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Cognitive Dissonance

We mere mortals are at such a terrible disadvantage when dealing with the sociopathic criminal element of the world, let alone their sycophant minions and enablers. Often it isn’t even a fair fight, regardless of the fact we outnumber them a ten thousand to one.

What passes for standard operating procedure (SOP) on Wall Street and in Washington DC would never even cross our minds as a valid choice, let alone desirable or even possible to consider. In fact, we find most of the sociopath’s more egregious antics to be too fantastical to actually be true because we would never ever consider doing those things ourselves.

This social/psychological phenomenon is precisely why The Big Lie (and the mountain of smaller lies supporting The Big Lie) is so powerful and utterly believable to the average Jane or Joe. Time and time again I have heard a person, still deeply embedded within the Matrix, tell me the revelation I’ve just passed on to him or her is simply impossible, thus in their mind discredited and totally without merit.

And yet their initial unthinking response (“I just can’t believe……”) tells me all I need to know about their severe case of cognitive dissonance as well as their desperation to keep reality at bay. It simply can’t be possible because they know it to be impossible. The sociopaths feed off this type of emotional dysfunction the way whales feast off large schools of krill or sardines. It’s all right there for the taking, consumed in one big gulp.

After much self-examination of my personal role in this mess, particularly as I began to wake up (still waking up folks; we are never fully awake, just hopefully a little more today than yesterday) combined with much research and soul searching, I have become increasingly certain this psychological condition isn’t just a case of a poor education, social or economic disadvantages or even imperial oppression (aka government by gun) though each does play their part in the big picture.

Instead much blame can be laid at the feet of our own intentional blissful ignorance, along with a willful and deliberate disregard for any personal responsibility to know what the hell is really going on. At some point in our life we can no longer point to our disadvantaged youth, a poor education, cruel and abusive parent(s), being poor, working long hours, a busy life or any of a million and one reasons why our eyes and mind remain strategically shut to the world around us.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not accusing ‘us’ of causing this unfolding socioeconomic disaster, just of enabling its germination and allowing it to continue well past the point of no return. No drop of water considers itself responsible for the flood, yet there the drop is, flooding along with all the other drops of rain.

I’ve had conversations over the years concerning the idea we can’t possibly know what we don’t know. Meaning we can’t be held responsible for our ignorance nor the consequences of our ignorance because we are……well……ignorant. With all due respect to those who have pressed this argument (and at points in my life I’ve held the same point of view) in my opinion this belief springs from the mind of the victim slave and most certainly not one who wishes to be free and to exercise their freedom. Please note the ‘and’ in the previous sentence.

It is the argument of those who wish to be affirmed in their passivity and blissful (willful) ignorance….especially those who are desperate to believe they were totally and innocently ignorant and to be excused for having been so. Do not underestimate or diminish the urgent need of us to be absolved of past transgressions and affirmed in our present path.

We all (want to) believe we are the good guy in the white hat. When that inner narrative is disturbed we will go to incredible lengths to right the sinking ship, beginning with self deception and moving down from there.

In our defense, we truly do love to be seduced into bed by the sociopaths. Those of us who live the inauthentic life need to be told what we are desperate to hear in order to validate our present path. It brings on a soothing high more powerful than the purest pharmaceutical drugs out there. Best of all, the delivery system is extremely reliable and always under our command.

Ultimately, for anyone to put forth the argument they could not know because they were not told, or even taught to want to know, is someone who rejects their very humanity. For this proposition reduces (wo)man to little more than a single cell ameba navigating ‘life’ via genetic predisposition, instinct, the hive mind and the herd mentality of the ameba cloud.

Is this assessment harsh? Maybe! Does it contain a ring of truth? Once again….maybe! I suspect many who are reading this have been triggered at their very core and have already amassed an array of rebuttals, objections and alternative explanations. The art of self deception lay in the skillful use of denial customized to our own education and experience level, often obscured behind reasonable doubt and carefully hidden behind righteous indignation and loud bluster. Show me someone triggering over something someone else said and I’ll show you some hidden denial and bargaining already in progress.

When I first entered the field of ‘sales’ more than two decades ago, on my very first day at work I was marched into the general manager’s office and given the ten minute ‘welcome’ pep talk. The last thing he told me was simplicity itself.

“Successful people do the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do.”

If modified slightly, it so perfectly describes the sociopath’s road to success.

“Sociopathic people do the things non sociopaths don’t want to do.”

“We the People” deny (to a lesser or greater degree) what is done by the sociopaths in part to avoid any accountability, thereby remaining absolved of personal responsibility. I term this the Sgt Schultz defense of “I know nothing, I see nothing, I wasn’t even there”.

Since this plays out mostly, but not completely, on an unconscious level, the conscious mind can often ‘honestly’ say they didn’t know. What can’t be hidden from the conscious mind is the desire to remain ignorant of the truth, other than the ‘truth’ we wish to believe which fits neatly within our every changing and always morphing inner narrative.

I would be remiss if I did not fully acknowledge the powerful role institutional conditioning plays in our day to day lives. Who wouldn’t want to believe the tall tale of brave founding fathers of our great nation rising up against a tyrannical king to bring freedom and prosperity to the unwashed masses that populate a recently settled and still immature nation? At this point, whether this meme is actually true or not is totally immaterial, only that it is still believable and willingly embraced.

The sociopaths have been beating this dead horse for decades, centuries actually, and the confidence game still has miles to go before we sleep. As Sinclair Lewis is alleged to have said, "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross". Feel free to change any of the nouns in Lewis’s declaration. It works pretty much no matter what you substitute in.

The point I’m making is simply that the more powerful the national narrative, the less likely the citizens of that nation will be to employ critical thinking. And the more likely they will be to suspend disbelief while accepting at face value what they are told is going on and why……at least until it is too late to do much about it.

Quite frankly, the average Jane and Joe is more likely to ‘believe’ as entirely possible a totally fictional movie where a false flag attack is engineered and executed by multiple US Governmental agencies for various immoral and illegal reasons than they are to believe the US government has already done precisely this on several occasions in the very recent past.

One narrative is entirely hypothetical (fiction aka not ‘real’) and therefore easy to rationalize away while still believing it possible. The other is stark reality which threatens our real time inner narrative to its core. If fully accepted as ‘reality’, one would be forced to, at best, reassess our inner narrative. At worst we would be forced to make radical changes in our lives now that we have (suddenly) discovered we are sleeping with a sociopathic mass murderer.

But here is the rub. Similar to a radar station being switched on, while the signal will alert you to incoming danger, it also alerts the sociopaths of your awakening. Therefore they know that you know of their true nature and methods. By opening your eyes you have become dangerous to them because truth is the mortal enemy of the sociopath. And you are now truth’s messenger. Only the deeply asleep are harmless to the sociopath.

Faced with such a frightening revelation, is it really that surprising so many minds go back to, or remain, asleep, comfortably numb and drugged with the soothing Soma of denial and bargaining? Welcome to the Brave New World!

This lurking and always nagging cognitive dissonance expresses in the form of divergent ‘working’ knowledge bases. The subconscious mind ‘knows’ certain things are true that are quietly denied and suppressed while awake. This inner tension is the source of so much of our personal, and therefore social, dysfunction……and the primary source of the leverage used by the sociopaths among us.

As I’ve said before, never underestimate the amount of time, energy and effort we will invest into defending our inner narrative from all cognitive dissonance enemies, foreign (external from the ‘self’) and domestic (within the ‘self’). Of equal, if not greater importance, is the zeal with which we employ selective hearing, reading and thinking (notice the absence of the word ‘critical’) when the ‘truth’ gets a little bit too close for comfort.

We accept as reasonable, even understandable, the adage “You can’t get a man to accept ‘B’ if they are paid to believe ‘A’”. In other words, a person can be biased towards one belief over another simply because they are being compensated (with money, power, prestige, position, influence, ego etc) to skew their beliefs.

What we fail to fully appreciate is that our own inner narrative, along with the desire to maintain that narrative, is the strongest possible bias we will ever experience. And quite often it is outside forces, aka sociopaths, that greatly influence (some might say ‘control’) our inner narrative, first by way of indoctrination, then by ongoing and systematic manipulation via a thousand and one public memes and inner self deceptions.

But another huge influence over the inner narrative is everyone else who shares the basic building blocks of the overall controlling and conditioning meme. While we all wish to believe we are independent entities who think for ourselves and arrive at our own fact based opinions and believes, reality is far different.

Aside from the fact we are herding animals who tend to share the hive mind, independent thought and critical thinking is actively discouraged, first by the state education system and second by the deferential and subservient Fourth Estate, the mainstream media many (wish to) believe is independent with an incentive to investigate and expose government, corporate and private transgressions. While it is questionable if this were ever the case, it most certainly is not at this point in time.

So, what to do about the sociopaths amongst us?

In an extreme oversimplification, we have three choices. Do nothing, do something or withdraw. For the vast majority of the nation (world) the default choice will be to do nothing for as many reasons as there are people doing nothing. Call it normalcy bias, wage slave capture, blind ideology, self interest, fear and/or greed, apathy, narcissism, ignorance is bliss, faith and belief, the list is endless.

A small, but growing minority will choose to do something, though in this case doing something means pushing back. This could be as simple as speaking out via the blogosphere at various different levels of involvement. Or the political system might beckon via active support for a political candidate and escalate right up to active protests against anyone or anything the person wishes to direct their attention and/or anger towards. Or they could go the route of more forceful resistance, the description of which I shall leave to the imagination of the reader.

And then there are those who decide withdrawal is the best option, though the method utilized varies remarkably from person to person. Some choose to bunker in, meaning they expect great social upheaval along with governmental crack downs, leading many to believe the best defense is a solid offense. They gather food, supplies and weapons and go to ground, some literally in underground bunkers, others fugitively in compounds large and small whether alone or in groups. Personally I think this just makes them easy targets, but will not judge since I am also an easy target.

A few flee for the hills in a mad dash to escape what they also expect will be social and political upheaval. Only this group focuses on a more long term and sustainable approach to surviving the chaos. The defining characteristic is their overriding sense of urgency to get as much done in as short a period of time as possible because it’s all coming down tomorrow.

Their sense of urgency is overwhelming at times, promoting a fight or flight mentality that, while extremely useful productivity wise, is debilitating and exhausting. Plus the self imposed blinders greatly hinder a broader, more encompassing point of view. Ironically, the longer it takes for the crash to materialize, the greater their sense it’s all right around the corner and will be exponentially more devastating.

Still others take a softer gentler approach and turn towards withdrawal in order to accomplish a permanent lifestyle change. The thought here is to move purposely towards inner personal change rather than fleeing external discord and growing social disillusion.

While each individual is unique, therefore no one solution fits all situations, in my opinion (please note the word ‘opinion’) the system is perfectly designed to meet force with even greater force. In addition, those who remain blissfully ignorant, along with the ideologically and financially captured, will join forces against those who threaten their gravy train with disenfranchisement or outright destruction.

Unless those applying force (not necessarily physical or armed) against the system are ready and willing to use the same techniques the sociopaths have amply demonstrated mastery over, the odds of ‘success’ are overwhelmingly against them. And that assumes ‘success’ can be adequately defined and actually achieved.

It is my opinion (note once again I am expressing an ‘opinion’) at this point in the unraveling of Empire, more harm can be inflicted by withdrawing financial, ideological and emotional support than by active resistance. This isn’t to say you should not speak out against the hypocrisy and illegal acts of the Empire. But understand that if you do so you are painting a large target on your back.

If your goal is to survive, and even thrive, the coming chaos, it would be best if you become a screen door and allow the ill wind to pass through you rather than erect a concrete wall that serves one purpose only, to resist, and which is a favorite target of all Empires in decline.

Personally I see no sense in dying a martyr’s death or being financially, socially and emotionally destroyed by the illegal and immoral tactics of a dying Empire, particularly if those around me don’t have the stomach to look at what’s really going on.

Worse, if the youth of America are demanding an even deeper embrace by the Imperial state via their desire for a ‘safe space’ and other such nanny state nonsense, which to me demonstrates a capitulation to, and acceptance of, the slave mentality, there is no desire on my part to attempt to educate and inspire those who wish to remain within their own cloistered and pampered world. Thanks, but no thanks.

I have no intention of becoming a ward of the state, dependent upon my daily feeding at the state’s teat in order to subsist on slave rations while pleading for more. Nor do I hope the rising tide of insanity safely passes beneath me while it ravages many who surround me. All Mrs. Cog and I needed to do to bring about a significant lifestyle change was to alter just about everything in our lives.

For us, it was a small price to pay for the freedom we wished to regain and exercise. Please note the ‘and’ in the previous sentence. For so many others the price is far too steep, or the payoff, enhanced and invigorating freedom, too frightening to comprehend. The deeply conditioned mind is trained to speak of their glorious freedom from within the safe confines of their slave quarters. All talk and no walk makes for compliant and pliable minions. Or worse, cannon fodder.

Count me out. I want no part of that world.

What about you?

06-16-2016

Cognitive Dissonance

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