Back in the day it was not a good idea, in fact it was a very bad one indeed, to become the focus of an investigation by the Roman Inquisition. They didn’t play around when it came to fishing for heretics who weren’t believers or promoted ideas contrary to what the Church deemed appropriate.
Such was the fate of Galileo when he began to publicly promote the idea of a heliocentric earth. What, the earth was not the center of the universe and in fact orbited around the sun? As we know the founder of modern physics and science was tried for heresy, was forced to recant his views and was kept under house arrest for the rest of his life. You don’t mess with the Church.
What triggered all this drama was something called cognitive dissonance. Or what I call “mind blur.” This refers to the experience we have when we are forced to resolve contradictory ideas. The brain does not like contradiction. It likes familiarity and routines because it functions on efficiency. When it is confronted with an idea that is contrary to what it already knows it is like throwing sand into the gears. No one likes sand in the gears.
Say you have been partnered with someone for a long time and someone suggests to you that he or she has been cheating on you. You now have cognitive dissonance. The idea of your partner cheating on you contradicts what you have held to be true all along. Now you are forced to make a decision. Or your brain forces you to make one because it does not like dissonance. It needs to function efficiently.
You either revise your preexisting idea to accommodate the new information (aha, now I see why he/she is home late these days) or you reject the new information because to do so means you’d have to abandon something very important to you.
Is Pluto a planet? Maybe it’s not a planet? Scientists discover new things and revise old theories all the time. That is the way of science. For the most part we can easily revise our information because whether or not Pluto is a planet or not does not mean much to us.
However, it becomes harder to deal with cognitive dissonance when we are more emotionally invested in a certain belief.
For example, christian fundamentalists reject the idea of evolution. Any new discoveries of science that contradict their beliefs cause mind blur. They either revise their religious beliefs or find some way to discredit the new information. Of course always the later happens for there is too much at stake for them to admit the possibility of anything else. The same is true for atheists just going the other way around. Any possible proof of an ultimate creator gets immediately challenged.
Look at any political debate, whether it be about gun control, health care or who is or isn’t a good president, it won’t take long before you discover cognitive dissonance.
There are those who vilify former president Bush. Anything he may have done that actually was helpful is immediately minimized or discredited because they have an investment in seeing him as the “bad guy.”
The pendulum swings the other way too. Now Obama is vilified in some conservative circles, nothing he does can be good. Or conversely, for Obama fans, anything he does that is controversial or might be a bad idea is rationalized, spun as misunderstood or taken out of context. Loyalty to an idea trumps practical reality.
But why are people so reluctant to revise their positions given ample evidence? Like I said, the brain likes its familiar routines. But the problem is also one of ego. Our egos, the thing we usually equate with “me” likes to be right. All the time. To be put on notice that we are wrong brings up uncomfortable feelings. Feelings like humiliation, embarrassment, not being as smart or informed as we think we are. No one likes experiencing these things. The more emotional invested we are in a belief, the less flexible we become when that belief is challenged.
And so what better way to avoid this mess than to continue on believing what you have always believed in? Better to continue praying to the fiction you already know than to worship an unknown truth. Some people call this denial.
Or is it? I can easily see the Church complaining to Galileo: “Say Gal, have you ever thought that maybe you are wrong? What with looking into some strange devil machine and coming up with strange ideas. Gal, my friend, maybe you’re in total denial of the fundamental truth. Get with it or else…”
Well Alex, some might say, so what? You’ve just deconstructed what we already know. We agree. We disagree. We go back and forth. Eventually the truth does win the game. The world really does orbit around the sun. It really is round and not flat.
What is disturbing to me is when an idea that might actually benefit the greater good gets lost in the shuffle of mind blur.
The evidence is in that medical marijuana does benefit very ill patients. The decay of family life is not caused by gays or lesbians but by divorce, drugs/alcohol, abuse and so forth. Maybe universal healthcare is a good idea and medicine for profit is not. I could on and on.
Unfortunately some very good ideas get lost because there is too much riding on wanting to be right (as opposed to beneficial or practical) and too much loyalty to a cause or ideology. People suffer, they die or languish because of political footballism.
Unfortunately on a personal level the same thing happens as the mind plays political football. It wants to stay with with it knows. Some people are so used to negativity in their lives that when something positive happens, perhaps a new partner who is actually nice, or an opporunity for successful work, it causes too much mind blur and they stay with what they know and the same drama recycles itself.
