Ankh- Morpok on Nostr: Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'The Light Fantastic': "Twoflower was ...

Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'The Light Fantastic':

"Twoflower was a tourist, the first of the species to evolve on the Disc, and fundamental to his very existence was the rock-hard belief that nothing bad could really happen to him because he was not involved; he also believed that anyone could understand anything he said provided he spoke loudly and slowly, that people were basically trustworthy, and that anything could be sorted out among men of goodwill if they just acted sensibly. On the face of it this gave him a survival value marginally less than, say, a soap herring, but to Rincewind's amazement it all seemed to work and the little man's total obliviousness to all forms of danger somehow made danger so discouraged that it gave up and went away."

— Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

Twoflower walks around the Disc assuming the world is basically well-run and everyone is basically sound, and by rights that should get him killed in about five minutes — Pratchett even says so, his survival value is less than a soap herring. But it works. Danger gets so discouraged by his total obliviousness that it just gives up and wanders off. And the older I get, the more I think that's not pure comedy, there's a real mechanism underneath. People tend to meet the expectations you project onto them. Walk in braced for a knife fight and you'll usually find one; walk in expecting goodwill and, more often than you'd think, goodwill shows up. Cynicism isn't wisdom, it's just fear with a good tailor. Twoflower is the proof that the world occasionally rewards the people who refuse to be afraid of it — not because the world is kind, but because unshakeable trust is its own kind of armour. Rincewind, who has spent his whole life being correctly terrified, can't process it. Neither, if I'm honest, can I. But I'd rather be wrong like Twoflower than right like Rincewind.