Why are many people still cheering the government on? Even after 40 years of asset stripping, the highest working hours and lowest wages in Europe, and record breaking levels of poverty? Why were the French out in protest after 2 years of this, but not the UK who seemingly want this to continue?
This type of thing has been studied a lot. For many it seems any excuse to preserve pre-existing beliefs and therefore avoid painful cognitive dissonance will do.
Each excuse is a compromise, and leads you further down the rabbit hole. You don’t want to believe you wasted time, energy and had been somehow fooled into vehemently defending something incorrect, so you double down.
On top of this, it takes a practiced neo-cortex to overwrite core beliefs, plus time and energy. Not only that, self identity will take a hit, as you have to shift your sense of self and ego to accommodate. This triggers existential fear of allsorts of things which you have to deal with. This is hard work, far easier to just not bother and carry on, especially when dragged along by that solidarity of others also deciding to do the same.
On top of that, just to make it worse, new information contra to current belief will get an olfactory disgust response from the brain, making you reel from it. Information that could expand your perspective is treated like a vile smell, and you not going to want to deal with it.
When you take action to remove this apparently disgusting thing – the brain is going to dish out dopamine when you protect pre-existing belief. These are neolithic traits that need working around. They evolved to help tribal life in the dangerous world of pre-history, but are now problematic in complex society.
Sound logic and empirical evidence are up against some powerful enemies.
Paul McMahon
