Not in Kansas Anymore

Philip Damon taught writing and literature at the University of Hawaii for 34 years, and his fiction, non-fiction and social commentaries have been published widely. Among the mystic and holistic traditions, he has followed many practices. His “Sacred Democracy” columns appear monthly in readthedirt.org.

In my two most recent columns, I introduced a pair of human attitudes, the ironic and the cynical, as mental approaches worthy of self-reflection. I suggested the ironical mindset to be the healthier, as it serves to prevent us from seeing things all one way or all another, insisting instead on the complexity of things. Cynicism, however, is all but certain to be unhealthy—it is defined in the dictionary as “an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general (my italics) distrust of the integrity of the professed motives of others.” Thus, while an ironic outlook is essentially fair-minded (think of “self-irony”), a cynical view is inevitably unfair, either to all or to a despised few.

In hopes, then, that the terms at least make sense for the sake of discussion, I’ll move on to a mental “condition” which, like cynicism, is detrimental to what I call “just thinking.” Cognitive dissonance, or CD as I’ll abbreviate it, was introduced in 1957 by Leon Festinger and has been a prevalent theory in social psychology ever since, with ramifications reaching beyond what I’ll get into here. Fundamentally, it is characterized by “conflicting cognitions” in a person’s outlook, usually starting with a belief or “knowing” that is cast into doubt by credible new information. It is often accompanied by bouts of anxiety, and may end up needing to be therapeutically addressed.

Yet its symptoms are mostly “self-treated,” which is where attitudes of irony or cynicism come into play—consciously or otherwise. If someone is inclined to be a “just” thinker, they may re-think what they once took to be true, even discern the essential harmonies between seemingly dissonant cognitions (i.e., embracing the ironies) and come away ever the wiser for it. But if a person is of a mind to be polarized already, all manner of defense mechanisms, rationalizations, and projections come into play, leading to a desperate reinforcement of previous beliefs. Often comfort is found in the society of others who share a similarly-prejudiced outlook, perhaps members of a group whose values stir contempt for the providers of the facts or ideas that stimulated the dissonance.

Such “values” pander to biases challenged by unsettling information, conniving against the mental balance of CD sufferers while convincing them they’re being cured of their symptoms of unease. This process is lamented by Thomas Frank in his 2004 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” (Metropolitan Books)in which he describes the change in his home state’s attitudes, from a shrewd earlier-century populist resistance to “monopolist strategies,” toward a willingness to be seduced into a mentality of their own undoing:

Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today’s Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they’re protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there’s a good chance they’ll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower.

But Kansas' politics notwithstanding (or escalating methane emissions there, in Texas, Oklahoma, or on the Siberian Arctic Shelf), we have our own closer-to-home reminders of how cognitive dissonance as a condition can pose a threat of epidemic proportions. In November, UBC glacier scientist Michele Koppes spoke at the Bellingham City Club on the state of the Cascadian glaciers. The Canada Research Chair on climate change cited data that show a decrease of 45 to 60 percent of the water stored in the mountain snow since 1950 — and, she added, since 1990 the glaciers have shrunk by 20 percent. This of course includes those on Mt. Baker, the source of the Nooksack and Skagit Rivers. Koppes was joined that day by Bill Dewey of Taylor Shellfish Farms, who stressed the impact of global warming on oceanic acidification, which has forced Taylor to move much of its oyster seed production to Hawaii. Thus fresh and seawater are in imminent peril, according to their data, yet how many among us are ready to believe it?

Their opinions were also solicited about the terminal at Cherry Point. Both voiced opposition, with Koppes chiming in that coal burnt in Asia becomes carbon soot back where it came from, exacerbating glacier melt all the quicker. Just thinkers must have wondered if these words of reason would fall on cynically deaf ears — and sure enough their warnings have been parried aside with a welter of fluctuating statistics, all of which ignore the single determining statistic: 396.15 ppm of carbon dioxide. The last time such numbers were reached was in the Pliocene Epoch, before humans existed. So who stands to benefit from our understandable unwillingness to accept this frightening reality?

Won’t we all sooner or later be forced to face up to our cognitive dissonance, as we ‘fess up’ to the fact that we’re not (just) in Kansas anymore?

Just thinking….