What if the Eiffel Tower is not Really There?

During a recent lunch time conversation with a friend of mine, he said that he couldn’t be sure that the Eiffel Tower was really there.  After a bit of questioning I almost had to agree with him.  We have all heard the saying “I’ll believe it when I see it” and many people live by this, almost mantra like!

I mean he had never seen it so he had no proof.  He had seen pictures of it, he had seen it in movies, he had heard people talk about it, he had read the history of it, but he had never seen it.  Thank goodness he is not that concrete.  He knew it to be there because he believed it was there.  The evidence he had accumulated, the trusted experts and his open mind led him to believe before there was actual proof.

Essentially, he followed the maxim, “I’ll see it when I believe it”.  There are others who are not as open.  They require concrete, irrefutable, personal experience before they will believe.  That must be such hard work believing that things don’t exist until proven otherwise.  How limiting and confining.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating that you embrace gullibility and believe everything that comes along, but I would encourage you to consider, what if?  Scientific types tend to amuse me, specifically the ones that require proof before belief.  Where would Einstein have gotten if he wanted proof before day dreaming about travelling on a beam of light, which in turn led to him postulating the E=MC2.

I am certain that James Cameron would have had a few “interesting” conversations with his team when putting Avatar forward.  I can just imagine the conversation starting something like this:

 “Ok, now I want to do a film about how a disabled person can possess the body of an eight foot blue being.  So the blue being needs to have a face similar to the human face.  They are going to need to be able to fly on dragon-like flying lizard things too.  They will be flying around mountains that actually float in the air.  I want everything to look realistic knowing that this place doesn’t exist and I don’t want it done in typical animation. I’ll probably need about $300 million to do this. The lead actor is a relatively unknown Aussie guy, the lead actress you don’t ever get to see outside her blue body and it would be great to have Sigourney Weaver in it. Oh and by the way, I am going to shoot it in 3D using a camera technology that hasn’t been invented yet.  Do you think we can do it?”

How many movie execs would have doubted, said no, need proof?  James Cameron believed it so we all got to see it.  Regardless of whether you liked the film or not, it was the work of a visionary leader.

What about you?  Where are your rock solid beliefs?  Are you sure about them?  Do they need to be challenged a little?  What if…?