Somewhere along the line, you may have heard the phrase “cognitive dissonance” but didn’t bother looking it up to see what it meant. Yet, today it seems to be something many people are having to deal with.
Simply Psychology says: “Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.”
Or, maybe a simple way of putting it is that we refuse to believe anything else may be true if we are stuck in one belief, even when faced with proof that we are wrong. We reinterpret the data to agree with the beliefs we hold.
No Man In The Moon?
If I was raised my whole life believing that the moon is made of green cheese and a man lived there, it would be very hard to convince me that I was wrong. It would take an awful lot of proof for you to sway me toward believing it is a satellite of the earth made of rocks and is deserted. It would literally be painful to believe otherwise.
Over the years, we have been taught who we should trust for news and important information. When I was younger, we didn’t have as many options for news. We had CBS, NBC, and ABC news on TV. Radio stations were affiliated with central news sources. While the slant may be slightly different depending upon who was presenting it, the basic news still remained the same.
Independent News Sources
Today, on top of those we have the internet and many more independent news sources. Literally anyone can be a newscaster of their own making. This can be both good and bad. It’s harder for the top news sources to work together to manipulate what the populace knows and believes. They can give a narrative, but it can be shown as false with enough voices brave enough to prove it wrong.
However, it’s also so much easier for false news to be fed to the masses by people who still think the moon is made of green cheese. There’s nothing stopping them from being believed. Not only is it confusing, but it may also cause cognitive dissonance in many people.
Who Watches The Watchers?
Someone will say “There’s always the fact-checkers. That’s why we have the ever-popular website Snopes.” But, here’s a question for you to think about. Who checks the fact-checkers? Who says they are right? (Not saying they aren’t. I don’t have information to prove they are or aren’t.) But, who was it that decided they know what’s true or false?
We’ve been brought up in a culture of trust, never learning to question anything or prove a belief is correct. When asked why we believe something, our answer is often “because that’s what I was taught to believe, or I learned it in school”.
Today we have social media. People can express their opinions openly and others can argue against those opinions. (And so often they are glad to do so.) Yet, many times neither side can explain why they hold the opinions they do. Nor are they willing to open their mind to the possibility that the other side may hold more truth.
How Do We Know?
More and more truths are being revealed by whistle-blowers. It’s quicker and easier than ever to put information out on the internet for everyone to hear or read. But, just as much false information is being seeded as well. How do we sort through what is true or not?
To be honest, I’m not sure myself. Sometimes things that sound the most outrageous have turned out to be true, verified by multiple sources or witnesses. And other things that seemed so plausibly true have later been revealed to have been a hoax. Conspiracies that were thought to be crazy have since proved to be true. (Good example: Chemtrails – the government finally admitted they were showering us from above.) Can we really write off conspiracy theorists as insane anymore?
Don’t Blindly Trust The Narrative
Closed minds and blind trust can lead to cognitive dissonance. Who are you putting your trust in? Logical minds are seeing the difference between the way things are presented and the truth they see with their own eyes and ears. Instead of just accepting the narrative, they are asking questions based on their own logical thinking.
Isn’t it time we all did?
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