Sounds like a stage magician's name, doesn't it?

I'm a smart guy. I've been told this since I was just a little tyke. I've been told it so often that I mostly believe it.

And yet, and yet...

I've understood just about everything I've ever bothered trying to learn. Some things I've given up on because I decided I had better ways to spend my time -- diminishing returns and all that -- but when it matters, I keep pecking away. For instance, it took me eight tries to understand five quarters' worth of college-level Calculus, but I finally got it. I understand a bunch of stuff with “quantum” in the name now, even.

One thing I don't understand is mystery. I don't understand why people are in favor of keeping it around.

See, I like solving mysteries. Or watching other people solving them for me. I like watching them die. I get off on it. Little mystery snuff films are a delicacy.

I know I'm not alone in this. There are entire cable channels dedicated to tastes like mine. There are entire cable channels dedicated to tastes stranger than mine. It's a continual disappointment to me to keep realizing how normal I am.

So. Ineffability.

It tends to go along with religions, but I'm not just busting on religions here. You get it any time someone supposedly trustworthy stands up and says, "[Phenomenon X] is beyond comprehension. Mankind just wasn't meant to know. Enjoy your overwhelming sense of awe and fear and wonder in the full confidence that some being so far above you that you are an ant in his eyes has your best interests at heart even while he's squashing you like a bug."

You can see why that kind of thing might be popular with representatives of the more authoritarian religions. However, it's also popular with politicians and parents and corporate executives and other authorities for whom questions demanding explanations might prove to be an inconvenience.

The truth is that a claim of ineffability simply means that whomever is at the top of the authority hierarchy doesn't have all the answers or, if he or she does have them, has a vested interest in not letting you know what they are. Check me on this.

Sometimes the issue is that the person at the top is legitimately stupid, and the reason for the claim of ineffability is that he or she doesn't want to admit that someone else could be doing a better job. Sometimes the issue is that if people knew the real reasons, they'd do things the authorities wouldn't approve of. Ignorance or manipulation. I can't think of a third reason.

I didn't work too hard to come to this conclusion. I know for a fact I'm not the first person to come to this conclusion. I'm sure as hell not the first person to try to bring this to the attention of others. That leaves the biggest mystery of all: Why do people put up with this "you wouldn't understand" bullshit?

As a child I despised the "Because I said so!" explanation, but at least I understood it. It implied an "I'm bigger than you, and I'm losing my patience" component. I wasn't too happy with "I don't feel like telling you" either, but again, that's just life. The people in charge occasionally don't have the time or inclination to keep underlings informed. These lack-of-explanations are obnoxious, but at least they're honest.

"It's a mystery" is anything BUT honest.

I know I'm not the smartest person on earth. But somewhere out there is the smartest person on earth, and he or she has to be pretty fucking clever. And until the smartest person on earth can prove to me with formal logic that something is beyond human comprehension, I'm not inclined to buy it.

And yet, and yet....

People buy it.

What's the deal here? Are people so comforted by the idea that there are kind and intelligent and wise and powerful people taking care of them that they actually imagine those people into existence, supernaturally overlaid on top of their parents and priests and politicians? Have a shit-load of actual adult human beings been convinced that they are physically and mentally incapable of taking care of themselves to the point that they willingly put someone else in charge of their respective destinies?

Well, duh. Of course that's the case. The mystery is why.