What He Believes

Roberto Saviano was once walking past the spot in Secondigliano where Carmela Attrice had been killed. And he heard two boys arguing. They were arguing in earnest: about the best way to die. One said: “I want to die like her. Two shots in the head: bang, bang, and it’s all over.” Saviano butted in and offered his own view: the heart is better. A boy nicknamed Pikachu explained to him, like an expert, why the heart is worse.

Saviano later admits he asked the boy about everything. Except the one thing that mattered: “why at fourteen he is thinking about the best way to die.” That question never even crossed his mind.

This is what a belief looks like. The boy didn’t say: “I believe I’ll die young.” He was discussing the details. The belief lay underneath the conversation, and nobody touched it. Beliefs are rarely said out loud. They’re where people start from.

Outliving the Facts

In 1986 Rusty Rastelli, head of the Bonanno family, was waiting for his trial in a corridor of the Brooklyn courthouse. He was sprawled in a chair with his entourage standing around him. Joe Pistone was testifying against them. Rastelli was holding forth, as Pistone tells it: even if he’d been out at the time, the agent would never have got anywhere near him. A mafioso beside him chimed in: no chance—what could the guy have done in six years anyway?

Look at how this certainty is built. Rastelli spent all the years of the operation in prison. There’s your simple explanation of why they never met. But that’s not enough for him. He needs the agent to have been unable to reach him, full stop. In Pistone’s final list, next to his name it says: twelve years.

The Mind Works as a Lawyer

In 1979 the psychologists Charles Lord, Lee Ross and Mark Lepper gathered a group of Stanford students. Some were for the death penalty, some against. Everyone was given two studies to read, supposedly real ones. One showed that executions deter murder; the other, that they don’t. Each found the study that matched his view convincing and picked holes in the other. After reading, both sides believed in their own position even more firmly. The same pages pushed people further apart than they had stood before.

Remember this. The mind isn’t a judge. It isn’t looking for the truth; it’s looking for arguments for a client it has already picked.

The Thought in Between

The psychotherapist Albert Ellis was fond of quoting Epictetus: people are disturbed not by things but by their opinions about things. On this Ellis built a whole method of treatment. First something happens. Then a person thinks something about it. And only then comes the feeling. We think it’s the event that makes us angry. What makes us angry is the thought in between, which we didn’t even notice.

The Don never read Ellis, but he lived the same way. Once a restaurant dropped our oil, and I came in angry. “They don’t respect us,” I said. The Don shrugged: “They dropped the oil. The disrespect you made up yourself. Go and find out what happened.” I went. The restaurant had a new owner, and the new one counted every cent. Six months later they came back.

A Prayer Before the Job

Dickie gives the prayer one of the bosses of a “death squad” said before every job: Lord, Thy will be done, it is they who want to die, and the guilt is not mine. The historian honestly admits that it is extremely hard to tell where sincere—if mistaken—faith ends and cynical deceit begins.

That’s an extreme. But it’s built like the everyday “that’s the market” or “everybody does it.” The belief takes away the guilt and hands it out to others. Arguing with it is useless. It rests not on facts but on the wish to sleep at night.

The Cook and the Greek Oil

We had a cook, old and stubborn. He was sure Greek oil was slop, and that the only good oil was ours, from Sicily. Then, in the year of the hailstorm, our olive mill gave half as much. That time the Don bought a lot from the Greeks. In his opinion, it was better than ours.

He didn’t argue with the cook. Not at all. He brought him two bottles without labels and asked for his help: “Tell me which is better. I’ve got an argument going with a supplier.” The cook tasted and chose. The Greek. A week later he phoned himself and ordered “the other one, the second one.”

The Don never told him where it came from. “Why would I?” he explained to me. “He needed good oil, not the truth about Greece.” I thought for a long time about whether that was honest. I decided it was, but right on the line. The cook chose with his tongue, not by the label. And if he’d asked, the Don would have answered. He never asked once.

The Bottom Line

Here’s the honest way to deal with a belief. Don’t start by arguing about what a man believes. Start with what he needs. You need the business done, not a victory. Let the man try it himself, without labels. But only go round where you’re hiding nothing: if he asks, tell the truth.

And on yourself, check something else. Did a piece of news make you happy? Check it twice as hard: your mind is already working as a lawyer. Someone explains what he did so that everyone’s to blame except him? That’s no argument; it’s the same prayer, just in civilian clothes. And ask yourself the question Saviano didn’t ask: why do I think this at all? Rastelli never asked himself that question. The court answered it for him.