Many years ago I read to my daughter a children’s book in which a little girl learning to ride a bicycle keeps running into objects like trees and lampposts. A bicycle instructor explains to her that when you become too fixated on an obstacle it exerts a strong psychological pull, so that the very exigency of evading it leads to a crash.
I used to wonder whether this was a real phenomenon. I don’t anymore…
Actually, I’ve long thought the second Iraq War was an example of the same phenomenon. There was no possibility that there wouldn’t be a war, because once they’d started to consider it Bush and Blair couldn’t bare not to see how it would turn out.
Common Infirmities 