The Wizard!

The Mandela-Effect

©August 19th 2016, Olan L. Smith

Ithank you for reading this article on the Mandela Effect, or as I like to call it the M-Effect for mind-effect. I want to point out this has nothing to do with God or gods, in my opinion, but it has more to deal with humans exploring their shared memories like they have never been able to do before, now we have instantaneous communication with people from around the world, via the internet, and before the internet an issue like this would have died a quick death. I call this shared memory a collective memory where we share common events and happenings, however, now we are having to deal with glitches in our collective memory. We humans seldom agree on anything, causing battles of I don't agree with you and you don't agree with me, and leading to arguments on a micro level when disagreements happen with our spouses or friends. "Fred, where did I place my keys?" the wife asks before going out.

Fred answers, "How would I know? Just trace back your steps." She does, and she finds the keys right where she remembers, in the entertainment center. I am not going to discuss with you these memories, but memories that are acquired through the following educational vehicles: The family nucleus, church/Sunday school, peers, higher education, songs, poetry, movies, TV and internet news.

One thing you don't mess with is our shared memory, for that is our foundation, our tribal stories if you would. Mess with them and you risk the whole society falling apart, because we wouldn't have a foundation. This was a TV skit from Jay Leno's Tonight Show, where he would interview random people on the street asking them shared memory questions. Most often, everyone failed to correctly answer his questions. In fact we don't seem to remember when pulled into a scene and suddenly asked questions without clues. This is similar to the walking through a doorway syndrome where suddenly everything is forgotten and we don't know what we came into the room to do or get. But I am not talking about that memory either. I am talking about the most common memories, like, is it? mirror; mirror on the wall? Or, a magic mirror on the wall. ...?" Well it is a little of both. The magic mirror hangs on the wall and she turns to it and asks, "Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest one of all? This still doesn't account for the old movie saying, "Magic mirror on the wall who is the fairest one of all."

"If you build it they will come" from Field of Dreams, is it the word "they will come" that is used or is it phrased, "...he will come." Using the word "they" in the storyline context doesn't make sense. Why is he building it? Only at the end of the movie do we learn "he" is the ghost of his father.

"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get," from the movie Forrest Gump. I just listen closely to Tom Hanks recreate the line on an old interview show and it is difficult to tell but it sounds like he is saying "Life was like a box of chocolates," although I clearly remember that he used the word is in my shared memory. Are we just misremembering phrases and words? Was it Berenstein or Berenstain, I will go with Berenstein. I remember Sex in the City, and I heard announcers say, "Sex in the City," but logically I imagine the word "and" was elided to 'n'. So it looks like this, "Sex 'n' the City" pronounced by the presenters as "Sex in the City."

However, there are those you cannot so easily dismiss and this is where I hang my hat for the Mandela Effect being real. The Bible has changed. Some will answer; well, no two versions are the same, but Isaiah 11:6 now says "The wolf will dwell with the lamb..." and I remember clearly, in my reality, "The lion will lay down with the lamb." It didn't just change in one version of the Bible, but every version of the Bible throughout the very history of it. There is no reference, today, for a lion laying down with the lion, therefore no reasoning for artists and photographers depicting a scene of a lion and the lamb laying down together. Another non-Biblical shared memory; this one seems more prominent, and that is the title of the movie, "Interview with a Vampire," and even the author uses the word "a" and not the word "the" in her book's title.