COGnitive dissonance: Christan's story

from megamouth - Tuesday, November 01, 2005
accessed 1253 times

“Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation.”

http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm

Basically if it is painful to accept something, it will not be accepted. That’s it, the theory of the Family’s membership base. That should answer all questions with regards to why they just don’t get it. They do get it, only they get it to well.

And beyond the children and younger people who cannot be expected to be anything but naïve in such an intellectually retarded environment, what you have is a group of trapped robots. The pain associated with honest reasoning or self-analysis ensures it does not occur. The pain, the cognitive dissonance forms a virtual wall, an invisible barrier that even to touch off causes the robot to retreat from, cower away from in pain.

Courage and Justice don’t seem to figure too highly in the Family’s Jesus buggering homoerotic, stay out of jail for child sex abuse agenda. Lacking these qualities especially courage, the difficulty in getting through the wall for the robots is made even more profound. For the robots to rebel is next to impossible.

Peter’s son Christian (or Jon A) is the classic trapped robot, to be fair what can he be expected to do, having being brutalised as a child, the children around him mauled by deranged hippie paedophiles, a victim himself and cursed to even share DNA with such a pathetic lump of coronary dysfunction.

How could the human brain deal with reality when it is so repulsive? It couldn’t and it can’t. Christian must find a way of dealing with the natural human instinct to muster the courage and walk into and past the restrictive barrier, and he does this by reinforcing all the reasons as to why he shouldn’t go near it.

Cognitive Dissonance in action lesson 1:

Smokers find all kinds of reasons to explain away their unhealthy habit. The alternative is to feel a great deal of dissonance.

http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dissonance.htm

In Brave New World revisited Huxley makes an interesting if not somewhat obvious point:

"The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free”

This will apply more to the younger Family members but I would say that for Trapped Robots like Christian that there is an underlying understanding that they are somewhat captive and that cognitive dissonance essentially prevents them from thinking about it except in a hazy, panic ridden, uncomfortable and brief way.

Cognitive Dissonance in action lesson 2:

“If someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning”

http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm

Had the dice been rolled differently Jon could have grown up in a normal Christian Family, he could have had a father who was around to bring him up and didn’t send him to Macao to be tortured.

Cognitive Dissonance final lesson:
“Dissonance increases with the importance and impact of the decision”