“A mental conflict which occurs when beliefs are contradicted by new information. This conflict activates areas of the brain involved in personal identity and emotional response to threats.”
The moment we encounter information that contradicts our worldview, cognitive dissonance rears its head. Our mental alarm bells go off. This is especially true when core beliefs about ourselves, social norms or reality itself are challenged.
Resolving cognitive dissonance is key to both inner growth and defeating deception. Here’s why...
What Exactly is Cognitive Dissonance? Cognitive dissonance is a state of mental conflict and tension arising when reality collides with our ideals, assumptions or identity.
Dissonant ideas and experiences create mental-emotional friction. This causes discomfort, anger, denial, defensiveness or rejection of inconvenient truths.
Common examples include:
A cult member being confronted with proof their leader is a fraud.
A pro-lifer learning their political party actually increased abortions.
A meat-lover informed about inhumane animal cruelty in factory farms.
A flag-waving patriot discovering their government lied to justify a war.
These contradictions between strongly held positions and challenging new data create inner turmoil. People try relieving this through avoidance, rationalizations, confirmation bias or attacking the source.
But why does this happen? And what purpose does this serve?
The Neurological Roots of Cognitive Dissonance On a biological level, the brain is conditioned to value inner coherence. Information that fits smoothly with our worldview is more easily accepted as valid. Outliers and inconsistencies provoke unconscious alarm.
Brain scans show cognitive dissonance activates regions involved with identity, threat response, emotions, decision making and error detection activity.
When disconfirming evidence clashes with existing beliefs, it threatens the brain’s preference for seamless stability. So reflexive defenses kick in.
For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, social acceptance was linked to survival. Questioning tribal customs risked exclusion. Differentiating from the pack threatened safety.
So human psychology evolved to intuitively resist inconvenient truths that jeopardize our integrity, status and group belonging. Challenging ideas disrupt the brain’s preference for coherence.
Unfortunately, this mechanism designed to facilitate harmony can also prevent individuals and societies from adapting to new information. Clinging to old paradigms blocks progress. The late Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, noted how the neurological discomfort of cognitive dissonance steers behavior:
“A painful truth is better than a pleasant falsehood.”
Growth Depends on Relieving Cognitive Dissonance Progress of any kind, on both individual and collective levels, relies on relieving the tension of cognitive dissonance.
Old paradigms cannot be shed and replaced until the discomfort arising from contradiction is honestly faced and navigated.
If disconfirming data about reality is automatically rejected, out of fear of destabilizing established worldviews, then evolution of understanding is aborted.
Dogma reigns. Truth remains hidden. Wisdom is obstructed.
Reality itself demands that we mature beyond blindly avoiding or attacking inconvenient truths, progressing instead to critically examining evidence with disciplined objectivity.
As philosopher John Stuart Mill wisely observed, "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
In contemporary society, cognitive dissonance is constantly generated by growing separation between what institutions indoctrinate versus what independent investigation concludes.
Rather than predicting and controlling the narrative as in more primitive times, today’s proliferation of information sources makes cognitive gaps increasingly unavoidable. Truth leaks through. Dissonance abounds.
The option of totally avoiding or silencing contradictory inputs is disappearing. No single group can maintain a monopoly over knowledge when empowering technologies unlock paradigm-challenging perspectives.
As virtual and augmented realities develop, the opportunity to create perceptual cognitive dissonance will expand even further. By immersing users in contradictory situations that bypass conformity conditioning, consciousness expansion can be accelerated.
The potential for virtual worlds to foment deeper critical examination of social programming through experiential dissonance presents fascinating possibilities...
But that’s another story!
Resolving Cognitive Dissonance: A Formula for Growth Progress depends on a willingness to push through the psychological tension of incongruent realities. Fortunately, humans have a tremendous capacity to cognitively adapt.
The secret is learning to sit with the discomfort of disconfirmation, responding with curiosity rather than reactivity.
Here is a constructive formula:
Openly acknowledge the contradiction without resistance or avoidance.
Gather more objective data from trustworthy sources on all sides.
Find nuance and common ground in the competing perspectives.
Update your understanding accordingly while maintaining humility.
Integrate this growth experience to expand your worldview.
By mastering this process, cognitive dissonance becomes welcome rather than threatening. It ceases being an obstacle to higher understanding and instead unlocks portals to deeper truth.
The Cause and Resolution of Cognitive Dissonance is Key to Defeating Deception in Spiritual Warfare...
Why does this matter? Without truth, human consciousness stays mired in a low-frequency net of lies.
Welcome to the Matrix...
In the film ‘The Matrix’ people are immersed in a false reality by malevolent forces, blind to the limiting web of deception imprisoning their minds. Essentially lobotomized slaves whose energies are exploited.
They must awaken, face difficult but liberating truths, and overcome layers of illusion to access expanded consciousness. A perfect metaphor.
Elites risk losing control as the forces of deception meet the forces of truth. More and more people are resisting and challenging fabricated narratives. This tension creates massive potential energy for transformation.
When deep truths surface and conventional thought-forms are contradicted, a window of awakening opens. Conflict between social programming versus transcendent wisdom presents a crossroads.
Questioning sacred cows makes people uncomfortable. Yet discomfort is the path to wisdom. Only by forcing ourselves to look beyond comforting delusions and confront contradictions can civilization advance beyond primitive fears, habits and assumptions. This takes humility, courage and discernment.
The core foundations of corrupt institutions rely on cognitive dissonance to perpetuate their fraud. Their lies thrive in darkness, confusion and unquestioning obedience.
But their deception stands no chance against individuals sufficiently dedicated to honest introspection and investigation of reality.
Cognitive dissonance, triggered when their controlling falsehoods are pierced by radical truth, can set people free. But only if the tension is pushed through, rather than avoided by retreating to the familiar.
Facing Cognitive Dissonance: A Call for Courage and Humility Transforming the mainstream worldview requires warriors of truth willing to champion illumination over darkness, despite social pressure to conform and remain blind.
When data points and information streams converge which contradict established ‘reality’, it takes sincere effort to unpack the full implications with an open mind. A closed mind will find diversion and denials rather than earnest re-evaluation.
Uncomfortable truths demand that we revise the very foundation of how we understand the world, human nature and the forces shaping society.
Whatever contradicts the officially endorsed narrative will be reflexively dismissed by those whose identities are interwoven with prevailing assumptions. Evidence challenging orthodox groupthink triggers unconscious self-preservation defense mechanisms. Denial is the status quo’s first line of protection.
But denial, ridicule and suppression cannot stop an idea whose time has come. As Victor Hugo said:
“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”
The intensifying clash between prevalent disinformation versus emergent truth calls for individuals whose allegiance is to human dignity and moral courage above cowed obedience. We must challenge institutional deception despite psychological discomfort and social penalties.
Dissonance is inevitable when transcending matrix of lies. The tension caused by juxtaposition of irreconcilable worlds can only be resolved through exercising humility, patience and discernment as we assimilate and integrate reality’s contradictions into wisdom.
Fortunately, facing truth need not be a lonely endeavor. As Einstein noted, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
The past few years have brought unprecedented awakening. Millions are finding solidarity in dismantling blocks of institutional fraud together, one plank at a time. An unstoppable force is being created by ordinary people merging their knowledge.
Yet each person’s sacred obligation is to test and discern information for themselves, rather than blindly believing any theories. Cognitive dissonance should excite, not deter, the seeker of truth. Through its resolution we forge new frontiers of knowing.
This great unraveling of deception will completely reshape society. The mental prisons maintaining our enslavement can one day be relegated to historical footnotes.
Imagine a world where future generations view today’s matrix of disinformation and suppression as we viewed the Dark Ages and Inquisition. Where schoolchildren learn how early 21st century citizens were chemically lobotomized, electronically surveilled and psychologically manipulated; deprived of human dignity.
By resolving the cognitive dissonance now triggered en masse by revelations contradicting orthodoxy, we quicken this transformation. Integrating truth opens space for collective awakening and evolutionary advancement.
The breakdown of elite deception cannot be stopped. But our conscious response choices can determine whether humanity is freed or further enchained by the crumbling matrix of illusion.
Will we each have courage to face the crossroads of new awareness with humility and drastically rethink our relationship to authority, government, institutions and reality itself as deep frauds are laid bare?
This begins with mastering the art of constructively resolving cognitive dissonance, individually and together. Our future depends on it. The time is now.
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