April Fools’ Day
This is a day where we partake in the act of poking fun at the instincts pertaining to our sensibilities, of pushing the boundaries of what we believe is real, of testing the limits of our conceptions of absurdity—how each of us would react when presented with something ostensibly outrageous yet remotely plausible.
The only problem is that we live in an era where “ostensibly outrageous yet remotely plausible” can be used to describe an ever-increasing number of events, many of which covertly bridge this gap between impossible and normal; mass-produced, widely available handheld devices with more processing power than the most powerful computers of yesteryear? AI that is capable of programming, complex problem-solving, perfectly mimicking human voice patterns, and composing music and creating art that is virtually indistinguishable from the world’s best artists? These likely would have been interpreted as April Fools’ jokes merely one decade ago.
But perhaps the greatest absurdity of all that in the face of such momentous change, we refuse to change. Bound by our anachronistic industrial-age thinking, we so desperately want the world to stay a certain way. We were always taught to demand proof. To demand evidence. To demand a guarantee for our effort invested and know that there will be a reward merely because we followed the directions as per the manual. But there is neither proof nor evidence, neither a guarantee nor a manual; the only certainty we presently have is in the undeniable realization that our society is at the cusp of revolution.
For most of us on April 1st, we blithely choose to laugh when we are presented with shocking news and evidence that directly contradicts our beliefs. But for every other day that we’re presented with such news or evidence, we neither laugh about it nor come to terms with it; we shove it under the carpet and neglect it.
Our future depends on our willingness to eschew these emotionally-charged beliefs that cloud our judgment—these conceptions of absurd or outrageous, of plausible or sensible—and by doing so, we can honestly and lucidly confront things for what they are.
