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August 31, 2004
Diagnosis: Cognitive Dissonance
Lately, my thoughts have been boomeranging back and forth between two extremes: one side of my brain is depressingly preoccupied with grand, existential angst—What is the Meaning of Life? What is My Purpose in the World? Can Humans find a way to overcome our selfish nature and collectively act with enough foresight so as not to destroy the planet?—while the other side of my brain, like a bumblebee floating from blossom to blossom, alights on tiny spots of beauty in the world around me, falling in love a hundred times a day—the almost imperceptible turning of my plant’s pink-speckled leaves toward the sun; the glide of thick clouds across bright blue sky; the bright orange paint in the subway station that covers perfect half-spheres of bolts; the smell of basil on my fingertips. Back and forth, but never getting anywhere.
Which, now that I think about it, is actually nothing recent at all. Maybe it’s always been like this to some extent (though at times in the past I know I’ve tilted much further in one thought direction or the other, whereas right now I feel a weird disorienting stasis, like the still-moving sensation when you’ve just gotten off an airplane and are standing still); certainly I can say I’ve been experiencing this thought-whiplash throughout much of Bush administration.
What all this sloshing back and forth means is that the different categories of questions and fears and worries get mashed together in my mind, so that I now find it impossible to make a decision about, say, what next step to take in my career, without contemplating a range of federal policy issues, the ethics of capitalism, and the role of art in society. I try to think about my life, and end up thinking about Life. I try to think about my problems, and end up thinking about Problems. And then I get stuck. These questions are far too broad for me to satisfactorily answer; and I know that, but somehow still can’t see my way past them to clarity.
So I stay here, disoriented, my thoughts bouncing from one extreme to another over and over again. Meanwhile, I try my best to savor those moments when I am fully present in the day-by-day, sensory experience of living; I try my best also to recognize the times when I try out an answer to one of those broad Questions and feel a little click of rightness with it.
What it comes down to, this whiplash confusion of thoughts, is this: It seems to me that living as a politically aware, compassionate person in contemporary America is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
Here's what I mean: Five days a week, I go to work, knowing somewhere in the way back of my brain that the tax dollars my employer deducts twice a month are funding wars and prisons and oil subsidies; every day, I put on clothes made by people who were paid a fraction of a percent of the retail price for their labor; every day, I throw more trash into my garbage can, knowing that it will end up in a vast landfill whose contents will take hundreds of years to fully decompose.
And yeah, I do what so many of us lefty types do: I try to make some choices that reduce the harm I’m doing. I ride a bike or take public transportation instead of driving a car; I buy as much produce as I can from local farmers’ markets; I use environmentally friendly cleansers; I patronize independent local businesses; I work for a nonprofit; I donate to progressive organizations and candidates. But it still feels like maybe I’m not doing enough—and then sometimes it also feels like, even if I were, what would be the point? I’m just one person. My choices, be they good or bad, seem insignificant.
Which is, I think, what allows the cognitive dissonance of an unsustainable lifestyle to continue on for so many people. Every choice we make is not life or death, and we all have ways of rationalizing our everyday decisions—my buying one book at Borders because they have it in stock and I need it today is not going to immediately put all independent bookstores out of business, I tell myself. This is why, although to me, driving a behemoth SUV screams “I’m a selfish, oil-guzzling, air-polluting asshole,” to that driver, it simply says, “I need the extra room/towing capacity/off-road capability this SUV provides. Yeah, it’s a few extra gallons of gas a week, but that’s no big deal in the grand scheme of things. I’m just one person.”
And I completely get that. Because I rationalize things too (c.f. Borders example). Because it’s virtually impossible to live a wholly sustainable lifestyle in this country. Because after all, I’m just one person. What difference does it make?
Well, what difference does it make? Sure, you can do the collective math: that if everyone turned their air conditioning up one degree and their heat down one degree, we’d save x amount of energy per year—so that yes, each and every person makes a difference when you add us all together; that’s important and valuable information, particularly when it comes to shaping policy.
But maybe these little everyday decisions also make a personal, psychological difference. Maybe the reason my mind keeps snapping back to global warming when I’m just trying to relish the beauty of a rising moon is that I do know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that there’s a little something more that I could pretty easily do.
It’s worth considering.
Posted by sarah at August 31, 2004 01:46 PM
