h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I hope you will bear with me as I attempt to make myself clear.

(shuffles notes)
Ahem.
(places hands in pockets)
I find the art of speaking to an unseen and anonymous audience to be an unsettling experience, a kind of lending myself to be a scapegoat or a lamb to the slaughter.
While I do not pretend to wisdom on any particular subject,
I do have a passion for making my, um, wishes known.
(adjusts glasses)
This evening I would like to address the topic of "The Persistence of Illusion".
(scratches nose)
The human mind is not capable of taking in everything all the time.
It must rest, early and often.
The human mind is not capable of tolerating everything it comes across in the way of ideas and thoughts.
It must rest, early and often.
In resting, everything does not go away, even if one is in a sensory deprivation chamber.
The brain does not shut down.
If it did, you would be dead.
(combs hair with fingers)
Persistence of Illusion allows the mind to isolate itself from whatever it is that it wants to get away from.
Thus, if there is a subject that the mind does not choose to deal with, say, the possibility that one might die from eating a salmon mousse, then the mind falls back on the illusion that it rarely happens, and when it does, it happens to those poor people on the news.
(gestures vaguely)
Persistence of Illusion is not to be confused with failing to deal with reality because the illusion is in fact a way of dealing with reality. Reality itself can be described as a combination of other people's illusions combining to produce one big illusion which everyone probably needs a further illusion to help them escape from the big one.
(shifts weight from one foot to another)
Persistence of Illusion is also necessary for the formation of what Kurt Vonnegut called 'false karasses', an excuse for the association of people who have no good reason to be near each other. In such cases, the Persistence of Illusion is intensifyed by other groups or individuals Persistence of Disillusionment in insisting that the false karass has no reason to exist...thus paradoxically giving the karass a persecution complex which is the best Illusion of all, because it is half true.
(adjusts glasses)
The main problem that can arise with the Persistence of Illusion is that it can feed upon itself, producing a cycle of Illusions that persist long after their initial purpose is gone or fulfilled, and leaving a foundationless corner of reality to bulldoze its way onward, propelled only by its own momentum...
(grasps podium firmly)
So, I say, that, in conclusion and closing, whatever gets you through the night can be a useful mental vacation,
that, whatever you require to help you deal with your personal reality is probably a good thing if it doesn't hurt you or anyone else,
that, if you use your imagination in order to produce your Illusion, it will probably make you a better person in the long run...
(gestures indistinctly)
But, and yet, I caution you against sharing another's Illusion,
or contributing to the Persistence of an Illusion that comes from whence you know not
and is already prominent enough that it has become a part of Reality itself.
(racing pulse communicates to podium and thence to the microphone)
Beyond a certain point, the needs of the individual become the demands of the group.
(gestures meaningfully)
I thank you for bearing with me.
I will take questions later.
Now, I believe, the steward will serve Grape Kool-Aid and Oreos.

(scattered applause and light showers)

Stay away from Grape Kool-Aid, whatever it takes
That's dangerous stuff!
lady Karen