If I Knew

It has long been a puzzle to me how normally intelligent and even very bright individuals could manage sometimes to be so incredibly stupid. It is a matter of people upon occasion simply refusing to recognize reality even when it is staring them in the face. It apparently has nothing at all to do with what we humans refer to as ‘intelligence’. It rather reflects the ability of man to gaze within and understand his own soul.

I had often puzzled on the seeming ability of many to hold within what appeared to me to be totally opposite beliefs about the same thing and not find their minds utterly destroyed by the cognitive dissonance it must create. In recent years it has become much more obvious this strange ability to ignore reality and behave if a manner that appears almost insane to observers.

In the financial world people see not the unsustainable systems and continue to paper over the problems, is that a foolish dream or simply inability to see the truth? The US Congress passes laws the people hate and talk about them as proud achievements, who are they fooling, the people or themselves?

Not long ago the media screamed that the Tea Party was racist, they did not see blacks among them. Well there were some but of course they were not ‘real blacks’. Only today this same media wonder why so few blacks are involved with the OWS movement and if perhaps they are in need of ‘leadership’.

Ah, the examples of this curious blindness could go on for many pages. It happens very visibly at the highest levels of politics, science and religion and quietly in our own households. With a certain belief that life must be ‘thus and so’, a world view that allows things to only be one way maintenance of simply sanity requires that we fail to ’see’ those things that do not fit.

From the engineer that follows a detailed specification and can not envision the human impact, to the banker that sees not the harm of inflation on the poorest, to the lover thats sees not wasting of his beloved, they are not truly at fault. The mind protects the ego and creates blindness where reality and truth would damage the fragile psyche of man (or woman).

The observer, uninvolved, may see the truth and try to communicate but alas such efforts are doomed. The blind can not be forced to see, the only hope is that perhaps a trail of bread crumbs, tiny hints may eventually encourage the blinded ones to take a small peek at reality.