Doublethink inducing Cognitive Dissonance

and we did it to ourselves….

Duplicity and multiplicity of facts, pseudo-facts, emotional claim stakes, marketing and propaganda have led to many situations where more than one “truth” is being held out to the people.

As an example the use of certain PPE (personal protective equipment) as touted as an absolute necessity for health, when that equipment is scaled so coarsely that the hazard will never even know the equipment is in use.

So a false security feeling based on flawed mechanical engineering is held out as truthful, despite violating common sense and any specific engineering assessed results.  Emotive “facts” rather than reality-based facts.

So the individual is expected to believe this PPE is Good despite knowing that this PPE is ineffective for the promoted usage, which is a conflicting truth.

The human mind has an ability to navigate doublethink, to a certain limit.

But when the discord is either too great a stretch in that particular instance, or if so many discords are simultaneously presented, the mind enters cognitive dissonance.

This induces psychological stress, to which again each human mind has it own limits to cope with.

In multiple conversations, both in person and online, people have started mentioning how they can see the psychological stress induced cognitive dissonance as people are expect to maintain a doublethink process on so many levels is causing.

The so called “fact checkers” reinforcing logically unsupportable positions for political reasons is aggravating the discord.

The squandered trust of institutions of society that formerly had been considered oracles of benchmark-grade statements, as they have been caught red-handed lying to the people doesn’t help either.

I have had highly educated and skilled people suddenly clutch to one side or another from a doublethink pairing, even if they knew that position was not truthful or factual. When you ask them they tell you that they simply have stopped caring I they “like” the position they are holding fast onto.

These doublethink afflicted people have experienced enough cognitive dissonance that they have retreated to emotional positions – clutching the baby blanket comforter of (il)logical thinking, rather than factual supportable positions.

It would be better if we could figure out a way to stop doing this damage to ourselves.

73

Steve
K9ZW