I’ve been taking French language lessons lately; not sure why, but I suppose I just like the idea of learning a European language. Besides, being trilingual would be quite smashing. But nonetheless, in a recent lecture, we were talking about meals and restaurants and someone brought up chopsticks.
I’m a sushi fanatic and I mastered chopsticks a very long time ago, and was very curious to learn what the french word would be for that. Turns out that the word is ‘baguette’. Now that actually makes sense since baguette in its true sense means a stick and when most people go visit a bakery and ask for a baguette, they are actually asking for a ‘french stick’.
But in North America, somehow a baguette has become synonymous with a french bread, thus everyone in the lecture was shocked to learn this and started questioning the fact, so as a repurcussion, the professor started thinking to herself that she might have made a mistake, but like always, she was correct. What she didn’t realize is that she had succumbed to popular delusions of the crowd. As is evident by history, the crowd tends to be wrong quite often(see here for a list of historical events).
Its not uncommon to become myopic in groups and become delusionsal and forget that perhaps what the crowd thinks is actually incorrect. Listening to the masses is always a good idea, but like a wise man once said- ‘Trust, but verify’.
