Jesus’ Face on a Potato

Todd Hayen

You’ve all heard tales of the face of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Pope, or maybe even Trump, showing up on the surface of a potato, on a burnt piece of toast, or even a kumquat or some other odd fruit, implying their likeness.

Then, when you actually see such a manifestation, you wonder how in the hell anyone could mistake some weird burn mark, growth malformity, or whatnot for the face of any human, let alone Jesus, Mary, or Trump.

But there ‘ya have it. People love to manufacture reality from non-reality. And they do this with little provocation. If the potato has some sort of malformation, it is easy enough to push that into looking like a nose, a mouth, a cheek, then voila, it’s Jesus!! (or Trump!) They aren’t lying when they tell you that is what they see. They honestly see it. They would stake their life on it.

Sometimes, you may see it, too. Especially if they explain it, “See how this part of the potato turns up, and this little black mark here makes that turn up look like a nose,” “Oh yeah,” you might say, “It does look like a nose.” The more information you get about how the potato should look like something in particular, the more you are apt to believe it, and then see it the same way the person explaining it sees it.

Particularly if you like the person who first shows it to you. And most certainly if that person is in the “mainstream,” or has a whole gaggle of folks around them who see Jesus’ face on the potato as well.

All of us are familiar with the Solomon Asch Conformity Line Experiment Study, which consisted of “experiments by Solomon Asch designed to investigate how social pressure from a majority group could influence an individual to conform.” These experiments have been referenced again and again in an effort to show what is probably happening in the world today.

The “group” that influences all others to see the world a particular way is the “mainstream” group—the massive group of people who swear by whatever narrative is being blabbed out by mainstream media. We, on the other side of this, continually wonder why the mainstream is consistently blabbering out untruths, lies and “non-facts.”

Of course, the irony of all this is that the side believing the mainstream is saying that we are doing the same thing—following an alt-stream media that is blabbering lies, untruths, and “non-facts”!

Do you know how to tell the difference?

It’s easy, actually. We are willing to talk about it, but they are not. They are typically so full of rage, belligerent certainty, and virtuous superiority that they are totally unwilling to discuss anything. If an opposing idea comes up, they have no interest in hearing it, no curiosity as to why someone they had trusted, or even loved, as a friend or a family member, a child or a partner, thinks so differently than

they do. All curiosity is lost, all empathy is lost. All that is kept is rage, hate, vitriol, and disengagement.

Shrews don’t do this (at least the ones I have met do not). We may be disappointed, even angry, but we are always willing to listen. Particularly with those who are important in our lives, we want to hear why they believe what they believe; we want to empathize with their anger and sadness, and we want to understand.

The irony here is that even that receptiveness is met with an untenable response: They seldom have anything to say when asked to speak, except something like “I can’t stand Trump, I hate him!” or “The vaccines save lives! They are safe and effective!” They don’t really want to tell you WHY they believe what they believe. That’s because they do not know.

Back to Jesus on the potato. Humans love to make up stories. In fact, the very way we perceive reality is through stories. We identify objects we encounter in life through a story, we define everything through a story. Think about it. If you see an apple sitting on the kitchen counter, how do you know it is an apple and how do you know what an apple is? You could say, “Through a previous experience.” That is true, but what is an experience? It is a story.

Can that story change? Sure it can. Can you have a story that is not formulated by a personal experience? Sure you can. In fact, most of our stories are not about things we empirically experienced. Most of them are told to us. There lies the problem. We either have to trust the messenger, or come up with ways other than through the messenger to vet the message.

This is where common sense and critical thinking comes in.

The source of the message is not as important as this. If you do trust the source, then you are fine to believe the message (within reason, of course). If you don’t know the source, and don’t really know if you can trust it, you have to come up with other ways to vet the information—through common sense, critical thinking, and deeper research.

If the source is the mainstream, and you believe and trust the mainstream, then you probably will fall into the subject of one of Solomon’s experiments.

The belief in the Jesus face on the potato is a different matter. The whole point of using this potato thing as an analogy is to say that nearly anything, anywhere, can be made to look like nearly anything, anywhere. If the observer who brings to your attention something they believe is a certain thing, it doesn’t really take that much to convince just about anyone that thing is what they say it is.

This works on both sides of this divide, and we have to be careful dealing with it. If people I trust on our side of the fence say something that is in alignment with other alternative views, I still have to be careful not to see something that isn’t really there. How? Use the same techniques we have used all along: primarily common sense and critical thinking.

Don’t fall into being the victim of Solomon’s group of influencers who can persuade the minority (you, as one person) that 2+2=5. Even if you trust them and believe everything they have said in the past (they may not try to influence you out of malice, but are in fact a true believer in the Jesus face on the potato).

Next time you fry an egg, be careful what you think you see. And avoid potatoes at all costs. A potato alone can never be trusted to give you important insight.

Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here