In psychology, cognitive dissonance theory attempts to study how our minds try to reconcile radically different ideas to make sense of our world. For example, when the reality is so different from our beliefs, we find ways to make sense that are advantageous to our beliefs even if this means that we bend truth and facts.
About a year ago, a marketer did an experiment—a variation of this has been seen everywhere including the one that involved a famous perfume—in which a group of people were served frozen food in a somewhat dirty looking restaurant first. They were asked to rate their food. Then, they were taken to a fancy up-class looking restaurant where ambiance resembled the first class with well dressed waiters and waitresses serving the same food with finer china and cutleries with quiet pleasing music being played in the back ground. Again they were asked to rate their food. The same people rated the food they ate in a fancy restaurant better and tastier. Our own perception of our environment persuades us to put aside the facts.
Our minds play tricks on us. Cognitive dissonance experiments remind us that our belief plays very important role in how we see the world. The difficulty is that we are shaded by the very faith we have has been used to iron out many difficult realities we face. Our faith, if not instilled properly, will mislead us and makes us build the world that is not real. This is why some will insist on believing things even when every truth and fact point away from what they believe.
We forget that God we think of and refer to is an image shaped by what we learned from our parents, teachers and our communities. In this sense, more than often we believe not in God who is but God whom we can make sense of in our lives. A warning for us all, indeed!
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