virus: Cognitive Dissonance

Reed Konsler (konsler@ascat.harvard.edu)
Fri, 5 Feb 1999 11:04:52 -0500

Tim Perper:
> "I know this makes you uncomfortable." she offered. "I felt the same
>way when I first heard the Word. Satan doesn't let go of his hold easily. He
>does everything in his power to keep people from seeing the true love of God
>and the truth about his son Jesus Christ."
> "I think deep down you know the truth," she continued, unrelentingly.
>"But you're so locked into this worldly life that you refuse to listen to
>your heart. And that conflict is making it impossible for you to hear what
>I'm telling you at all. It's like there's a war going on between your head
>and your heart--and there is a war going on; a war between Satan, who doesn't
>want to give you up, and Jesus, who will never give up on you no matter
>what."
>
>And then it happened. I couldn't believe what she said next:
>
>"The psychologists call it `cognitive dissonance'," the Christian mouthed,
>"It happens when you're faced with the truth, but are just too afraid to
>accept it all at once."

That is such an awesome story!

I guess you have to expect Xtians to use whatever they find helps the cause. Most of them sincerely believe that what they are doing is good and they've been practicing evangelism for quite a while. Evidence of memetics? Jumping, mutating, fornicating memes?

This is why, I might add, Richard is so serious about pushing memetics. The world is awash in "viruses of the mind" and they are only becomming more powerful.

Technical points:

  1. I don't often use the word truth.
  2. I tried not to make any value judgements about which way a paradigm shift ought to go. As a scientist, I am interested in preserving useful paradigms and replacing disfunctional ones. It's all context dependent, though. I evaluate new experiences and choose to disregard them and their source all the time. Indeed, I think a lot of our experience just bounces off our paradigm without ever crossing our consciousness. But, luckily, you don't have to go anywhere anymore to become "cosmopolitan". Whereever you are, just open your eyes.

[grand gesture]

Welcome to the Universal Virtual Supermarket of the Mind.

Our Motto:

"Caveat Emptor"

;-)

Reed


  Reed Konsler                        konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
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