I started Chapter One with a simple declaration. The more certain I am that I’m right, the greater the probability I’m wrong. I shall continue that discussion in this final chapter, but with particular emphasis placed on questioning the majority held opinion that The Crash, defined as a relatively quick decline of the economic and social systems, is coming.

Rather than try and define the hundreds of variations of how “It” might play out, let’s just say that for the purpose of this essay, the opposite of The Crash is a much longer and slower decline peppered with a few rapid plunges along the way.

Could the Zero Hedge consensus view be wrong? Is everyone keying off the collective bias and missing signs that the crash might play out as a slow exhalation of air and bubbles as The Empire sinks slowly beneath the waves? It’s quite possible this is what’s going on despite occasional rapid drops. Rather than look at the mechanics, it’s far more intstructive to examine our own psychology. After all, it’s the human psyche that’s the ultimate source of the instability that drives the decline and fall.

Layers of Self Deception

It makes it so much easier to deal with life’s ugly inconsistencies when we can sweep them under the intellectual rug. And it all happens in seconds with barely a blip in our blood pressure. The really tough dissonances might take a little longer, but never underestimate our capacity for self deception. And this cognitive tango is always running in the back ground with very little conscious awareness. Unless, of course, we train ourselves to see what’s going on. But who’d want to do that?

Since recognizing these cognitive gymnastics and then compensating for them requires self examination and personal courage, is it any wonder the average Joe’s worldview is distorted? It may come as a shock to learn that for all of us, our worldview isn’t affected so much by a lack of information as our lack of desire to (re)examine, update and accept it. The only information vacuum we live in is the one we create between our ears.

Maybe it’s time to question our fundamental beliefs in the face of a relentless Ponzi. We claim private and governmental interests are pulling a confidence game on the public and that we’re not fooled by it anymore because we clearly see the deception. But is this really the case? How deep down the rabbit hole have we gone and how many holes are there anyway?

For many of us we’ve gone just far enough to confirm our basic suspicions, but not so far as to face some really ugly realities. Or to be fair let’s call them ugly probabilities. We’re willing to think outside the conventional wisdom box, but not too far out. I mean, let’s be reasonable here, some things are just crazy right? But when we offer that excuse, are we respecting society’s reasonable boundaries or our own emotional limits? In most cases I’d say it’s the latter.

We construct and maintain our belief system and worldview not in order to understand reality, but to protect us from the emotional trauma inflicted upon us by reality. We’re taught a fairy tale from birth of how the world and our country functions, including a propagandized and mythical history. For many of us, we spend our lives defending that fairy tale as best we can with the only tools at our disposal, primarily denial and the quasi fantasy world we’ve constructed that we call our belief system.

Don’t get hung up on the word “fantasy” because we’re not talking about absolutes with regard to denial, but rather shape shifting and blurred lines. Since we all see the world differently, it can be argued that while there are many agreed upon “facts” we all share within the consensus reality, there’s plenty of wiggle room for deviation and denial, particularly if we’re the judge, jury and executioner of our own specially constructed inner world.

After all what is denial, but simply an altered perceived reality, our version of what’s real and what’s not as seen through our own infinitely variable cognitive filters? We all own a pair of rose colored glasses that are completely customizable and personalized. One might say that denial is self inflicted propaganda for it serves the same purpose as corporate and governmental propaganda, that of spinning the (ugly) truth into something more palatable.

As we grow, and as needed to survive and thrive, we modify and alter our beliefs to accommodate “the real world”. But we do this begrudgingly and only when we’re left with little or no choice. Most importantly, rarely do we apply logic and consistency to the process nor is there an annual review or a ritual spring cleaning.

Like a partially formed gaseous monster straight out of Star Trek, denial has few clear boundaries or sharp edges. It expands and contracts to fill the emotional needs of its user and it rarely can be positively identified or quantified as this or that fact based truth. However, the key ingredient to denial is convincing ourselves that truth is all we deal with. This nebulous quality is what gives denial its enormous power to leap tall dissonances in a single bound. We may power it, but for the most part denial controls us.

In a positive defense of denial, it can be used as part of a suite of cognitive tools to help absorb new or different perceptions into our belief system. Think of using denial as a holding pattern while we attempt to land new information for assimilation. The problem begins when we become trapped in the holding pattern and are unwilling to accept the differences or reject incorrect beliefs. We then become mired in the muck of our rigid belief system and denial is no longer used as a bridge but as a dam.

Bending in the Wind

When we read or leave comments on ZH that contain the words “I’ll never believe” or “You’ll never convince me” or “That’s impossible” or the classic “I just can’t believe” we know there’s further to go down the rabbit hole and it’s not information that’s holding the person back so much as denial. Terms such as those above are not learning phrases used by an open mind to expand the inner universe, but full stop rejections used to protect a closed mind under attack.

An extremely important concept to understand about denial is that it’s not an all or nothing proposition. There are multiple levels, degrees and side channels to denial. So when conflicts are overwhelming, we’ll concede select points in order to keep others hidden. We’re more than willing to lose a cognitive battle to win the denial war. And denial isn’t black and white, but a hundred shades of gray. So to say someone’s in denial doesn’t mean they refuse to deal with everything, just certain select parts and subtle variations.

The enabling power of the denial process is convincing ourselves we’re not in denial. Thus it’s imperative that we accept certain facts while others are colored or phase shifted to blur the lines in order to introduce a key ingredient of self deception, that of plausible deniability. In addition, we have a remarkable capacity to compartmentalize contrary pieces of information from each other and ourselves. This allows us to hold incompatible and contrary views or beliefs on the same subject at the same time and literally think nothing of it.

For Example

A widely held and glaring example of inconsistent or contrary views is that after decades of abuse, many people now firmly believe their government (along with people in and out of the government) has repeatedly lied to them. They know their government will harm them, even going so far as to silence people by destroying them professionally or by reputation. Or even kill them if they present too much of a threat to power. Many now believe their government has repeatedly deceived them, fabricating “evidence” in order to drive the country into war or prolong and/or escalate war.

They realize that the government manipulates statistics about the economy, including allowing companies to cook their books to show (better) profits through national security directives. That they now overtly and covertly manipulate domestic and foreign stock, currency, commodities and precious metals markets to further their goals. And that they do so under cover of national security, saying in effect that the more they meddle, the more they must continue to meddle.

The government lies about the condition of the environment, the BP oil spill, national health issues, spying on its own citizens, torture and rendition, weapons of mass destruction, the list is endless. More and more people are beginning to comprehend that the government will rob the many to benefit the few and will hurt or kill those in its way.

People not only don’t trust the government, but they’re down right frightened of the government and for good reason. They’ve come to believe that the government is lethal to them, a remarkable admission considering it’s such a deviation from the public myth they’ve been indoctrinated into since grade school. This is a very sobering realization and one you’d think would have fully shaken them awake.

The (Cognitive) Border is Closed

But in many cases, people will only acknowledge emotionally difficult insights contingent upon rejecting others they consider far worse. This internal negotiation is carried out in a back room bargaining session with themselves, often with little awareness to guide the horse swapping other than a primal fear that’s driving the urge to hide or get away. But ultimately where do we go when we live within, and depend upon, that which we fear?

Most likely as a form of emotional self defense, many of these very same people desperately wish to believe their government (along with people in and out of the government) would never willinglyignore, encourage, support, promote or execute (false flag) attacks against its own citizens in order to further various goals or objectives, either private and/or governmental.

In other words, they chose to believe there are moral, legal, and physical boundaries that those in government, as well as their political allies and (corporate) enablers, just won’t cross. They in effect wish to believe that the sociopaths running the show will respect certain select moral and legal lines drawn in the sand by society and the governed. That the powerful in and out of government can and will kill a few, but not more than a few, that they will defend their hold on power, but only up to a certain point.

These people admit the government may have crossed these lines in other countries in the past and may still cross them today. And that they might have crossed these lines here in America deep in the distant past. However, distant is usually measured as being longer than they’ve been alive, thus making these transgressions emotionally safer.

Remember again that the perception of personal risk or safety is a function of proximity to the risk. So the further away in time they can pretend the government has violated “the rules”, the lower the personal risk appears to the denier that the government might again violate “the rules”. This allows us to believe that our present administration is the softer kinder sociopathic version (44.0) and really doesn’t have its citizens by the throat.

Or maybe they need to be further from the fact that they were asleep at the wheel, ignoring the obvious or inevitable while it occurred and thus potentially responsible, even if only morally. After all, a popular public sport is to claim we didn’t vote for so and so after the shit’s hit the fan. People in denial are very keen to avoid personal responsibility that might lead them back to their own denial.

Even after admitting all of the above, they still insist the government would never engage in this type of behavior today nor did it ever do so in the recent past, meaning within their adult lifetime. It would be too close for comfort otherwise and to seriously entertain this idea would overload and crash their cognitive process as well as their sense of personal safety. Thus the reason we read the “I can’t believe” and “You’ll never convince me” statements declaring a cognitive dissonant impasse and emotional safety. We all desire our comfort stories.

This “belief” is glaringly inconsistent, logically suspect and strikingly narrow. And not surprising at all considering most of us still wish to believe we live in the America of our history books and public myth and not in a South American banana republic with nuclear weapons and a reserve currency. Perception is reality, thus I control what I believe and what I perceive.

Which begs the obvious question? Whose line in the sand and what forbidden boundaries are we really talking about here? The ones we believe the government won’t cross, the ones we don’t wish to admit have recently been crossed or our own emotional boundaries, the ultimate do not enter stop sign?

This is a reasonable question because a brief look at history offers up dozens of publicly disclosed examples of major lines in the sand repeatedly crossed by so called democratic or representative governments, including the USA on multiple occasions. I say this not to define who’s right or wrong, but to declare under no uncertain terms that if we’re not being consistent in our thinking, if we’re unwilling to honesty assess all information at our disposal, if we’re being selective in when we apply logic, that this is a major signal that there’s denial blocking the way forward.

You Can’t Make Me, You Can’t Make Me

For those who (understandably) can’t accept such a horrifying thought and all its ugly implications, it’s rejected outright as impossible or crazy. We can always come up with a thousand reasons or explanations to reject something in order to place as much emotional distance as we can between the frightening reality we’re denying and ourselves. Again, one sees this all the time with posts that begin with “You’ll never make me believe” or “Nothing you show me will ever prove” or “I just can’t believe”.

The person making these statements is declaring that any information contrary to their emotionally safer worldview will be promptly rejected without an unbiased assessment. This is not an open mind on display, but rather a mind whose steel trap is firmly welded shut. The information is too frightening to even be fairly considered, so it’s rejected outright before it ever crosses the cognitive threshold.

“You’ll never convince me” is the sign that the mental deck is stacked. Yet after these people have finished the initial denial process and have regained their emotional composure, they consider themselves to be fair and open minded and willing to discuss anything, just as long as it’s “reasonable”. They declare that any information that opens the emotionally uncomfortable box they just closed as crazy or unreasonable or unconfirmed or whatever it takes to keep the monster at bay.

They make their own cognitive rules, which they then use to judge the quality and acceptability of the information. And the rules will always say this information isn’t going to be allowed. It helps immensely if others in their social peer group as well as their leaders affirm their decision that some information’s off limits. Thus we understand the critical need for leadership and its enablers to establish the public myth and to lie in public and on the record.

This is done both in the run up to and after the limits have been violated and the lines crossed. Leadership declares for all who wish to believe the lie what’s socially acceptable to believe and what’s not. This is also the purpose of “blue ribbon” fact finding commissions, the so-called independent experts and authorities. Their primary job is to explore, modify and, after a few shocking “mistakes” have been revealed to allow us the fantasy they did a thorough job, ultimately bless the overall official public myth and lies.

The person in denial is looking for permission or affirmation from an outside (of their own mind) authority that his or her denial is emotionally, socially and morally OK. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to the sociopaths. When we’re in emotional distress or acting in a morally or socially suspect manner, we seek comfort and affirmation from authority figures that we’re in the clear and any guilt is unwarranted. This is why I often write “Daddy, tell me another lie so I can believe it’s the truth.”

Think back to when your own children were very young and they were emotionally insecure or afraid. They were especially eager for you to (re)affirm them in their own denial or to reassure them they were OK, particularly if it was about their own self image, stature or safety. Children aren’t the only emotionally insecure people who wish to be reassured, particularly when they’re in denial.

At one time or another, we’ve all been in a shaky relationship where we made the choice to accept a lie rather than face the truth. Since we all wish to believe we’re strong and mature it’s difficult to accept that we often act infantile and needy. Thus we’ll even repress the understanding of that basic emotional need if awareness leaves us vulnerable.

For those who don’t engage in this level of denial, or more realistically don’t admit they engage in this level of denial, my explanation sounds suspect and “unreasonable”. After all, well educated adults don’t act this way. But this cognitive process is well understood, particularly by the psychological warfare and social control experts who use the knowledge of our inner disorder against us to manipulate and control. This is why I talk about knowing yourself. One can only be violated when one doesn’t understand how and why it’s occurring.

These layers of subtle self bargaining and authority approval seeking are an example of the seductive and insidious nature of denial. And to the person employing it, it all sounds perfectly reasonable. How often do we see directly after the post “I’ll never be convinced” the statement that “It’s not me that’s the problem here because I’m opened minded. It’s you and your crazy information that’s the issue.”

Our worldview is constrained and maintained by ourselves, not by outside forces, regardless of the grand tales we tell ourselves about how fair and honest we are when viewing the world. A sympathetic soul might say “We tell ourselves little white lies occasionally so what’s the big deal? Everybody does it.”

This is precisely where denial begins, with little subtle deceptions that are “harmless” or “inconsequential”. We allow ourselves the comforting self deception that small lies don’t lead to big ones and we can stop lying to ourselves any time we want.

Self Psyops and Propagandizing Oneself

We have met the enemy and the enemy is us. This is why there’s a never ending supply of fall guys and patsies pushed to the front of the public perception as foils and enablers for our own self deception. Why beat ourselves up when we can hate someone else.

We’re all desperate to some extent or another to deny a very basic reality. Psychological warfare is used against us by our government and private interests to manipulate and control, by our social control systems to pacify, maintain order and control, and by ourselves to deny and self deceive in order to live within the insanity and with ourselves.

It’s all about our individual and collective ego and our addiction to the natural dopamine high that supports and enables our denial. It feels so good to convincingly deny something that’s emotionally painful. And that good feeling comes from our endless natural supply of emotional pain killers. The crazier it gets in our real world, the more we’ll reach for the pain reliever that’s just a small denial away. Psychological warfare leverages our own failings by exploiting the age old adage that you can con a dishonest man.

An important part of individual denial is how it coordinates with society’s collective denial. Again, this is what I mean when I talk about the public myth and the keepers of the public myth. We as a society maintain half truths and outright lies about our history and ourselves in order to brush aside uncomfortable dissonances and unpalatable facts.

Our leaders lie to set the public myth in stone as well as to support prior or future lies. And once a lie is released by “reputable authorities”, the very fact that it exists and that it was recorded as “truth” because an “authority” spoke it, defies anyone to say otherwise. Are you calling the great and exalted authority a liar? Daddy doesn’t lie, at least not to the kids.

The public myth is always rigid and easily understood and many are deeply woven into our own personal worldview and belief system. “They hate us for our freedom” is one of the more egregious and nonsensical phrases that warms the cockles of our patriotic mythology. I wrote about this extensively in my “Welcome to the Insane Asylum” series as well as other articles.

Even those who feel a sense of social responsibility and wish to do something to stop this are beginning to pull in their horns and hide from the coming storm. When they begin to understand that the government is no longer just a roadblock, but a potentially lethal enemy, they discover within themselves a bone rattling fear of their government, their presumed protector.

This primal fear is something many people alive today have never experienced before. Sort of like waking one morning to discover that a mass murderer is sleeping next to you or down the hallway and across from the kids.

These realizations about our government’s motives and methods fly in the face of everything we’ve been told. It contradicts our social conditioning and mythology about a somewhat benevolent but bumbling government that eventually gets it right. Infinitely worse, and thus ever more frightening, it places upon us total responsibility for our own life, happiness and wellbeing. No more playing the victim and no more excuses since Daddy isn’t here to save us, but maybe even to kill us.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

But does this creeping realization that we can’t trust our government anymore actually serve to feed our bias when it comes to The Crash? Since our instinct is to reject all official pronouncements and information coming from the government, is this tendency backfiring when it comes to our assessment of what’s coming and how it will play out?

In many respects, it doesn’t make any difference whether the governments lies or not with regard to longevity and stability when every other government is doing likewise. Remember that while we might not trust the government, many still do. Even those who don’t trust the government continue to act as if they do simply because it’s in their own self interest. Combine this with the natural inertia of continuing on the same path and there’s still plenty of momentum to keep this Ponzi churning for a long time.

The obvious question here is, are we thinking clearly and unbiased when considering the economic and social disaster we expect is just around the corner. Personally I doubt it. As I pointed out in chapter one, it’s easy to become biased and hard to recognize when we’re emotionally involved. Often we’re attracted to information that confirms our beliefs and regardless of how accurate it is, Zero Hedge and other contrary websites help us do this.

Even if we’re ultimately correct about the crash, it might make sense once in a while to check our assumptions. But do we really want to prove ourselves wrong? Naturally, we tell people (and ourselves) that we’re willing to admit when we’re wrong in order to maintain public (and internal) credibility. But often we engage in the illusion that we’re double checking, just like we did during grade school to fool the teacher.

If we’re serious and really do check, we might find something we don’t like which certainly won’t please us. No one likes to contradict themselves, especially when we’re emotionally involved. It’s so much easier to say we checked and that everything’s fine, then leave well enough alone.

That might also be why we hang around Zero Hedge so much, to allow us the illusion that someone else is on the case. And why some get nervous when it goes off line for any extended period of time. Where’s my ZH fix? Left alone without our constant spin and reassurance, doubt may seep in or we might start to drift from the message. Would we still be so resolute if Zero Hedge wasn’t here?

After all, on Zero Hedge we receive constant assurance that we’re right and they’re wrong. Plus we get to mingle with other like minded individuals, which lends us moral support and positive feedback. It’s all right there and everything we need, delivered up in 10 to 15 articles a day and a dynamite comment section. We’re in Nirvana, also known as our own little contrary universe.

Zero Hedge has just as much bias as CNBC, just in a different direction. Remember that the term bias doesn’t measure accuracy, just direction, momentum or magnitude. That’s just a statement of fact and not a condemnation of ZH or any other contrary website. One must always understand and compensate for the basis and bias of any information we consume. Just read the Zero Hedge disclosure.

Are we willing to subject our view of the coming crash to as rigid an examination as we do the Ponzi view? Or do we just assume the Ponzi is lying and declare anything opposite the lie must be the truth and the “real” reality? Is the real reality what we believe it “should” be or what it really “is” day to day?

Why do we think the “truth” will prevail? That’s not a foregone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination. Nor that exposing the “truth” will sink the lie that’s supposedly supporting the economy when it’s clearly in nearly everyone’s short term best interest to lie and live another day. Does “truth” always prevail or is that just another part of our individual and collective myth by way of our grade school conditioning and indoctrination? Here comes Mighty Mouse to save the day.

Why would we possibly think people are motivated not only to learn the “truth” but then live the truth? My personal life experience doesn’t support this supposition though I will admit it’s one of my comfort stories.

More to the point, the “truth” will not force the government to stop promoting a lie when to do so will put people in physical, emotional and financial peril, not to mention the leadership. We all understand that at times it’s so much easier to maintain the lie than to finally begin to speak the truth. So much needs to be undone and explained so why even try?

The government creates crisis after crisis to frighten the herd. And based upon every cowboy movie I’ve ever seen, stampeding herds just want the fear to go away. To think that at some point there will be such an overwhelming outcry from the public that the sociopaths will cease and desist and perp walk themselves to jail is beyond childish. Frogs in the bottom of a pot brought slowly to a boil don’t do much of anything other than complain about the weather.

Now that we know the “truth” and are some of the early adopters, are we acting to support the truth and stop the lies or are we just cueing up for another ZH exposé? Why do we expect others to act differently than we have acted once they learn the “truth”?

I’ve asked this question a few times before here on ZH as well as other places and I’m mostly ignored. It appears I’m cutting too close to the bone because while most won’t admit it, we seem to be waiting around for someone else to do what we don’t wish to do.

We claim to have truth and justice on our side, but just knowing the truth doesn’t stop the lies. There seems to be this belief that once the “truth” becomes widely known, reinforcements will swell the ranks and then we can strike at the belly of the beast. I suspect this is just another comfort story we tell ourselves in order to sleep better at night. And that this dissonance between what we say and what we do feeds into our collective denial.

Even better (worse?), do we claim the moral high ground where all is sacred and self questioning is blasphemy? I fully understand the importance of declaring the emperor to be naked, but the sociopaths deduct points for truth and they have control of the reins and the game. Righteous indignation, something we love to revel in, has throughout the ages covered up a lot of bad thinking by the so called good guys.

Inconsistent Inconsistencies

An example of an inconsistency in our thinking might be that the Ponzi has lasted much longer than many predicted it would. Very few on ZH considered the possibility in March of 09 that the stock market would be much higher a year and a half later. It was obvious systemic death was just around the corner, right?

Even fewer believed the US, British and EU governments and central banks could have repeatedly issued multiple trillions of dollars in sovereign debt and Treasury paper in multiple currencies at ever decreasing interest rates without a currency crisis and collapse. And yet that’s precisely what they’ve successfully done if success is measured as paper issuance and no collapse.

Or maybe the dissonance can be found within the precious metals arena. While there were some who felt otherwise, many people were convinced that once the public was told of the Federal Reserve’s Gold price suppression techniques that the Gold paper trade would collapse. And yet it continues to this day, even if it’s hobbled to some extent. How can that be?

Lately I’ve heard the explanation that there wasn’t enough public exposure of Gold manipulation to cause collapse. While that sounds reasonable, won’t the public ignore what they don’t want to hear no matter the quantity or quality of evidence? You can bring the horse to water but….

I agree that it defies common sense that a market as manipulated and undercapitalized with actual physical Gold wouldn’t disintegrate the moment the news of manipulation hit Bloomberg. And yet it didn’t disintegrate and still functions today. Is this not an aberration that must be carefully examined? It seems we’re incrementally increasing our denial as the Ponzi marches on.

All I see people doing is pushing back the expected date of collapse, saying next time there’s a run on Comex or the Chinese want more physical or more tungsten is found inside 400 ounce bars, then it will collapse. Even if it does collapse, what comes next? When only Gold has perceived value, it would be foolish to think the sociopaths will allow us to keep ours. Think about that and then read some history. The insanity isn’t extinguished; it ebbs and flows or just morphs into new bodies and forms.

We continue to brush aside multiple contradictions to the quick collapse scenario without seriously considering this could continue on for many more years. Some may not wish to recognize this, but those who understand what’s going on, meaning the principal supporters and benefactors of the Ponzi (both on Wall and Main Street) will cling to the devil they know rather than face the black abyss of the unknown. This alone assures a much longer unraveling than we’re acknowledging.

I’m not taking “sides” in this argument as much as I’m asking a more fundamental question. Are we taking a side and then ignoring evidence that might prove us incorrect? The more our argument for the crash or a collapse can withstand critical scrutiny and the more we probe and dissect its weaknesses, the stronger it becomes unless it’s weak or baseless.

However, the more we shield our argument from scrutiny, either by overt or covert denial, obstruction or obscuration, the weaker it becomes. This method of interrogation is how we pummel the Ponzi, by relentlessly questioning its suppositions and evidence. Shouldn’t we apply the same acid test to our own arguments or is our only claim to fame simply that since we proved them wrong, we must be right?

Shoot the Messenger, Ignore the Message

What’s obvious to you and me is rarely obvious to others, not because it can’t be seen, but because it can be ignored and rejected. The same can be said in reverse. Many people, including this author, are at times irritated with certain contributors and commentators and their barrage of articles and comments on Zero Hedge that seem to defy the laws of common sense.

“You live in a fantasy world” or “Sooner or later you’ll be crushed” are all common refrains left to refute these people. I’m not saying the comments are or aren’t valid. But we must ask ourselves some questions if we’re to face our own emotional outbursts. Are we angry with the authors because they’re delusional or because they represent everything and everyone that’s holding this Ponzi together and precisely the reason it’s lasted longer than we expected? Maybe we’re holding it together ourselves?

These authors are an emotional and intellectual trigger for many here on Zero Hedge. Rather than rant at them, we should step back and examine why we’re being triggered. Often we yell and scream in order to hide from self examination. Is that what’s going on here? I suspect that for many it’s not the money that’s upsetting, but instead a sense of bloody outrage over the magnitude of the thieving and the colossal gall exhibited by the principal sorcerers that’s clouding our vision.

Once we look within and understand the trigger, we can discover the underlying dissonance that’s obscuring our worldview and beliefs. I know that when I experience an emotional outburst, particularly when I’m feeling righteous indignation, this is a clear indication I’ve been triggered and that something’s unsettled within.

It could be seen as a huge blow to our ego to admit that it might be time to hunt within for some inner truth when the streets are filled with the thieves and the complicit. But I know if we continue to be triggered, we’ll be easily manipulated and seriously out of balance. Only when we’re at peace with ourselves can we be effective in all other aspects of our life.  

When we’re triggered, rather than get caught up in the details of the information being argued, we should be looking closely at what we fear or what we’re avoiding that’s causing such an outburst. We’re angry that the Ponzi uses diversionary tactics to distract and bluff the public from the “truth”. Yet we use the very same tactics on ourselves rather than take a long hard look within. Maybe some personal housekeeping is in order?

Admittedly this is a difficult task and it requires self confidence and discipline to pull back and pause when our ego is screaming for us to “do something” to defend our ego honor or ego self respect. When we’ve been emotionally triggered and we’re upset over something that was written or said, what’s really going on here, what’s really been triggered is our sense that our worldview is under assault. This is precisely when we must calm down and reach within to find the courage to look deeper into what’s going on.

The Abuser/Abused Paradigm

The reason I always talk about our ego not being “us”, but rather a separate and distinct entity, is because we’re constantly led to believe by our ego that our ego is our friend and can be fully trusted. Our ego accomplishes this by convincing us that our ego is “us” and that “we” are one and the same as our ego. Thus we believe that when our ego is talking, in fact it’s “us” that’s talking.

As I said in Chapter One, this is hardly the case. The ego considers itself to be a separate and sovereign entity, not a part of “us”. Thus the ego is not bound by any moral, emotional or social boundaries nor does “it” feel constrained from lying, cheating or using subterfuge to get what it wants. Since our ego doesn’t physically control our bodies, it must use manipulative methods (essentially self psyops or self propaganda) to achieve its goals.

In a remarkable example of how the fabric and structure of our society and social order mimics our internal disorder, the control system (the Ponzi, the banking cabal aka the Federal Reserve and other central/commercial banks, the political and justice systems, the so called free press aka main stream media, religions, corporations, academia and the education system etc) does exactly the same thing to us externally as our ego does internally. And for the most part we fully participate in this.

Using subterfuge and illusion as well as encouraging our own self deception, the control system convinces us that it’s “our” control system. We’re told that the decision to send “our” troops (I didn’t know I had an army) into foreign wars is “our” decision and in “our” best interest. That it’s “our” government despite the fact that “our” government doesn’t act in “our” best interest. We’re repeatedly told that “we” must save “our” too-big-to-fail banks in order to save “ourselves” from those very same too-big-to-fail banks.

The main stream media, an integral part of the control system, assures “us” that “we” must protect and enable “our” financial elites and “our” government so that they may employ and protect “us”. If the financial elites are treated poorly by “us” taxpayers, they’ll take their ball and go home and “we” shall starve.

Yet for decades we’ve been assured they’ll trickle down some of what we give them so I guess it’s all good folks. Yet the income and wealth disparity continues to grow to new records each year. Without judging the validity of my statements, understand what’s really going on here.

We the (self) abused have been and are being conditioned to love and cherish our abuser. Or at least tolerate it. Whack! “Thank you very much sir. May I have another?” Whack! To tolerate such a disparity without revolt takes a great deal of emotional and intellectual bargaining and denial.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to you and me because we understand what’s going on, right? I hear this all the time on ZH, that we’re the informed and thus immune. Is this another comfort story we tell ourselves or are we just caught in the emotional headlights and frozen in our tracks?

The Big Bang or the Little Whimper

So, what if “it” doesn’t end with a bang but with a whimper? I believe this unraveling can and will go on much longer than we expect and we should plan accordingly. Since no one really wants our way of life to end, many will subtly and covertly maintain it even if it means they must maintain the lie. And that’s the key to a slow and painful death of the Ponzi rather than a collapse.

As was so wonderfully illustrated in “The Matrix”, nearly all of the population will fight to remain within the lie for as long as they can simply because the alternative is too horrible to accept. For them, to lie is to live. So they’ll bargain away anything they can’t maintain and deny the pain for as long as they can.

Like walking down a staircase, only when forced will they accept another step down into the abyss. Once there, they’ll acclimate all over again using the only coping tools they have, those of denial and bargaining. Then they’ll take the next step and the next step and the next step in a slow walk to hell.

For those who have forgotten, history’s littered with failed Empires, some as recently as 65 years ago. The one constant throughout history is that the citizens of those failed empires lived in great denial of their current condition and they slowly bargained away their souls for another day in misery. This doesn’t need to be, but it usually is anyway.

While we as a society and a collective are slowly relinquishing our sovereignty to the powers that be, the one area that is under our complete control is our own mind. Let’s not cede that as well by blindly following our own contrarian herd.

We should not adopt positions or beliefs that oppose the Ponzi simply because it’s contrary to the Ponzi. Doing so just shifts the illusion of control to us, but still leaves us dancing to the Ponzi beat. Our views should be adopted only after rigorous examination and vetting. This is the only way to a truly peaceful, free and sovereign life.

09/05/2010

Cognitive Dissonance

One new trick this old dog has learned is elegantly simple. The more certain I am that I’m right, the greater the probability I’m wrong. Before we dismiss this concept as simplistic or nonsensical (because we’re absolutely certain we’re right) why don’t we take a closer look at the underlying supposition and then apply what we learn to “The Crash” meme that’s widely held among a clear majority of Zero Hedge posters, contributors and commentators, including myself. It never hurts to check our math, right?

For those readers looking for an in-depth analysis of the current sociopolitical and economic climate, stop right here because this isn’t what you’re looking for. Other people can, and have, covered that ground better than I could. This is a collective self examination of how we arrive at our beliefs using denial and how this can lead us astray, especially when something’s “obvious”. I wish to swim a bit upstream of the contrary waters, which is not the same thing as taking a dip in the consensus reality pool.

When talking to family and friends about the greater probability of being wrong when we’re absolutely certain we’re right, the initial reaction I get is usually an assumption on their part that I’m applying a high probability of being incorrect. This isn’t the case. For something to be greater, all it needs to be is a bit more than the baseline measure. Often our biggest mistakes materialize when we assume something (because it’s obvious, right?) when more often than we care to admit, our assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth.

Mispricing Risk and Reality

For the sake of this discussion, let’s say there’s normally a 10% chance I’m wrong and a greater chance is defined as 15%. While we might brush this away as minor and immaterial, if you knew the next time you got behind the wheel of your car you had a 10% chance of getting into an accident, would you call that minor? I don’t think so. More to the point, we all have a tendency to minimize risks we’re familiar with and maximize risks we don’t understand or that push our buttons. Since we’re intimately familiar with our own thinking, it stands to reason we don’t recognize the real risk of being wrong.

I suspect we’ve all seen articles or news stories that highlight the public’s misperception of risk in our daily lives. For example, many people consider the risk of being attacked by a shark while swimming to be greater (there’s that term again) than of being hit by a bus or lightening. Of course, none of these risks are even a tiny fraction of 1%. But try telling that to someone after watching the movie Jaws, walking across a bus filled street or playing golf during a lightening storm. Proximity has a lot to do with our perception of risk. For this reason and more, we “misprice” risk in all facets of our lives, especially when developing and maintaining our worldview.

When it comes to our own decision making thought process, our so called inner dialogue, we rarely recognize this variable nor do we properly incorporate it into the conclusions we reach. And I deliberately use the term “inner dialogue” here because when we’re thinking or contemplating, the vast majority of us believe we’re all alone and “talking” to ourselves. Even when we’re conversing with others, either in real time by phone or in person or with a delay via letters, email or blogging, for the most part we believe it’s “us” that’s doing the talking and writing. Why wouldn’t we think this? Who else could it be?

For those who’ve been reading me for awhile, this is an old theme that I’d like to freshen up a bit. Our ego is always present and often front and center. Most people consider their ego to be an inseparable part of themselves and give little thought to what’s really going on in the background. Much of our day to day activity, be it physical, intellectual or emotional, is either ego driven or on “ego” auto pilot. I call it that because when we’re not consciously engaged, it’s still the same body being flown by someone or something other than our conscious awareness. If you think about it, that something’s the ego, though we think of it more like instinct or training.

Our Ego Maniac

Our ego is quite insecure and overly sensitive to being ignored or rejected. It’s assumed that the primary purpose of our ego is to take command of the ship of state during times of stress or emergency and to do whatever it takes to pull our butt out of harm’s way.

What’s tragically misunderstood by most is that the ego considers itself to be a separate and sovereign entity and not a part of the “self”, thus not answerable to or affected by “our” decisions or (in) actions in the same way you or I perceive “being affected”. It helps if we view our ego as a parasite or virus rather than a friend or companion because the ego considers you and me to be nothing more than the host.

For all intents and purposes, we’re living the life of someone with a dual personality. But we’ve been seduced into believing there’s only one person, the “self” or “I” we refer to when speaking about our personal being. The ego doesn’t share this perception, which means there’s an entity involved in our day to day affairs that doesn’t have “our” best interest in “mind”. Consider this concept carefully for a moment because its eye opening. A potentially malicious stranger is permanently living within my house. Do I leave him unattended or ignore his motives and actions?

Our ego is an ego maniac (no pun intended) that possesses (or should I say is) a severe sociopathic personality disorder. It seems our ego will go so far as to create disaster in our lives, in effect sabotage us in order to be needed, wanted and paid attention to. That’s the very definition of an ego maniac and the sociopathic personality. While this self destructive impulse varies from person to person, it’s there in everyone and must be recognized in order to deal with it.

The world’s most disturbed human beings aren’t dropped off on Earth by visiting space aliens nor do they grow on trees. They spring from within and the potential seed of their insanity can be found in all of us. This is why I endlessly repeat that in order to understand why people do certain things, one must look inside oneself. It can be shocking to realize that the raw material of these personality types resides in us all.

Our ego is seamlessly integrated into our lives and society, to the point where its influence is rarely understood by the vast majority of us. The more direct control we cede to our ego, something our narcissistic naval gazing entertain-me-now consumer culture tells us is desirable (which in turn feeds the ego) the more out of control our lives become. A severe side effect of this ego centric life is how it turns us into walking talking intellectual and emotional trip wires that can be, and often are, triggered for a variety of reasons. And this triggering almost always occurs without us being consciously aware of what’s going on or why.

Trip Wires and Mine Fields

Let’s examine a small but commonly shared example of egoic response to outside stimuli. How many times have we read a (Zero Hedge) article or comment and before we’re even finished, we’ve hit the reply button and are pounding away at the keyboard. We leave a caustic or snide reply, or even a heartfelt opinion, and then we move down to the next comment. Ten minutes later, we check back and the next response below ours doesn’t make any sense or isn’t what we expected. “What the hell’s wrong with that idiot? That’s not what I’m talking about.”

When we go back and re-read what we originally responded to, we find that somehow we completely missed what the person was saying. We’ve all had those “I don’t remember reading that” moments where it feels as if we’re absorbing something for the first time, not the second or third. This foolish “error” of ours is sometimes so obvious that we thank God no one knows who the hell we really are.

And this happens more often than we care to admit. It’s almost as if we didn’t read that particular comment but an entirely different one instead. What the hell just happened? You see it all the time in the comment section, to the point where you really don’t pay much attention since it all blends into the back ground noise and shouting.

You really only notice when it happens to you. And even then, you might deny it and blame it on the other person. Then there are times when the comment section degenerates into nothing but shouting and ego responses, where no one listens and everyone’s right.

If we pursue some quiet reflection on the matter we discover that somehow we missed nearly everything except a word or phrase that’s a hot button or trigger for us. Once we’re triggered, it’s usually game over and nothing else is making its way into our central processing unit except how to crush that fool who just triggered us. This is why I talk about reading everything twice, once to feed the egoic trip wires and the second to absorb the information into our conscious awareness. And maybe even a third time just for the joy of it.

While on the surface it might appear that it was “me” who responded, in fact it was most likely my ego. And as I said before, they aren’t the same thing. In today’s fast paced world, it’s our ego that’s often interacting with everything in our personal universe. Only we don’t recognize it because we see little or no difference between our conscious mind and the ego.

A careful reading of centuries of history shows us that while our ego has always been a major influence in our daily lives, our present day ADD need for constant stimuli and entertainment has mostly blurred the dividing line between our inner consciousness, our inner “spirituality” (to use a trigger word) and our ego. In a world where our collective and individual ego has run riot and the ego is nearly always front and center, is it really that surprising we live in an insane world?

Contemplation and Reflection

It’s only during quiet reflective times (some call this meditation, others deep thought) where we deliberately box off and isolate outside distractions and diversions while also restraining the constant chatter of our inner voice (our ego) can we begin to find, and then reinforce, that dividing line. Most of us believe that the inner voice we “hear” is “us” when in fact it’s most often our ego. This misidentification of who and what we are, along with being manipulated by our own ego and the control system, is in my opinion the primary source of many of our personal and social woes.

We’ve been separated for so long from our genuine inner self, our true consciousness, that for many in today’s world being reacquainted is a frightening experience to be avoided at all costs. The control system feeds this fear in order to maintain order and control and we go along because we’ve been told it’s all a part of modern life. The average person flips on the radio or TV as soon as they enter their home or get in their car. It’s all just the back ground noise of the control system and for most people; it’s a shock when it’s gone.

At first I thought this accelerating fusion of the ego and our consciousness appeared only to be affecting the younger generation, mostly I assumed because they quickly assimilated the newest entertainment technology. But over the past decade its spread and I’ve noticed in the general population that there’s almost a quiet desperation never to be alone for long with one’s thoughts. I’ve written in depth about “why” in other essays so I won’t dwell on it here.

A few years ago, while riding my motorcycle solo along a popular mountain ridge with spectacular views and exhilarating switch backs, I pulled into a rest area for a break. In the back corner of the parking lot was a large group of fellow riders. While their ages varied from what looked like the early 20’s to the late 60’s, everyone was riding two up. Most of the riders had communication devices that allowed them to talk to each other or at a minimum MP3 players plugged into their helmets or ears. Here they were, in the heart of Mother Nature, and still they required distraction and communication within the collective.

After exchanging pleasantries and while surrounded by those who came over to look at my bike, one middle aged lady asked me the most remarkable question. She observed I was riding alone and then asked “How can you ride alone? Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you get bored?” I could tell it was a sincere question and she was genuinely perplexed. Immediately the small talk within the group hushed as everyone waited for my response. It kind of surprised me that they would care to hear what I had to say. I soon understood why.

Without thinking I quickly said “No, not at all. In fact, I consider myself quite good company. I love riding alone because it gives me time to think. I’m never bored.” The group just stared at this strange man from another world and then quickly broke up and remounted. I remember seeing combinations of surprise, confusion and even fear in people’s faces and eyes.

From their point of view they were trying to avoid exactly what I was trying to achieve, communication with the inner sanctum. For many years I’d thought the growing lack of quiet reflection among the general population was just distractions and busy lives, but now I see it as overt avoidance and even fear. People are running from themselves and the control system is encouraging this with its constant “me me” consumer meme. We’re becoming passive beginning with ourselves.

It’s All About the Drugs

When examining information for the purpose of forming opinions, we often overlook our own unavoidable but correctable confirmation bias. Ironically our confirmation bias gains considerable strength in part from making “correct” choices in our day to day decision making process. Remember that proximity affects our perception and often being correct in the small daily tasks of life seduces us into believing we’re extremely capable in our decision making process.

During our waking hours, we make hundreds of small decisions that are immediately confirmed as “correct”, at least in our minds. This, along with other influences, encourages us to believe our analytical process is efficient and nearly foolproof, particularly if we’re already influenced by emotional confirmation bias and ego triggers.

We, or more accurately our ego, positively love to be correct. And each time our brilliance is confirmed, even if only in our imagination, our brain floods our body with powerful endorphins such as dopamine, a natural drug that’s dozens of times more powerful and much more subtle than crack or heroin. This biological process has evolved over millions of years and was, and still is to some extent, essential to our survival.

But modern society, or should I say society’s control systems, have distorted this natural mechanism. One only need study psychological warfare techniques or even the advertising, entertainment and official (government) and unofficial (corporate news) propaganda industry to see how our own natural biological responses are being used against us on a daily basis. Because we’re totally immersed within our own world, for those who don’t or won’t pay attention, it’s nearly impossible to see these influences for what they are. After a while, few wish to wake from wonderland, especially when it morphs into hell.

Biologically speaking if we’re doing something “right” it might be in our best interest to continue to be “right” if we wish to survive a while longer. But we need proper incentive beyond just survival to ensure we replicate the survival behavior. Cue that wonderfully delicious feeling we get when we’re “right” on the money. In fact, that natural high we feel is the dopamine drug rush. It’s only a matter of time before we find a way to induce that high on command. And confirmation bias and denial are sure fire ways to that Rocky Mountain high.

(Biased) Junkies Are Us

In effect we’ve become evolutionary dopamine junkies, craving the natural high we get when we’re rewarded for being right, even if it’s all in our mind. It’s better than sex, lasts longer and is infinitely repeatable. Jesus, talk about being biased. Does a super high quality drug factory located inside our brains count as biased when we control the dopamine dispenser?

Is it any wonder we accept transparent lies from those we love or those who lead? We shouldn’t be surprised when we practice deep denial and self deception in order to keep ourselves drugged with dopamine. Not only are we getting off on the (self) love endorphins (which are also triggered by nationalist or patriotic feelings) but we get the confirmation bias endorphins as well in the ultimate two-for-one drug deal from Mother Nature. No wonder we call her Mother since we suckle on her drugs all the time. It’s amazing we get anything done during the day considering we’re all walking around stoned to the eye balls. What a way to go.

This brings to mind old YouTube videos of monkeys or other animals pushing a lever or pecking at a button to solve problems for bits of food or sweets. Or how about those lab rats solving a complicated task for food or a quiet evening of wine and necking with the opposite sex? Does it sound a little like our own rat race?

Of course, even as those images flash in our brains, our ego takes over and tells us “But we’re intelligent human beings who possess reason and logic.” Who exactly are we trying to convince with that little ditty? Just take a look around at the utter insanity we’re currently immersed in and tell me again about the human intellect and logic. Ticks run their lives better than we do. They just lack running water and DirecTV.

Driving to Denial

For a more subtle example of denial, let’s look at my own personal decision making process and the intellectual denial it spawned. While driving to my office I make dozens of decisions that if in error could affect life and limb, particularly mine. Yet I’ve not had an accident in over 16 years and I quite naturally consider myself a good driver. In fact, I’m a great driver. Yet as I’ve aged, I’ve noticed that for some strange reason I drift left and right a bit more and the close calls seem to be occurring with increasing frequency.

So despite the fact that I’m an excellent driver and without ever acknowledging otherwise, I’ve compensated for my aging by slowing down, looking more carefully before changing direction and so on. In other words, at some level I’ve recognized the increasing error rate and I’m compensating, even though I consider myself a superior driver. Or maybe I should say I’m compensating despite being an expert driver that ostensibly would have no need to compensate what-so-ever.

Like walking through a hall of mirrors, we’re never quite sure exactly what we’re seeing. But this doesn’t slow us down one bit. In fact, when facing a conflict, our ego takes over and just barrels on through, pushing aside uncomfortable cognitive dissonances as immaterial, unimportant or just plain silly with little to no conscious thought involved.

Actually, the only reason I’ve slowed down is because it makes sense to be careful, especially considering all the crazy distracted drivers on the road these days. I most certainly didn’t slow down because I needed to change my behavior. It’s them, not me. And even if it were possible that I might have something to do with this, my age has nothing to do with it. At least that’s the cover story I tell myself.

The above illustration might seem ridiculous to some and there’s no doubt I used exaggeration to push the point home. But we’ve all been there and to say otherwise isn’t true. Some might even say that at worst all I engaged in was a simple “white lie” or a harmless self deception to make me feel better about getting older. What’s the big deal? Or maybe I was just playing with “semantics” and it’s all of little consequence. But in fact it’s a wide open window into the mechanism of denial and well worth our time to explore precisely because it’s so insidious and seductive.

The Slippery Slope

Consider that on the physical level I’m compensating for an obvious degradation of my driving skills in order to live a little longer, thus fulfilling my basic survival instincts. Of course I acted this way. Why wouldn’t any sane and prudent person do the same?

However, at the same time I’m maintaining the mental and emotional illusion that few driving skills have degraded or been lost. In fact I use the continuing streak of accident free driving, accomplished in great part because I’ve slowed down and I’m more careful, to support the illusion that I’m still an excellent driver. I’m engaging in a self deception in order to soothe and placate an ego I don’t consciously recognize as material. Why am I stroking my ego to begin with? Isn’t it enough just to survive longer?

As with all lying and self deception, the key to continuing is to rationalize and justify past deceptions in order to continue in the future. To do this successfully, first we deny there’s a problem (even if we fix it) then we deny we ever denied there was a problem in the first place. Then, in the ultimate intellectual coup, we forget we ever indulged in denial what-so-ever. In the closed loop isolated environment of our mind, we create our own reality along with the proofs needed to affirm that reality. We’re masters of our own universe and we make the rules where we rule.

We should recognize that we can still be engaged in denial even if we agree with or recognize some facts or information. It’s how we deal with it that matters, not if we deal with it. We bargain with ourselves all the time to avoid what we don’t wish to see. There’s a great deal of subtlety and subterfuge employed in day to day denial. When juggling reality and fantasy while avoiding the ugly monsters, we determine what’s important and what’s not. So we can play games of all kinds to bury what bothers us.

If denial and self deception is present in such a mundane task as driving to work, wouldn’t it be an act of denial itself to claim that denial doesn’t affect our thought process when considering items of much greater importance, such as the end of the economic world as we know it? From a survival point of view, might we need to concede the possibility that we’re not considering all pieces of information at our disposal when coming to conclusions as to what’s going to happen as well as when where and why?

Tricks of the Denial Trade

One of the tricks we employ when trading in denial is to dismiss (deny) contrary information as quickly as it comes in the front door. This way we rarely experience an uncomfortable cognitive backup that might nag us for attention and create an emotional crisis if left unattended. If one is to self deceive on any scale, out of necessity one must become efficient self deceivers if we’re to live comfortably with ourselves in our insane world.

I’ve often thought that the job of the professional therapist is to untangle the dissonant log jams and get them moving towards the saw mill, not to actually deal with the dissonant logs themselves. Or maybe I should say they deal with just enough of them to get things moving again so the patient can happily remount their hamster wheel. After all, in our society, the measure of sanity is how well we’re coping with our insane world, not how “sane” we are.

In fact, people who in my opinion are declaring their sanity by unplugging and walking away from financially lucrative but morally or emotionally stressful jobs are considered by society to be crazy. When the only goal offered and rewarded by society is to ascend the ladder of “success”, how else would society treat those who chose to descend that very ladder but with disdain? Society tells us “Here is the only reality that exists, now fit in, shut up and be happy” rather than “Here is the raw material, now go forth and create your own happiness and self worth.”

Faced with no real substantial choice other than to fit in and confronted by a society, aka the control system, that shuns and ostracizes those who go against the flow and think and act too far outside the small box, is it really surprising we engage in massive self deception in order to kill the pain and go with the flow? And wouldn’t the control system encourage this self deception in order to keep the hamsters on the wheel? God forbid you think for yourself because left to your own devices, who would remain to fleece investors with another helping of CDO on rye or serve up coffee and cardboard muffins at McSlop’s?

To remain emotionally safe and “happy” on the hamster wheel, we increase our denial efficiency by creating mental rules of judgment, sometimes called rules of thumb or the smell test or ideology or simply assumptions. There are dozens of names and terms to describe this process. The beauty of this intellectual shorthand is that we don’t need to participate in the complicated process of outright denial each time. Once we’ve denied something for whatever reason, we give ourselves permission to do the same with every other piece that’s similar or that we wish to believe is similar.

And we don’t process denial in big pieces but in tiny little bites. We remove the more easily refutable parts and discard the rest. Then we wall these parts off and isolate them from corroborating evidence and context that would disturb the denial process. We use a form of “a priori” to make sweeping generalizations that key off other denials, half truths and outright lies we keep ready for instant deployment and presto, the problem is gone

In the world of denial, all we need is reasonable doubt to deny and we determine what reasonable doubt is. But we demand rock solid proof when defending our denial and any proof offered can always be refuted because we determine what’s valid and what’s not. We can’t lose using these rules of evidence and we never do unless we chose to.

In the ultimate twist, we then use these subsequent denials as further proof that our initial denial was correct. Faulty handling and processing of information (aka denial) is used to deny something as incorrect. Then additional denials are used to buttress the initial denial, thus strengthening our resolve to deny similar future information. We come to the denial party with guns load. That my friend is a closed loop circular logic positive reinforcement mind game taken to the nth degree and it’s the staple of basic long term denial. And it all happens in seconds and it’s almost exclusively handled by our ego auto pilot.

In Chapter Two, we shall continue down the rabbit hole and see what Alice has to say about “The Crash”.

 

08/31/2010

Cognitive Dissonance