There’s an old saying: ‘If you want to hide the treasure, put it in plain sight. Then nobody will see it.’ We see what we can see, and what we can see is determined largely by our beliefs. If we believe that treasures are always hidden away in secret places, our belief can deceive us. Sometimes the treasure is actually staring us in the face. History is studded with examples of blindness toward the obvious. As ethnologist and filmmaker Lawrence Blair describes, the natives of Patagonia could not see Magellan’s ships when they arrived at the tip of South America in 1520. To the aborigines, the shore party appeared out of thin air on the beach. The shamans eventually discerned a faint image of the tall ships anchored offshore. After they pointed out the images and everyone concentrated on the concept of giant sailing ships for a while, the galleons materialized. Philosopher Michael Polanyi reports a similar incident when Darwin’s ship, Beagle, anchored off Patagonia in 1831. The natives could see the tiny rowboats, but could not detect the mother ship. Their belief system had a place for small craft, but not for large vessels. Selective blindness […]