A Case of Cognitive Dissonance and Logical Fallacies
Philip Penaflor, MNSA
Leon Festinger’s theory on cognitive dissonance illustrates some kind of psychological quandary because of one’s adherence to contradicting thoughts, beliefs or value systems, or when one does some actions which are contrary to his beliefs or values. For example people would normally value honesty as it has been taught at home, in school or madaris, in the churches or mosques, but when confronted with an opportunity to earn money easily will have no qualms about grabbing the opportunity even if it would entail some anomalous transactions. That’s why plentiful of stories abound of “decent” and prominent people schooled in the best universities both here and abroad, who are benefactors of good causes and charity, supporters of religious or civic activities, and yet in their business dealings would engage in some nefarious activities to earn for themselves huge profit at the expense of ethics.
The theory of cognitive dissonance is operative in our kind of traditional politics, not that this is a monopoly of the country as it happens in many countries of the world as well, but certainly needs to be pondered upon in order to understand why social transformation is difficult to achieve in our society. Our political leaders and government officials all mouth good governance as a cliché or common slogan, but in practice they take advantage of their positions to enrich themselves and to protect their own vested interests at the expense of the people, with some few exceptions (although in reality it has become the rule rather than the exception). Hence the procrastination of social change is a function of the politics of vested interests translated into political dynasties that benefit only a few families who control the country’s political system.
We suffer a large scale cognitive dissonance during national and local elections where both political candidates and the electorate undergo certain psychological stresses as both cling to contradicting beliefs and values and live these contradictions up to the voting precincts. On the one hand the way political tandems or tickets are formed, for example, are a form of “reductio ad absurdum” and puzzling to the thinking mind, for how could personalities with semblance of integrity could organize themselves together with personalities of known records of disrepute and opprobrium then mouth their platitude of visions for social change? On the other hand, people who honestly believe in social change would surprisingly support candidates whom they know to be corrupt and unfit to become public servants.
It plainly violates logic and Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction. When people vote for candidates not on the merit of their qualifications but because of their popularity, at the very least it is argumentum ad populum, especially when aided by the bigotry of social surveys. Yet it is the sad reality, the consequences of which we all suffer in various degrees but mostly the poor majority whose predicament will be as perennial as their cognitive dissonance of wanting a clean government to respond to their needs and yet would sell their votes to the politicians who are not concerned at all for their welfare.
These elections are more venues for entertainment than for thinking together in a more rational fashion of how we could transform ourselves as a nation. There’s a lot more practicality in feeding the hungry with all the campaign funds pooled together than spending them in leaflets and other election paraphernalia. Actually it’s a lot more practical to do away with elections characterized by a lot of corruption because in many cases campaign funds have been siphoned from some irregular sources, or a lot of intimidation and violence, and a lot of mudslinging and “argumentum ad hominem” rather than the soundness of one’s platform. We will need not merely new presidents or new leaders but a new system of social relationships where the mode of governance and production shall be responsive to people’s rights and dignity as human beings regardless of who our leaders are.
A REAL MAN WALKS!
Consume Less; Walk More
Paul
Philip Penaflor, MNSA
--
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Society of Cosmic Anthropologists" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to society-of-cosmic-anth...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.