I was going to write a new post about something else awhile ago, but then this just came to mind now. First off, let's take a look at the definition of cognitive dissonance:
the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes
An (particularly striking) example would be believing that murder is wrong, yet happening to kill someone for some reason that I won't specify in this example. Use your imagination. Maybe it was self defense. Anyways, this person who has murdered someone else is going to have cognitive dissonance because they killed someone, despite believing that murder is wrong. We try to get rid of cognitive dissonance by justifying our actions that were in opposition to what we believe and/or changing our beliefs. The degree to which we experience cognitive dissonance is based on how strong our beliefs are and how much our action is contradictory to our beliefs. As an aside, I'm sure there are people out there who do not believe that murder is wrong. I'll leave it at that for now. This post isn't intended to delve into a discussion about the morality of murder. Maybe some other time in another post.
So now that I've (hopefully) explained what cognitive dissonance is properly, back to the topic at hand... the "you" referred to in the title is the yet unnamed commentator on CNN with the lovely eyelashes and eyeballs. Seriously, they're brilliant. He is going to remain anonymous because I have the inkling of a suspicion that this whole eyeball/eyelash thing (mind you, the rest of his face is pretty nice too) would be even weirder if I mentioned exactly who he is. I dearly hope he never reads this stuff.
This brilliantly eyeballed and eyelashed man (you can say things like "pale skinned" or "golden haired" so I'm sort of extending that to the words eyeball and eyelash..) is, (sort of unfortunately, see here, is the source of the COGNITIVE DISSONANCE)... a conservative. (*gasp!*)
The contradicting beliefs here are:
a) He is a conservative (I am not. I am a liberal.)
b) His eyeballs and eyelashes are wonderful.
Being a liberal, it's... decidedly cognitively dissonant for me to appreciate conservatives for whatever reason. I realize that his political orientation has no (probably? Maybe there's a correlation? Look at all that psychology vocabulary.) bearing on his physical appearance. Yet, it still feels weird (cognitively dissonant) for me to think, wow, his gorgeous eyeballs and eyelashes!! and also (gingerly) he is a conservative. Now, my mother has a conservative friend who I don't really have this problem with. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I've known her for much longer than I've seen this commentator on the news, or that political discussions are not the focus of the friendship. Perhaps it's a combination of both. This commentator, it's literally his job to be on the news and talk about his opinions (as a conservative). So the conservativeness of this guy is a bit more in your face if you will; it's harder to ignore.
Now, onto how I might resolve this cognitive dissonance. The likelihood of me (or him, for that matter) changing my political beliefs (ie, becoming a conservative) is very low. I guess currently I am justifying my belief about his eyeballs and eyelashes by thinking that his political beliefs are irrelevant to his appearance. It doesn't get rid of the cognitive dissonance entirely though (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this post..), so it would be ideal if he just weren't conservative. But alas, he is, and that's just how it's going to be.
So there you have it, a personal anecdote about an experience that I am currently experiencing regarding the concept of cognitive dissonance.
(ps: this post didn't really have anything to do with Vincent! Maybe sort of, tenuously, since Vincent also has nice eyeballs and eyelashes [no, I promise I'm not going to go on about that again here] but it's more about this other guy and the cognitive dissonance that he's causing me.)
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