15
pro
udly in a strained, high pitched voice, "And not a plan has gone
astray!"
But twelve o'clock passed, and there was no whirring of
anti-gravity engines, no great rush of air from above, no luminescence
lighting up the lawn outside the windows.  The believers sat stock still,
their faces frozen.  The researchers noted that "it became clear later that
they had been hit hard."
Finally, the faithful stirred.  In desperation they went over the
messages and the original prediction to see if they had made an error
in calculation.  They argued one explanation for the delay after
another.  Then, at four A.M., Mrs. Keech began to cry.  Reported the
researchers, "She knew, she sobbed, that there were some who were
beginning to doubt but that the group must beam light to those who
needed it most and that the group must hold together."  The catalyst
that might, indeed, save them from dissolution arrived at 4:45 AM.
Mrs. Keech's hand suddenly jerked across the page of her writing pad
with a new message from The Guardians.  The faith of the believers, it
said, "had spread so much light that God had saved the world from
destruction."
Then the Guardians delivered an even more significant directive:
publicize the fact that the believers had saved humanity!  Mrs. Keech
leaped to the phone to call the very newspapers whose reporters she
and the others had chased away just the day before.  When she hung
up,  others rushed to the phone, seized with a sudden sense of
purpose, and dialed more media outlets whose inquiries they had
shunned in the previous weeks.  The saucer group had found a new
mission:  to increase the size of their congregation by winning new
converts.  New converts to a belief that had been proven false.21
Why did the failure of a prediction trigger a spasm of new
activity?  Because the only measure of a web of memes is not its truth.
The real purpose of a myth, a hypothesis or a dogma is often
something else--to serve as social glue.  If a belief system performs that
<<  <  GO  >  >>