People Cling to Their Constructs more than their Children

Years ago, a friend of mine made the statement that is the title; “People Cling to their Constructs more than their Children.”

At the time, I didn’t understand.   The words were heard, but floated somewhere above me.

As time passed and I encountered the phenomenon in real life, the statement became one of the most brilliant and insightful remarks I had ever heard.

As we all should know by now, what is on the Internet may/may not be true.   Many Web Pages which look legitimate are not, and there is a great number of hoaxes, scams, tricks, and ‘fake news’.

Yet…

No matter how many times one is hit by one of these untrue pages,  there are people who do not internalise this fact.   That will go to a Web Page and believe it.

My community was ‘hit’ by what I call a ‘Flatfoot New York Hustler’.

This is a term for a person who portrays himself, without much accoutrement, as something he ‘could’ be or ‘had been’ but IS NOT.

These folks may be shills at a gambling table,  they may hold themselves out as Professors or Clerics or whatever the stipulations for a position are.   They will use bits and pieces of reality, stapled to fantasy, and make it seem that they were or did.

They may have attended Columbia University, but dropped out in their second year, or did not get a degree in a particular field.   They know how to get a bit of the Official Page and chip it into their own page so that unless one goes to the source, and puts in that extra effort, the lie will pervade.

This Hustler came to Jamaica and I saw through him as glass.   But I was sidelined while people tongue cleaned his toes, and sat back and watched the performance.

It took the ‘leadership’ two years to learn what I had said that very first day, that this man was not who he said he was, did not do what he said he had done, and was really qualified or capable.

I did get a kick out of the ‘I told you so’ but, of course, that was a pyrrhic victory.  He had already gotten all the monetary rewards available, and the directors were more willing to bankrupt themselves to get rid of him then let a Court rule.

Recently, one of the toe cleaners said something about him and I repeated everything I’d said before. But Marie, who knows everything cut me off.  She still believes him, and what is on his Web Page… despite the fact he states he was in Jamaica in 2016 performing particular tasks.

For a fact, known to her, he was not in Jamaica.  He did not perform that task.  Neither did he do it in 2015, for he was gone by that time.

The lie is blatant.  It is done to make the world think that he is employed in Jamaica and held in high regard when he was virtually sent out of town in ignominy.

Yet, she refuses to recognise that this lie, known to her, because she was present in 2015 and 2016, does not, in any way, shake her ‘certainty’ that what she read is ‘true’.

How is this possible?

Her construct of him as this Great Leader is so strong that the facts are boxed away.  She clings to her belief in his abilities and achievements.

She clings with such focus and defiance that one can not shake her belief.

As many people, once she ‘commits’ to a belief, to a construct, she will not release it.  And no amount of evidence, of raw proof will dislodge her illusion.