How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy by Lorenzo von Matterhorn

Magician’s Best Friend
    It’s tough to blame Barney for wanting a little consistency, especially since his real life is lacking in it. His father left him when he was a child. His first love broke his heart. Not to mention that, when he does admit that he loves someone, it always fails. Barney has not had an easy life, and yet he continues to be perfectly happy in his day-to-day life. This happiness with his current persona is the problem. Along with other emotions, it’s the reason he falls so easily into self-deception.
    As Barney’s dad says, “a magician’s best friend is a drunk audience.” Drunken people are less attentive to the trick, and therefore much easier to fool and entertain. It’s the same thing with emotions and self-deception. When in an emotional state, people see the world in a way that makes it easier to act in a certain way. Barney may not be physically drunk like Beercules, but he is definitely drunk on his emotions and ready to be tricked.
    In his book Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (Routledge, 1962), Sartre defines emotions as magical transformations of the world (p. 39). He says that we use emotions to perceive the world in ways that we want it to be—ways that make the world easier for us to deal with. Emotions are not just how we react to the world; they are ways of structuring our world.
    Remember the way that Marshall becomes obsessed with the “best burger”? The thought of that burger makes him so happy, while the thought of other burgers being equal to it makes him sad or angry. In feeling this way, Marshall is constructing a magical world where there is only one burger like the “best burger” and all other burgers are just poor imitations. This limits freedom because it limits options. By only allowing for the one “best burger” he eliminates the options of all other burgers.
    Barney’s whole world is magical like this. As a child, his mom told him that Bob Barker was his father and he was more than happy to believe it. It explained a lot. If Bob Barker was his father, then his father would always be busy with The Price Is Right , which would explain why he was never around. It would also give Barney an excuse to not contact him, as well as someone to look up to.
    At its core, Barney’s happiness was an escape from the truth, because the truth would mean that his real father was still out in the world. If Barney were to accept this, then he would need to make a choice about whether or not to find his real father.
    This would be too hard to do, so Barney settled into his happiness. Using his emotions, he constructed a magical world where Bob Barker was his father and there was no confusion. Barney never needed to go searching for his real father. His happiness restricted his freedom to do so.
    When he met Bob Barker, Barney had the perfect opportunity to tell him that Barney was his son. However, he chose not to. His fear that he may be wrong, and his happiness with the answer that he already had, led Barney to keep the information to himself. He preferred the magical world where he was happy, rather than the real world where he would need to make a difficult decision about finding his real father.
    It’s not just this decision that Barney wants to avoid. He wants to avoid almost all of them. He doesn’t want to makecomplicated decisions about how to dress, so he always chooses suits. Suits make him happy, everything else disgusts him, and it supports his view of himself as a businessman. The decision is easy.
    He doesn’t want to choose someone to be with for the rest of his life, so he just picks up women for one-night stands. The idea of having his heart broken again makes him sad and scared, so he eliminates all the possible actions that could lead to heartbreak.
    Barney’s world is constructed to support who he thinks he is and who others expect him to be. However, he could be otherwise. Sometimes