I was on the bus yesterday evening when a woman got into a polite argument with the driver. She was a cyclist, with her bike safely stowed on the rack at the front of the bus, which means she gets a free bus ride, but she asked for a receipt anyhow. I'm not sure of her logic — something about forcing the bus company to track how many cyclists they get so the cyclists can argue for more of the same, perhaps — but the driver didn't like it. He argued that he was under no obligation to print out a little paper stub for people who didn't give him actual money. She argued that she wanted one anyway, and got on. But as she was leaving, I heard this exchange:

— Listen, you ride your bike because you care about the environment, right?
— Well, yes, at least partly because of that.
— But think about the trees that have to be cut down to make these paper tickets. You're hurting the environment by demanding one, aren't you!
— [speechless, takes bike, goes off into the night]

That, right there, is a good example of what some people have dubbed magical thinking. When something is touched by a hot-button topic to the point where it becomes impossible to assign shades of grey to it, that's magical thinking.

The best example I can think of — one that won't offend too many people right now, except maybe by ancestry, but I hope not — is the Nazis. Nazis were evil, sure enough. Nasty, horrid bastards in desperate need of a crowbar to the brainstem, the lot of them. But how magical is that evil? If you've got a pair of identical twins in 1930s Germany, one joins the Nazi Party but quits after ten minutes, the other doesn't, then they both live to their late nineties and then die: was there a significant difference in the evilness of one over the other? A slight difference? No difference at all? In other words, is it possible for Nazis to be only a little bit evil?

If you're thinking that any contact with the Nazi party taints that one twin, regardless of how short it is, then you're engaging in magical thinking.

An example closer to home: sexism. Twins again: one wolf-whistles at an attractive woman, one time; the other murders his wife when she reveals that she wants to get a job. Both sexist, obviously, but are they equally sexist? Does the process of sexism automatically — automagically! — taint a person so that there are no shades of grey?

Or how about homosexuality? The Kinsey Report came up with the oft-quoted statistic of 10% by recording absolutely any homosexual experience as evidence of homosexuality. I suspect their subjects lied to them; the number should have been closer to 90% by that criterion. I believe there's a continuum, from James Bond up one end to Julian Clarey up the other¹, and everyone falls somewhere on the line. But you'll find people who will hate you for being too far away from the 007 end of that line, where "too far" is defined as "anywhere at all".

The bus driver was thinking magically. Trees are good; paper is trees; waste is bad; therefore any waste is bad, and no amount of "saving the environment" can make up for the waste caused by five square centimetres of paper.


Now, I went and watched Iron Man last Friday, and it was good fun, but the villain in there was pure monochrome: an arms dealer killing women and children, evil maniacal laughter, the whole nine yards (or ten rings, as the case may be). They're saying this was the best superhero movie since Batman Begins and Spiderman 2, and I agree, but I think they could have done better with a less magical villain. Doctor Octopus in Spiderman 2 and Ras al Ghul in Batman Begins were far more interesting, because they had shades. Doc Ock was heartbroken by the death of his wife; al Ghul was trying to save the world from inevitable ruin. They both believed themselves to be good, whereas Stane (and Crane in BB) were just cackling bastards. The magical thinking came in the writing: arms dealer = bad, insane psychiatrist = bad, no shades of grey, no motivation required, we've painted this character in rich shades of sable, ebony and jet, and that's all we need to do.

Magical thinking shows up everywhere. I'm guilty of it on occasion; I find it hard to imagine how anyone can willingly vote Republican in the US and not be either evil or ignorant, for example. But then I look at the probably-next President, John McCain, and I have to admit that he's a better man than Huckabee and Romney and the other also-rans. (He's also saner than Ron Paul, but so is Donald Duck, so let's leave that aside.) Another Republican government over there will be a disaster for the world, but it could be worse.

Saying "it could be worse" is probably the cure for magical thinking, I suspect. Seeing things in shades of grey is the first step to seeing all the colours of the rainbow. It's a start.

¹ Sorry, it's not possible to even mention Julian Clarey without innuendo. Move along, nothing to see here.