The Transcendent Paradox of Self-Awareness (article) by Earon S Davis on AuthorsDen

Human stupidity willinevitably catch up with us, and all the more quickly when we believe that we are intelligent,rational and disciplined. We are drawn to complexity like a blade of grass is drawn tosunlight. However, we are not equipped to discern reality within complex systems if someother aspect of our lives disposes us to an inconsistent world view. If we are profiting(financially, socially or ideologically) from doing things in a certain way, most people literallycannot recognize when that social system comes into conflict with legal, moral or ethicalstandards and values.

There’s an almost impenetrable veil, called cognitive dissonance, that

falls over us. There may be some awareness of the conflict, but it is distorted in ways that allowus to misperceive reality and remain on our current course. When there is a conflict in ourperceptions, we tend to block out all that is not in our existing world view.In a way, spirituality is the path of self-awareness and many teachers and traditions (especiallyBuddhist thinkers and original peoples around the world) had human nature nailed. This is whythey did not favor changes that created the illusion of greatness, power and intelligence amonghumans. They favored long-term thinking rather than short-term gain. This is why they soughtlimitations to the power of rulers and elites, who would always tend to ignore the needs ofregular people and concoct systems, businesses and governments to run roughshod over themuntil the systems would break down.In the long term, these teachers and traditions understood that after any major change, thenext generations would accommodate to the new reality and continue to push technology andsocial engineering further and further, invariably to one or another breaking point, causing

conflict, confusion and the accumulation of wealth among a very small class of people. Becausethe lesson of humility must be learned repeatedly by each generation, and our social andtechnological structures are constantly changing, we never get to the point of understandingour limitations

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only our possibilities. We are doomed, therefore, to progress technologicallyin ways that distort reality and distract us from our problems, rather than to actually solvethem.Cognitive dissonance is a characteristic of how humans perceive reality. It holds that webecome terribly uncomfortable when the reality we expect is different from the reality thatexists, so uncomfortable that we will rationalize them away, ignore them, reinterpret them orotherwise entirely misperceive them. We may ridicule or even attack those who insist on analternative view of reality, regardless of whether they are correct or not. Racists and sexists willdefend bigotry if it protects their social order or their economic interests. They will evendefend and nurture a civil or international war, which is virtually always irrational and self-destructive.

We just can’t help ourselves.

And now for the transcendental paradox of human thought: Most people are unable tocomprehend cognitive dissonance because the theory conflicts with their perception of humanperfectibility. The myth of human perfectibility is a powerful force in our lives, and it distortsour perceptions in ways that set us up for self-deception and self-destruction. The recognitionof Cognitive dissonance is an insight that propels a competing human drive towards simplicityand rationality. However, it is no match for our desire to see the world as orderly and ourselvesas rational and perfectible. If you have a large tolerance for dissonance, you may see truth inthis little article. If you are made incredibly uncomfortable by this entire topic, you will likelynot perceive cognitive dissonance as important at all. You may be quite annoyed that I havewritten this, or you may think it is nonsense, a conspiracy, or just plain mean-spirited. This isdetermined not by whether you believe me to be intelligent or decent, but by whether you arecomfortable with the realizations that humans are not perfectible and that our large socialproblems are ultimately not solvable until our larger culture becomes comfortably aware ofcognitive dissonance and learns to view itself more objectively.