Cognitive dissonance as a staple of modern culture

When was the last time that you had an argument with someone? Did either you or the other party end up changing stances by the end? Probably not. More than likely, this is what happened instead:

1. You introduced stance A.

2. They introduced stance B.

3. You provided a fairly sturdy argument for stance A.

4. They provided a fairly transparent argument for stance B -- even if, on the surface, it appeared to have some solidity to it due to its use of platitudes and memorized, regurgitated phrases.

5. The both of you went back and forth for a while, neither budging. Despite their stance being obviously flawed, you couldn't find a way to really hit them over the head and wake them up to this fact.

6. Finally, you introduced a poignant, concise meme which crushed the opposing argument directly and explicitly. The absurdity of the other party's argument was subsequently quite out in the open.

7. The other party replied with "You're starting to frustrate me. Why do you have to overanalyze everything? Can't we talk about something nice for once?"

8. The argument ended abruptly with no resolution and the prospect of such growing vanishingly small. The other party then appeared uncomfortable and confused.

What has just been described, I hypothesize, is the result of terrible parenting. The other party participating in the argument realized, in some recess of their consciousness, that your logic was sound, but another, more biologically beneficial part of their mind interceded.

What happened? Well, during childhood, your conversational partner had probably participated in similar conversations that went something like this:

"Dad, why can't we see god?"

"I don't know, son. That's just the way it is."

"But how can we know he's real if we can't see him?"

"He's testing us. It'll all make sense when you get to heaven. You'll be rewarded for waiting so long!"

"But... how do you know that?"

"Look, he's just real, okay? What's with these questions all of a sudden? I'm trying to watch the news. Why don't you go outside and play ball with the kid next door?"

Upon encountering the problematic "foreign object" within a logic chain, kids are programmed to switch routines and do something personally rewarding or pleasurable. Because our society is relatively affluent, everything from happy meals to high tech video games is almost always a few seconds away from the grasp of children, so there is zero incentive to do "the right thing" when immediate self-satisfaction can so easily be substituted in its place -- with no consequences or scoldings.

The mentality birthed during this period of development apparently carries over into adulthood, where it germinates until it becomes a contributor to the monstrosity that is our current situation.

This is absolutely unacceptable for adult humans in this day and age. We cannot continue to act like children.

A true story

I work for a systems integration firm which specializes in providing solutions for the communications and security industries; specifically, I am "the IT guy" for our internal operations, though I work alongside several contractors who also maintain our network.

Sounds important, right? I'm not so sure that it is.

Two days ago, one of the contractors with whom I work needed to drive out to a nearby tunnel system with an engineer in order to swap out a server mounted on a rack full of modulator-things (I'm not an engineer, so I don't need to know exactly what the engineers do, apparently. As long as I do my part and make my money, right?). The goal was to change out the server, update the database, and test the modulator-things by way of a radio in order to ensure that the signals that the modulator-things were modulating were strong enough. Still sounds somewhat important so far.

But I wasn't there to do any of that. I was supposed to be back at the office re-imaging a hard drive and recovering its lost data from a backup system provided by a fairly unreliable (but cheap!) third party. Why did I have to drop everything that I was in the middle of and go, then? Because the contractor's back was hurt, and he wanted me to carry his suitcase for him.

That was it. I was there to carry a fairly light suitcase into a building, into an elevator, and then into a server room; the rest of my time was to be spent sitting in a chair and waiting for the other two guys to finish. Honestly, the contractor didn't seem all that hurt, but even if he was, the engineer who was also tagging along could have easily grabbed the contractor's stuff on a second trip from the car to the building. Basically, this was an inefficient use of man hours on the part of the contractor.

I normally wouldn't complain about such a thing, no matter how obviously poor the decision was -- especially on this blog -- but there's more to this story. In addition to my role in this operation being needlessly redundant, it turned out that neither of the two guys working on this system really knew what he was doing, and both had been rushed by their managers to get the job done that evening at all costs. Oh, and on top of that, the system turned out to be full of errors.

This combination of unfortunate elements -- all generated by a society obsessed with self-perpetuation and gratification, no matter the cost -- caused us to stay at this place until almost 9 at night, when the goal was to be done by 5 or earlier (we got there at 2:30). In other words, from approximately 2:30 until 8:45 or so, I was sitting in a chair. I could have been eating dinner, but because I was "needed" for carrying a relatively light load to a place where a project "needed" to get done that day, I just sat there for the entire day, doing literally nothing.

Even if I really was needed for carrying the suitcase -- which I am somewhat open to being a real possibility -- the system's lack of criticality indicates to me that there was no need whatsoever for us to stay any later than 5; the push to stay as long as it took makes no sense to me in this case, as we weren't exactly performing heart surgery.

All that aside, I still wouldn't have posted this entry if it weren't for this: The goal of the system that they were working on is to allow you to hear your radio when you're driving through the tunnel. I spent over six hours (three of which were outside of my normal hours of work) doing nothing -- not helping anyone back at the office, not eating or drinking, not enjoying a recreational activity at home -- just so that the people who drive through that tunnel can hear an extra thirty seconds of their favorite Lady Gaga song. With all of the things that need to get done on this planet to make the burden of life more bearable, apparently, what we did that day was more important.

Do you still think our society is sane?

Brains are the source of suffering - follow-up musing

1. Brains create pain; pain is not a native property of the things with which you traditionally associate it. If you're suffering, it's because your brain is a painful organ -- not because the stimulus affecting your neurological wiring is actually painful. Brains hurt.

2. Furthermore, brains create and poorly manage bad memes -- which, like the genes necessary for brains to exist at all, get passed on from generation to generation in the interest of staving off entropy. Brains are selfish and illogical.

3. The universe would be absolutely devoid of value if it weren't for the existence of sensation; even bacteria, which dominated the first three billion years of evolution of life on Earth, would be acceptable in a valueless universe, in no way compromising its neutrality. Prior to the beginnings of neurological functioning on Earth some billion years ago, it's possible that the universe wasn't the horror that some now think it to be; likewise, it's possible that it won't always be as horrible a place as it currently is. Brains are the worst, and thus most important, aspect of the universe.