What can cognitive dissonance offer us?
Trying to find a way to peace while holding two things at once
The last few days have been so tender, filled with news from Israel and the Gaza Strip. I have been trying to articulate my thoughts to myself about what I was reading and hearing. Yesterday morning Sarah Silverman made an Instagram post about her frustration with a different IG post that the DSA made about the Hamas terrorist attacks. I agree with her that their public statement had a tone of “we support Israel, but.” Her response was outrage, and it made an important point - that to fit the atrocities of this world into your mind you have to hold more than one truth, often competing and both unpleasant.
What she is talking about is moving towards the feeling of cognitive dissonance and learning to hold the painful emotion of there being no winners even though you thought you knew who to root for. This resonated with me after hearing about Israel’s devastating losses despite having been an admittedly undereducated Palestinian supporter for many years. Yes, the Israel-Palestine conflict is complicated, but murder and terrorism are unequivocally wrong.
The most comforting posts about the Hamas terrorist attacks have been the ones that call for radical peace. I tried to explain this feeling I had to a friend, without much success, that I want peace for Hamas as well as Israel and Palestine.
This is another post that I found especially poignant from the founder of Roots & Crowns Apothecary.
Hamas has obviously transgressed against their fellow humans through the most disgusting means, and it comes from a place of deep wounding, trauma, and fear.
The questions that nag on me: Will Israel’s government find a way to de-escalate? Is violence always necessary? I, with my naive hopes, wish the leaders there could find a way to take care of each other in real tangible ways to reduce the continued effect of Hamas; to provide resources and escape routes to people fleeing both countries; to look beyond identity and religious affiliation to offer each other compassion and humanity.
To do this, to love your purported enemy, one has to contend with some serious cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance in psychology is defined as the feeling of holding two competing thoughts, or a competing thought and action.
Our human brains don’t enjoy the feeling and we will spend much of our lives trying to avoid it. It is only through emotional maturity and much therapy, can we eventually begin to accept that while we may love cows, we also really love eating hamburgers. Or more challenging still, while we reject Tr**p, we still love our family friends who voted for him, and even want to go to dinner with them when we are home for the holidays. It is a therapist’s job to help us navigate this uncomfortable non-binary.
And I think it will be our mission, if we choose to accept it, as we face the election in 2024 and the constant threats against our rights, to love and have compassion for those who do not see us, our friends, and our family members as equal humans. The people who don’t extend humanity to us are the ones that we need to continue to try to meet on a human level (while also booting them from office).
It’s really hard to humanize murderers, crooked politicians, and bigots, but what else is there to do? I’m not talking about befriending everyone with an opposite political belief from you. But what if we could get back to a place of understanding enough to move together towards a common goal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? It will be uncomfortable, and cause stress, and guilt - all symptoms of cognitive dissonance. But the lesson is to move towards it and stay with the complications, withold your judgment, and try not to rationalize it.
The other alternative is to escalate and continue to up the ante on the anger, hurt, and bad behavior. But bad behavior begets bad behavior and I don’t believe that any of us reading Art Date want a war. We may want to fight for what we believe in, but do you want to resort to violence? “War is hell,” as General Sherman said. It requires death by the nature of its construction.
I choose peace. The bummer is I have no idea what this peace realistically looks like in the US or elsewhere, or how it happens.
There’s the idea that you will never be able to achieve peace unless you imagine it first. This is the focus of Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace project and the corresponding monument in Reykjavik (just another reason to love Iceland and Yoko.)
So how do we get there? Should we all do a peace vision board and reconvene before the 2023 elections?
Yeah if you don’t feel called to speak there is no reason to force people into the fray. There’s already so much to take in. It’s a lot!
I don’t have any answers. I scroll through my social media feeds and see nothing but angry, hurt people demanding I take a side. Publicly. Like sending private messages of support and reaching out and giving money to help those on the ground isn’t enough. (I’ve done all those things this week.)
I do not have to vomit my reactions to everything onto the internet to prove I care. And maybe that’s where fixing this starts: With deliberation and thought and consideration for our words and actions.