In an uncharacteristic reversal of previously nuanced variations of my less-than-enthusiastic belief in the goodness of my own species, I may have stumbled upon what I’m calling the Jiminy Effect, presuming that the Pinocchio Effect has most likely already been coined by someone opining on lying, large noses or some puppet/marionette argument.  In a nutshell, rather than holding fast to my long-suffering belief that most people suck, I’m beginning to embrace a slightly more-forgiving supposition.  Those persuasive shoulder angels, the anthropomorphic embodiment of our struggle with free will, our conscience, have existed in one form or another since biblical times.  They boldly underline a weird phenomenon in our unique, big-brained psyche that, when it comes to a consideration of right and wrong, too many of us don’t generally gravitate toward right simply because it’s, well…right.  The pull of self-satisfaction or a dangling carrot can tip the scales, surely when we think we can avoid consequence, but often, far too often, even without that consideration.  In Carlo Collodi’s tale of the lonely woodcarver and his wooden son’s larger-than-life journey through the wrongs of childhood, he wrote, that in order to achieve the fairytale goodness quotient necessary to become a “real” boy, he would need guidance.  Enter the cricket, (incidentally, not Jiminy in the original telling), conscience.  When reimagined by Disney, the befuddled Jiminy, (voiced and sung by the unforgettable Cliff Edwards), showed how exasperating a job it is to battle the dark urges of youth, (or any age, really), even with the wish-upon-a-star promise of all your dreams coming true.  Pinocchio still makes bad choice after even worse choice until finally seeing the light.  It’s a morality fairytale, after all.  In the real world, although there are the occasional mea culpa confessions from those that have escaped the darkness, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for massive stripe-changing in the direction of new-found compassion and kindness.

Ooooooo, oooooooo! (That’s me raising my hand impatiently, wanting to share with the class).  I had a close friend for fifteen years who sadly succumbed to cancer.  Our friendship began rather casually but quickly became an everyday work/social interaction.  He was a talented, good-hearted and kind man.  His politics, however, belied those positive traits. His sources of information were Fox News and the Drudge Report.  He hungrily consumed wild-assed conspiracy theories and eagerly repeated them in conversation.  Early in our friendship, I la la la-ed. (in my head), trying to not enter into what I knew would be an ugly and unresolved confrontation.  But, as we became brother-ish, I began to humorously challenge his sources and call out his most preposterous regurgitations.  I should point out that his core belief in such balderdash was nurtured by his similarly misguided and strong-willed father, not by some later-in-life radicalization.  Over the years, even though his kitchen TV was perpetually tuned to Fox and he remained a daily reader of Matt Drudge’s blather, my relentless challenges to the bullshit he sometimes felt compelled to repeat, (often as a non sequitur over dinner), began to have an effect.  I could sense that he was making an effort to parse his way through baseless rhetoric before piling on, and by the time Trump bubbled up from the ooze, he was practically liberal.

I realize that social media provide more wrong-minded rabbit holes to fall into than the cuddly kitty, elephant-loves-puppy variety, and that there are far too few Jiminys on call but, if you have the chance, and you like the hat, vest and umbrella combo and Leigh Harline and Ned Washington’s lyric assertion that “…it makes no difference who you are” rings true, try chipping away, cricket-like, at some of the jagged edges of a friend or family member who needs some guidance.