I Am Not A Crook!
* From “The A**HOLE’S Guide To Arguing (Or, How To Succeed In Politics)”
Ah yes, cognitive dissonance. That ugly thing which everybody suffers from – except you. Right?
But if you do suffer from it, pray that nobody finds out.
At least not during a debate.
So what is cognitive dissonance?
It is what happens inside a person’s mind, when they are confronted with data that does not fit what they believe, or when they hold beliefs that contradict each other.
When Richard Nixon said, 'I am not a crook', he probably believed what he was saying. Share on X If you believe that you are an honest and hard-working person, yet you do something that most would consider to be morally corrupt, you have two choices: either accept the fact of what you have done and adjust your self image, or deny that what you have done is wrong and preserve your self image.
When you hold beliefs which contradict each other, such as ‘Life is sacred’ and ‘Murderers deserve to die’, that too will create dissonance. You may be thinking,
“If life is truly sacred, then how can anyone deserve to die? That is not logical.”
So the next step would be to adjust the claims with exceptions, and see if that will bridge the gap.
“Life is sacred, and murderers have violated the sanctity of life. Therefore they must be put to death.”
And that we feel more comfortable with. All that is left to do now, is to create another murderer. For if someone puts another person to death, that someone becomes a murderer. And should therefore be put to death. OK, so it is not an ideal solution.
But then, maybe we can adjust once more and say that some murderers deserve to die. All murderers, except the ones that are hired by the government to kill murderers, deserve to die. Nothing wrong with that, right?
Unless, you are a Christian and you think it is strange that we should allow the government to ignore the 6th commandment. But then, that government-killing-people-stuff happens in war too. So what are we going to do about that? Except give ourselves a headache thinking about it.
As you can see, cognitive dissonance is a rabbit hole.
The more you try to dig yourself out of cognitive dissonance, the deeper you risk falling into it. Share on XThe best line of defence against it in a debate, is simply to avoid falling into the hole. If you see one approaching – quickly change the subject.
Run rabbit, run!
© Merlyn Gabriel Miller
