Cognitive Dissonance

Most people have never even heard of the term cognitive dissonance, even fewer understand what it means, and an infinitesimally smaller number of people can recognize the behavior in others.  Ironically, no one can identify the behavior in themselves.   The mind is truly fascinating and its propensity and ability to protect the person who houses it . . . remarkable.  Cognitive dissonance is what happens when the mind encounters something that contradicts a person’s core beliefs, beliefs held so strongly, so deeply, rooted in the person’s subconscious mind that the person can literally not understand, they cannot grasp anything other than what they believe and their reasoning, logic, and ability to interpret any information other than what they believe simply shuts down. 

Let’s say, for example, a person believes that the earth is flat and that if you sail far enough, you’ll fall off the edge.  You can show them maps, you can show them how the planets rotate around the sun, you can show them pictures of the earth and nothing you will say will convince them otherwise.  When they argue with you, it won’t be based on anything factual but rather they will get to a point where they can no longer argue so they deflect by calling you names or bringing up another subject, or simply yelling and screaming that they are right and making illogical arguments that validate their beliefs in their mind.  The mind literally cannot process anything other than what it knows to be true. 

Now, let’s say someone believes . . . hmmmm . . . let’s use an example that is completely impossible.  Let’s say someone believes that pairs of all the earth’s animals fit on a boat roughly the size of a cruise ship.  First and foremost, any sane, rational, intelligent person will tell you that it’s impossible to fit one of every animal on any vessel of any size, let alone two, and that’s even if you eliminate birds and creatures of the sea.  There are simply far too many species of animals, the food sources required to feed all the earth’s animals would take up more space than the animals themselves, and the waste accumulated would be far too much for 8 people to dispose of on a daily basis.  There is no one temperature that accommodate all the earth’s animals without air conditioning.  There would be no way to transport all the animals across the globe.  .  The entire story is impossible.  Even if God magically transported every animal to the location of the arc, even if God made the animals not eat or poop or need water the entire time they were on the arc and all they did was sleep in a comatose state, there is no way that the entire earth’s population of animals could repopulate from only two animals.  There’s no way it could happen, it’s not true.  (There’s no way the entire earth’s population of humans could evolve from two people but that’s another story) 

But people who believe that the bible is the only true word of God will tell you all sorts of things to rationalize their belief.  They will tell you all sorts of things that were not written in the story.  They will make up their own explanations.  Their mind will do whatever it has to do in order to protect their belief that the every word in the bible is true.  Their fear is that if they don’t believe every word in the bible, that if they don’t believe every story as irrefutable fact, that God will punish them to burn in hell or they will be considered a bad Christian in the eyes of God.  Their mind tells them that they have to believe the stories of the bible, not because there is any proof or evidence of any of the stories being true but only that they were told at a young age that they had to believe them or they would be punished. 

OK, that’s a touchy subject for Black folks because our ancestors had Christianity beaten into them.  They were whipped and beaten and tortured until they gave up their African spirituality until they were very much afraid of believing or even reading about anything other than Christianity and that belief has been passed down in the generations since slavery to the point that people today, relatively intelligent people actually believe the fables of the bible. 

OK, people’s brains are shutting down and they are angry and outraged that I would question their religious beliefs so I’ll use an example Black people can understand and agree with.  White people are taught, socialized, and reinforced that they are better than everyone else in the world.  They BELIEVE that they are the most righteous, the most attractive, the most worthy of wealth and justice and basically everything under the sun.  No one ever has to say, “White people are better and Black people are inferior,” for them to inherit that belief, it’s in all the stories they are told as children, it’s in the traditions passed down, it’s in the perpetuation of stories that say that God and his son are white, that everything that is good is white.  Superman is white, Santa Claus is white, all these things lead white people to believe that they are inherently superior so their mind creates this false belief that only Blacks are criminal, or even worse, that ALL Blacks are criminals.  Even if they say, “I’m not racist. Color doesn’t matter,” that doesn’t mean that they have done the work of dismantling their core beliefs.  They still believe that blond hair is the prettiest, that people of color are genetically prone to stupidity and criminal behavior. 

The problem then arises when they are faced with people of color who don’t fit the mold that they believe.  Like Obama for example.  They believe he was born in Kenya and is a secret Muslim trying to destroy America.  That’s how their brain compensates for the fact that they think Blacks are evil, that whites are inherently superior.  They can scream, “I’m not racist,” all day long but it doesn’t chage their core beliefs that Blacks are inherently inferior.  You can’t reason with them, you can’t show them a birth certificate, you can’t do anything because they BELIEVE that Blacks are inherently inferior and that is the only thing that their brain will compute.  It’s called cognitive dissonance and it’s very real. 

So, while you think that everything you believe about life is true, you are guilty of cognitive dissonance as well.  Your brain shuts down when you encounter something contrary to what you believe to be true.  You hold on to your beliefs, even if they are false, because you were indoctrinated to believe that your core values were indisputable.  The process of divesting yourself of those beliefs, of even acknowledging what they are is when enlightenment occurs.