Lux Lucet

The prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.

• Proverbs 22:3

In a well-known scene from The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her companions finally get their audience with the Wizard himself.  It turns out to be a terrifying affair, with thundering, lightning, and smoke all around. 

That is until Dorothy’s little dog Toto runs over and pulls back the curtain on the control booth, revealing the Wizard to be a not-so-imposing fellow, one whose frightening image is the product of special effects controlled from an electronic panel. 

Whether the intention of the filmmakers was for this scene to serve as an illustration of the workings of modern society, I don’t know.  Perhaps it was.  But whatever their intention, it certainly is a glimpse into how things so often do work in our media-driven society.  It’s “look over here, look over here” while at the same time we’re told, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

Put another way, we’re taught to focus on the effect rather than on the cause of the effect.

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