No doubt it is easy to say that cognitive dissonance is dangerous to our mental health and general perspective on our lives. I believe that most of us experience cognitive dissonance in terms of relationships. Romantically involved or not, urging continuous involvement in a situation in which is mentally unstable and notably volatile. Not only can this ruin your current mental state and in turn your state of happiness, what does this say about our evolutionary traits? Evolution is only possible by our capability to adapt. That notion is entirely simplistic and sorry, set your religion aside, complete and utter fact. So how is it possible that our mind can allow us to misinterpret and ignore warnings that an aspect of our lives is killing us (metaphorically-or not). We are empirically designed to adapt to situations that better suit our physical/mental needs. We are prone to grow from situational awareness, so how can we continue to drink from a poisoned gauntlet? The only understanding I can get from this contradiction is our mind is prone to insulting our adaptability.
Why do our brains attempt to skew perceived reality? In that case it is also important to acknowledge the question of, how much can we trust our memory and that which we perceive? In a recent study (that I wish I could site, but do not remember who brain games said released it) it has been stated that our current memory is made up of our recollection each time we recall that memory. In simple terms, whenever we recall a memory we are recalling the last time we recalled that memory. I know I get it, it seems redundant, but it's science guys-its cool. If we were to think of a past vacation and put ourselves in that scene we are not in the scene but pieces that we put together when we recalled it. If we think of our most vivid and important memory, it is heavily skewed by what our brains belief. It accounts for all terms of memory, and therefore, we can not trust our memory. So I am not that surprised that our brain is also capable of cognitive dissonance.
Let's take Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) quote, "Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel". Now of course the context of this novel was poverty, extraneous circumstances, and a mentally tarnished protagonist; The stance of adaptability is more condescending than enlightening. But in most cases, especially noting survivors, we can adapt to any situation when we have the hope to survive.Take Curt Richter's rat experiment as an example. His test consisted of throwing rats into a water filled bath tub to see how long it would take for them to die. Those who were never released from the water swam for the longest of 3 hours before they became exhausted. However, some of the rats were taken out of the water after and hour, then put back, and lasted more than double that of the rats that weren't given the same hope. We are inclined to fight for our lives and hope is an important key to our adaptability. That's the connect that I can make with cognitive dissonance. We cling to false hope over grim reality. We will skew reality and trick our minds, over our best judgement, because we are hopeful idiots. We will jump into a black hole hoping their is gold at the bottom. Then we will come across the same hole again, putting our better judgement aside, hoping there could be gold. Maybe it will work this time. We are dumb, insulting our evolution, insulting our better judgement, but we are hopeful for better things. So which is more insulting to our physical state ignoring warnings or never risking our chance to find gold?
nothing would ever be accomplished without diving into that black hole, no love, no advancement, no adaptation. Despite reality being grim, taking the chance is what makes it bearable.