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I first began knowing what cognitive dissonance was as a result of the behaviour of a neighbour. This is from twenty years ago. At that time we had two young children and our focus was their schooling and all other things to do with children. Our childless neighbour’s primary focus was his lawn, which he cut every 3 days. There wasn’t a single weed on his perfect lawn. And his entire garden looked like it was from a magazine cover. Since our focus was our kids, we let our lawn get long before we cut it. So we cut our lawn once a week. And our lawn had dandelions, as we didn’t poison our lawn to keep it perfect looking. This greatly disturbed him. Which one of us was doing the lawn thing the “right” way? He would stand and stare at our yard, with its summer time browned grass and a few dandelions, with great dismay. In the summer the lawn goes brownish if you don’t water it. He watered his lawn constantly to keep it green.
When water restrictions were imposed, you could only water your lawn twice a week from 3:00 am to 4:00 am, with a hose. We never watered our lawn once during the 20 years we lived at that house. Our neighbour, on the other hand, got up at 3:00 am twice a week to water his lawn by hand, per the water restrictions.
This is hard core lawn care. We did not experience cognitive dissonance, as I saw what he was doing as wasting water and poisoning the water table with the stuff he sprayed on his lawn to kill weeds. He experienced cognitive dissonance with the clear disdain he held for us by basically allowing our lawn to go brown and grow weeds. This caused great cognitive dissonance for him, as he clearly felt the “right” way to care for your lawn was his way. So, he had to shun us. He only spoke to those other neighbours who kept a perfect lawn, similar to his. By a long shot, not everyone kept a perfect lawn, so we weren’t the only ones who chose to be “lawn minimalists.”
Today, cognitive dissonance is occurring with much more in-your-face issues, like vaccines, viruses, masks and elections. When someone has an opposing viewpoint, they can simply be okay with you believing the opposite. However, a certain proportion of people feel the need to convert you, so that their thinking and beliefs are validated. They need this in order for their world to make sense. To them, the world doesn’t make sense if there are people who believe the opposite.
In many ways, this is similar to Theon on Game of Thrones, who was brainwashed into believing his torturer and captor was his best friend. His captor made him believe his name was Reek. When Theon’s sister came to rescue him, Theon refused to go with her and defended his cage. He was sleeping in a dog cage. He defended his cage and yelled for help, by alerting his captor to the rescue attempt. And he remained in that brainwashed state, through his own choice.
There are people who defend their cage today. If you present truth, they can get vile. Gaslighting is a first choice of defence. In addition, they may say hateful things to you. It’s as if they are saying:
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You need to think like me OR I will have to hate you.
If you don’t think like me, I’m going to taunt you until you do.*****************************************************************
At that point, you have a few choices:
1) you can choose to convert your thinking to how they think
2) you can agree to think like them, but secretly not think like them
3) stop seeing that personI think this is an excellent example of how cognitive dissonance works in its worst state. Of course, there are many out there who have cognitive dissonance, but suffer from it completely silently. I believe much cognitive dissonance arises from big tech, big biz and the MSM. Unfortunately, if you encounter the extreme form of it that comes with gaslighting, it can drop you into 3rd density, where you will have to find your way back up to 4th or 5th. In my own situation, I’ve chosen option 3) above for two family members, as I don’t want to keep defending my beliefs.
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Dear Claire, thank you for this many-layered topic and post.
I will post my cognitive dissonance experience later…meantime, here’s a definition, courtesy of the APA site, by Ann O’Leary, PhD:
Cognitive dissonance theory has a long and esteemed history in social psychology. As originally formulated (Festinger, 1957), cognitive dissonance is induced when a person holds two contradictory beliefs, or when a belief is incongruent with an action that the person had chosen freely to perform. Because this situation produces feelings of discomfort, the individual strives to change one of the beliefs or behaviors in order to avoid being inconsistent. Hypocrisy is a special case of cognitive dissonance, produced when a person freely chooses to promote a behavior that they do not themselves practice.
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Hello Clair,
Thank you so much for this subject and your article. I love it, all of it.
The examples show very clear how the constructed 3rd Dimension Needs projections on “others” to keep yourself IN the limited false “conditional love” Reality of self/SELF perception as Truth.
At that point, you have a few choices:
1) you can choose to convert your thinking to how they think
2) you can agree to think like them, but secretly not think like them
3) stop seeing that personAlso my compliments on this “Holy Trinity” Duality Perception. The only True way out, is the 3). As a matter of fact it holds the center, beyond the constructed perception of the other two.
Everyone who GETS this, passed this lesson and is ready to move on. All others, keep returning into this false matrix.
Love you 💕💕
Ralph
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