Cognitive dissonance

With LaTex behind me I now have more time to focus less on publishing papers and more on current events. Unfortunately with it not being an election year, I don't see people violently debating topics as they no doubt will two years from now. Not that I look down on these "seasonal" debtors (quite to the contrary I support any debate periodic or otherwise), but it leaves me without much to talk about. I did, however, stumble across an old article written by a friend of mine. 12 Reasons Same-Sex Marriage Will Ruin Society [1]. In addition to the title, the entire piece is a well written piece of satire. But it does raise the interesting question of: why not? Why not let to men marry (or two women)? We have no laws against their having monogamous sexual relations with one another, why deprive them of marriage?

There could be financial considerations (remember marriage is also a civil union), but what possibly could someone gain financially from marrying a man instead of a woman (or vise versa)? I suppose there might be religious considerations, however marriage ceased to be soly a religious institution back in ancient Rome. As long as the happy couple can find a religion to marry them, who are we to stop them? And not all marriages have any religion associated with them any way. A friend of mine got married in a court house four months ago. No prayers, no blessings, no priests (or rabies or other religious figure). As a community homosexuals seem to want this, so why not give it to them? What do we lose as a society? Isn't America the land open to all practices?

Actually it isn't, or at least, it hasn't been. From slaves to women to Muslims, America has historically been notorious for not being very accepting. This seems to be rather odd for a country who's motto was: "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," but it certainly isn't unique. In fact, this sort of degradation of minorities and subcultures appears all over the world. From the Chinese response to Falun Gong, to the Islamic wars on Israel, to the oppression of Jew throughout Europe, humanity as a whole has a way of vilianizing those that aren't like them; and while we may like to think that we have risen above such a seemingly barbaric practice, the fact is, it is ingrained in our nature as part of a concept called Cognitive Dissonance.

I do not attempt to explain all racial/ethnic prejudice with this concept (as there are many reasons for both), however, it is important to understand if we want to understand why normally perfectly rational people behave in an irrational manner (such as denying marriage to homosexuals, something which wouldn't even effect them). I also do not attempt to explain those whom have a religious objection to same sex marriage. Although the bible has been used to justify horrible things before, separating marriage from religion is not an easy thing in our culture and as such, opinions of a religious nature may or may not have merit. Instead, I only seek to spread a little understanding as to why people behave the way they do.

"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. ...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[2]." Or in lay men's terms, we avoid things that prove us wrong, worthless, or we just plain dislike. If I believe that all men have green hair, I am much more likely to be taken in by someone with a green dye job and less likely by someone with an orange dye job. This is because the green conforms to my expectations, thus I do not try to find fault with it, where as the orange does not, making me much more likely to try to find fault with it. While this is paradoxical in nature (how can we have learned the initial view points if we think ourselves infallible) it is also necessary so as to reduce anxiety brought on by realizing misconceptions. If I suddenly stop believing that Jews are evil and bent on taking over the world, my entire library of knowledge must also be taken into question which would render me unable to function. To counter this, I stick to my beliefs (regardless of their validity).

Want proof? Here is an experiment you can probably conduct on your own. Get a bunch of kids together and have them do some sort of menial labor (cleaning for example). Pay half of them 10 cents and half of them 10 dollars. Now ask each one to lie to the next one and tell that next one that they enjoyed the task (which is why it is important that the task be dull and menial). Which do you think will lie more readily? If we believe in cognitive dissonance the answer is those paid less, as because they are paid so little they must unconsciously justify their actions to themselves and thus believe the task was more enjoyable than it was. This is because they know 10 cents isn't a lot of money for such a horrible task and thus they must have enjoyed it or risk upsetting their collection of knowledge to date. So what does this have to do with gays getting married?

We vilify homosexuals because if we start considering them one of us, we must then consider the possibility of being one of them. As they are looked down upon to begin with this would mean considering ourselves lesser than the majority of society (which some people actually do do , and thus think themselves homosexual when they are not, but normally they realize this and have to come to terms with their own heterosexuality). As this contradicts the information we have already been fed (that we are part of that majority), we reject this possibility and the homosexual community as a whole. Cognitive dissonance sets in. We may justify actions caused by cognitive dissonance through a verity of manners (which would be cognitive dissonance caused by understanding cognitive dissonance), but this only confirms the theories. Haven't you, while reading this, said to yourself "oh I see how this effects some people, but not me. I never have cognitive dissonance." ? What more proof do you need?

Taken in part from: What World We Live In, by Jim Tzenes.

"That's not a lie, its bullshit."

Most of us spend our whole lives talking about bullshit without ever really knowing what it is. Well, atleast I didn't untill just last week. I was sitting at the dinner table eating thanks giving leftovers and discussing everyone's favorite topic: the Iraqi War, when I was informed that the supposed weapons of mass distruction were not a lie by the administraition, but rather bullshit. This puzzled me as I had always thought of the two as being intrinsically linked. They aren't.

If you get a chance, I highly recomend you read Harry Frankfurt's book On Bullshit. For the more erudite it will probably do a much better job of explaining the difference than I can. However, Frankfurt can be a hard read, so I will do my best to summerize it here for you.

To understand the difference between bullshit and a lie, it becomes necessary to understand what a lie is first. Without going into too much detail, a lie is a cunning attempt to convince the other person that something which the liar knows to be false, is infact true. The importance here is the deliberate attempt to deviate from the truth. The liar commits two sins here. Firstly, they convince you that something that isn't true is; and secondly, that something which is true isn't. This specific deviation from the truth is the ultimate goal of the liar.

Bullshit on the otherhand is something far more devious. To start, the bullshitter has no concern as to what is infact true. The bullshitter's objective is deception, just as the liar's, however he is unconcerned with the truth. Where the liar must convince you that the lie is true, and the truth is a lie, the bullshitter only convinces you that the bullshit is true. He is unconcerned as to what the actual truth is. He may even be right, but the fact that he does not know whether or not his stance is infact true is the essence of bullshit. But let me give you an example.

Suppose I choose to comment on a subject on these boards that I have a basic understanding of without doing any research into the matter. Let's say for example I advocate "Gun Proliferation for the Reduction of Crime" (something I don't in reality advocate) during a debate on gun control. Without actually doing research to find out if it is an effect method or not, what I've done is made a statement that is essentially bullshit. It may be true, it may not, however, as I've made no attempt to find out, my statement has no regard for the truth and instead exists only to further the cause for which I support (in this hypothetical scenario it would be looser gun control laws). While my argument is a possibility, it is essentially bullshit, because I don't care if its true or not, I'm only trying to further my cause.

If you look at politics in general, it doesn't take long to realize that most of it is bullshit. Lets look at the example of the justification of the war in Iraq. Assume for a second that the real goal was the removal of Saddam from power (I know its a strech for you bleeding heart liberals, but its only a hypothetical, and don't use this as a forum to vent your "blood for oil" campagain) something the current adminastration has said many times (so its not beyond reason that it might have been). The actual justification which was used to enter the war was "weapons of mass distruction." Now, Saddam himself insisted that he had them and even went to the extent of publicly buying missles to deliver them. What emmerged was an atmosphere in which it began to be plausible that Saddam might have had them. Of course there is no way to prove he didn't have them (short of invading the country), so when Bush got up there and said "he quite possibly could have weapons of mass distruction," this wasn't a lie as much as it was bullshit. Everyone assumed he had them (and for we knew did), but there wasn't any hard evidence.

This doesn't mean bullshit is by any means a justifible communication tool for the government to employ, however it means Bush is not a monster, just another sinner like the rest of us. Afterall, who among us hasn't had to "bullshit" an essay or presentation when we were younger for school.

Taken in part from "Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt, Conversations on the Intellectual Elite forum and conversations within the Tzenes family.