I think cognitive dissonance is one of the great culprits of today's polarization and underlying violence in the world. I just had a very sad exchange here in Diaspora with someone who had so far behaved very politely in all our previous interactions, but resorted to name-calling and dismissive comments when faced with an idea that conflicts with his own practices.

This is just another example of a phenomenon I see very often, both out there in the world, as well as in the Internet. People are generally nice and decent to each other until they are confronted with an idea that puts them in a state of contradiction between what they do and what they believe. In other words, ideas with which they deep down agree with, but that stand in contrast to what their habits.

I think it's a shame, because the response is quite automatic, and therefore outside of most people's control. Yet, it has the very negative effect of distancing people away from each other, and of moving those affected by cognitive dissonance to extremes they would normally not be drawn into. However, such people often prefer to inhabit these extremes rather than confront the ideas that challenge their deeply ingrained habits. And what is worse, in these extremes they meet with other people who, for whatever reason, have also found themselves moved to such extremes. Once people find each other in these extremes, they comfort each other and tell each other it is OK to be in such extremes, further reinforcing a behavior that results in alienation from others with different world-views, and results in the creation of bubbles of thought, where the exchange of different ideas no longer becomes possible.

I wonder what is the solution for this. Perhaps practices like Mindfulness help, so that individuals can notice how they are alienating themselves. Unfortunately, Mindfulness practices are not for everyone, and often are incompatible with the modern way of life we have nowadays.

I'm interested in what you think are possible solutions to this conundrum

#thought #society #cognitiveDissonance #mindfulness #empathy #humanity