On the potentialities of Shampoo
Where does the truth lie, if not in the basin?
It is always dangerous to assume that there is only one possible explanation for unusual phenomena. The ancients assumed that the only explanation for the bright light in the sky was a giant man riding in a fiery chariot: they refused to even consider the possibility that the sun was the egg of a mighty space dragon; and this narrow-mindedness would prove to be their downfall, which is why you never see any ancients around anymore.
We see the same painful rigidity in political analysis. Remember when Prime Minister Tony Abbott ate a raw onion in public? Everyone assumed this must be because he was in the middle of a debilitating psychotic episode, but it was always equally possible that Abbott was being held at gunpoint by an eccentric supervillain.
Now the public’s lack of imagination has come to the fore again, with current PM Scott Morrison attracting criticism for washing a woman’s hair. The assumption being made by all who witnessed this deeply distressing scene is that Morrison has suffered a massive head trauma. Yes, this is an entirely reasonable conclusion to draw. But does it not behoove us, as reasoning creatures, to take into account the myriad other possibilities before making up our minds?
Here, as far as I can determine, are the possible reasons that Scott Morrison decided, in full view of the press and photographers, to wash a woman’s hair.
Morrison genuinely believes that his current slump in the polls is the result of a feeling among the electorate that their prime minister lacks hair-washing experience.
Morrison does not genuinely believe that, but he is being pressured by party apparatchiks to adopt the official Liberal line, which is the belief outlined in 1.
Focus groups have indicated to the prime minister’s advisers that the most important quality in a prime minister is a set of firm yet gentle fingers that cause all that tension to simply melt away when massaging your scalp.
“Dirty hair” consistently polls as the number one concern among Australians.
After a terrible accident Scott Morrison has lost his memory and a prankster on his staff told him he is a professional hairdresser.
After the scandal of the text message calling him a “psycho”, his staff brainstormed the best way to demonstrate to the whole country that he is definitely NOT a psycho, and washing a stranger’s hair was their number one idea.
He is dizzy with the joyous swell of new love.
He needs some extra cash.
Morrison just happened to be in that salon when all the hairdressers passed out from the giddy thrill of meeting the prime minister, and the woman in the chair had a big presentation to the board in TWO HOURS and needed her hair washed right there and then, and Morrison stepped up to save the day.
Morrison has been brainwashed and programmed by an extremely incompetent foreign power, who meant for him to assassinate the US president but botched the process so that when the trigger word is spoken, he washes the nearest person’s hair.
He is a deeply disturbed pervert.
Any of these are entirely possible, and it is unfair of us to assume that they are not, just because we have been conditioned to default to the “anvil fell on his head” hypothesis. So please, just for once, Australia: a little THOUGHTFULNESS?