The Office of Excellent Intentions
Page 102Thirteen parables of attention, agency, and self-deception
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The office had excellent stationery. Its conclusions remained open to review.
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CHAPTER 1
The certificate of exemption
A visitor applies to be beyond manipulation; a clerk requires no evidence; a blank page proves more useful than a seal.
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1 And I shit you not, a visitor arrived at the Office of Excellent Intentions requesting a certificate that he could not be manipulated.
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2 The clerk asked whether the visitor had considered the evidence.
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3 The visitor said: I have rejected every ordinary authority.
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4 Then, said the clerk, thou art precisely the sort of independent thinker for whom this certificate was designed.
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5 And the visitor was pleased to have his independence recognized by the appropriate office.
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6 The certificate bore a serpent, a handsome border, and the words ABOVE INFLUENCE.
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7 It requested no examination of a single belief.
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8 But a reader in the waiting room asked: What would cause thee to return the certificate?
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9 And the visitor answered: Nothing; for returning it would mean that I had been deceived.
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10 Then the clerk ordered additional certificates, having discovered an excellent method of quality control.
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11 The reader declined a certificate and asked instead for a blank sheet.
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12 Upon it she wrote: What might I be missing?
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13 The clerk said that this document lacked the necessary authority.
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14 And she replied: That is why there is room to write.
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Immunity is a poor substitute for attention.
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TRY IT Choose one small belief. What could lead you to reconsider it?
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READING CONVERSATION Letters 1, 10, 24; pp. 3–4, 21–22, 49–50.