons they reap, and the concerns they address. As the tales are told, the stories unravel showing the importance of a trickster and the eye-opening experiences they bring.