On trust, deception, and why washing your hands might just be a political act.
The Sound of Silence (and No Running Water)
It started, as so many reflections do, in the office bathroom. After a two-and-a-half-hour drive from The Hague, I finally sat down for what I’ll politely call a “biological break.” And then — the soundscape of civilization: footsteps, a flush, the door opening… and no water running. No sink, no soap, no washing of hands. Seconds later, it happened again with another coworker. Same story. Two for two.
It sounds trivial, but these tiny absences say a lot. Hygiene, or the lack of it, is a quiet referendum on awareness — a microcosm of care, or indifference, toward others. During COVID, I found real relief in the ban on handshakes; it legitimized what I’d always preferred: the bow, the nod, the respectful distance. The Japanese got it right long before we did.
Because once you know someone doesn’t wash their hands, something changes. You can’t unsee it. Trust evaporates faster than sanitizer.
The Game of Deception
Maybe that’s why I love social deduction games — they’re structured spaces where distrust is the rule, not the flaw.
Take Secret Hitler. A name that provokes, yes, but deliberately so. Created by Jewish designers, the game is meant to reveal how subtle manipulation and blind loyalty can slide a society into extremism. In it, players are divided into two camps: Liberals and Fascists. The Liberals try to pass liberal policies; the Fascists (and the hidden Hitler) aim to seize power.
Each round, presidents and chancellors emerge, propose laws, and lie through their teeth. You start watching gestures, silences, tiny hesitations — the bathroom flushes of politics. It’s unnerving how easily charm and confidence can mask deceit, how natural it feels to justify manipulation “for the greater good.”
No wonder the game feels more relevant now than ever. Power, after all, is still a game of inference. Elections, too, are a kind of social deduction — everyone claiming to represent the truth, while you, the voter, try to sniff out the lies.
The One-Night Mirror
At home, our family found One Night Werewolf, a faster, funnier cousin of the big social deduction games. It’s brilliant because it forces everyone — even our seven-year-old — to think. Who’s lying? Who switched roles? What really happened in the dark?
In this four-minute microcosm, you see the same dynamics as in the boardroom or the ballot box. Information is partial, emotions run high, and the difference between truth and perception is razor-thin. And yet, it’s play — a safe sandbox for exploring deception without consequence.
Maybe that’s why these games feel more vital than ever: they train us to detect patterns, question narratives, and hold our own in a world of masked intentions.
We wash our hands to stay clean.
We play games to learn when others don’t.
And somewhere between the bathroom, the ballot, and the board game,
we glimpse what it really means to be human — flawed, strategic, and still learning how to tell the truth.
What's on your mind?