I read about a pretty interesting story this week that got me thinking.

In June 1999, hundreds of Belgian citizens reported having severe stomach cramps, nausea, headaches, and palpitations after consuming Coca-Cola products.

What ensued was an utterly bizarre, month-long investigation by toxicologists, doctors, statisticians, and psychologists. The result of the investigation was quite surprising. It shed light on the fairly-wide, yet often-overlooked gap that exists between the world we live in and the world we think we live in.

Today I want to talk about what an unlucky group of Belgians can teach us about the current state of society and why an investigation that would end up costing Coca-Cola ~$200m turned out to simultaneously be a complete waste of money and also a priceless foray into the mysteries of the human mind.

Let’s get into it.

There seems to be a big push over the last several decades towards fortification against danger. And why wouldn’t there be? We now have access to technology that can provide protection from all sorts of threats we have been exposed to (and largely helpless against) for thousands of years.

We install alarm systems to protect our homes from intruders, we enroll in insurance plans to shield ourselves (financially) from calamitous accidents, we apply sealants to preserve the integrity of the barriers that protect our living spaces from the formidable forces of nature, and we consume supplements that bolster our immune system against a ruthless onslaught of pathogens. The list goes on.

As a result of this fortification, we find ourselves in a world where we have never been more sheltered from many of the age-old chaotic forces that have historically threatened to destabilize our lives. I fear however that this relatively new layer of safety has left us with a false sense of security. A false sense of security that has left us vulnerable in an increasingly-critical realm — our minds.

The first phone call that Coca-Cola received related to the incident came on June 9th, 1999. It was from a school in Belgium, reporting symptoms amongst 26 students who had consumed bottled Coca-Cola earlier that day. The story broke on the news the following evening, and within 48-hours there were hundreds of reported cases across the country of the same beverage-induced illness.

In the following weeks, Coca-Cola would go on to spearhead a full-scale investigation that would involve hundreds of millions of dollars, millions of beverage recalls, thousands of toxicology reports, hundreds of indemnity claims, and one stunningly strange result.

The main finding of the investigation — the common thread tying the allegedly-contaminated drinks and the hundreds of ill Belgians — was…absolutely nothing.

Yep, that’s right. They didn’t find a single thing wrong with any of the beverages… or with any of the Belgians.

No toxins, no contaminants, no fungi, no bacteria, no viruses — nothing.

In the thick fog of nothingness left by the investigation, however, lay something real. Something very real. Something more real than most other investigations had accidentally uncovered in a long time. A truth. A truth equal parts beautiful and terrifying.

In the end, physicians, scientists, statisticians, and lawyers were able to agree on the source of the mysterious Coca-Cola illness of 1999 that afflicted hundreds of people with very real physical symptoms: the human mind.

What ultimately condemned the Belgians to their afflictions was not the consumption of liquid, but rather the consumption of information. The contaminants did not enter through their mouths, but rather through their minds.

Coca-Cola unknowingly funded the latest of a long list of studies that ultimately underline the unnerving powers of the human mind as the conduit that transfigures that which we believe into that which we become.

A bit less than a century before this, The American Psychological Association invited William James to speak about the first five decades of psychology research at their convention.

James got on stage and said: “People, by and large, become what they think of themselves.”