| Learned Ones are Full of Cognitive Dissonance |
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| Administrator's - Intellectual | |||
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Learned Ones are Full of Cognitive DissonancePeople start learning right from their childhood. They form concepts and then arrange those concepts; then store those concepts and then when called upon by the circumstances use those concepts. This processing of information and concepts is called cognition in Psychology. Such people who can make so many users of the Cognitive information and the concepts of cognition are called learned ones when they cross a minimum level of storage of such Cognitive informations.
As he grows he is given education. He is taught about the theories given by some predecessors. He is repeatedly told about and is made to believe in the sanctity of the theories. He is taught about the infallibility of the theories. For instance, no student of physics can be motivated be believe the incorrectness of Newtonian Laws of motion for ordinary speeds. Hence as a result , now he starts to identify himself with these theories in the same way as he used to identify himself with the concepts of his name, parentage and religion etc. . People feel proud in calling themselves scientists, mathematicians, democrat, pragmatist, revolutionary, extremist, communists and so on so forth. People have identified themselves with theories. After theories people further go on adding to their acquired characteristics. They now start identifying them with values. They feel proud in such identification. They call themselves as awakened, spiritual, honest, gallant, clever, beautiful, sharp and no one knows what more. People are conceited with their these acquired identities. In the childhood a common story is usually recited. Several seekers went to a Guru to learn music. The Guru asked the first seeker his earlier qualifications. The seeker told that he knows nothing about music. The Guru told him that it would take him 6 months to learn music. The second seeker was a bit acquainted with the rules of music. And Guru told him that it would take him more than a year to learn music. The third seeker told that he had already earned degrees in music and knows a number of scriptures about music. The Guru asked him that it would take him for about 10 years to learn music. On being asked the Guru explained that the learning period of all three is the same i.e. 6 months, the remaining time will be used to cleanse the garbage they had accumulated in the name of knowledge. It is always easy to write on a clean slate then to write on a dirty slate. For a dirty slate is to be cleaned first and then it can be used for writing. If the slate of mind is dirty then it takes quite a long time to make it clean because the concepts are engraved on the surface of mind. They are not simply written with cleanable chalk. A scripture is the experience of the past generations. It tells about the history. It tells about the past. But you have to prepare for the future. Making preparation for the future based on the accounts of past is useful only if the nature were to repeat itself again and again. But this does not happen. The nature is not found repeating itself. It does not repeat itself. Then why all those learned people have burdened themselves with the load of past ages.
This entire burden of values, beliefs, habits etc. reduce a person as a mere reflection of the past. He becomes a dustbin where more and more garbage of past is accumulated. More and more of the past (in the form of values, beliefs, theories or habits etc.) is filled in that bin more and more contended he feels. He feels more equipped with values, beliefs and theories. He can deliver lengthy lectures to his companions with similar equipments. One who is comparatively more equipped is more respected among those "equals". Life is new at each of its moment. It does not repeat itself. Life always and continuously keeps changing. All live circumstances are new. This newness of life poses a challenge to all those who are equipped with the outcomes of the past experiences. For instance, when people are confronted with the circumstances where they have to have resort to values contrary to the values of truthfulness and honesty for winning a competition, it would create a tension in their personality. They find their deeds and beliefs standing poles apart with no consonance in them. Continuous exposure to such inconsonance takes them to the verge of breaking. Whenever there is inconsonance between the deeds and beliefs of a person, he is confronted with an internal turbulence and the psychology calls it Cognitive Dissonance. Values acquired are those values with which you identify yourself. These are those values which assume prominence even over you. You go in the background and the values come in the forefront. Gradually you are thrown overboard and the only values remain there. There are a lot of instances in the human history when people have sacrificed themselves for the sake of values they cherished. An honesty valued person would die rather than being dishonest. A gallant person would die rather than fleeing as a coward. It is the honesty and the gallantry which are prominent and not the person who possess them. The learned ones argue that a tenant means the one who has a right to live in the premises. Therefore it is all OK if the landlord is thrown on the road because he can never, as a meaning of his name, be landless. The learned ones, more often mix the reality of life with the verbal definitions. They solve the problems of existence by using the syntax of syllogism. Some Popular Articles:
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