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    Your Elvenar Team

Dissonance and Discussion

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
In the area of making decisions most people live pretty much in the moment. Most decisions are easy enough. Vanilla or Chocolate? Easy. Chocolate, of course! Watch a rerun of Fraser or Seinfeld? A little harder, but I never got Seinfeld, so that's not going to be my choice. On the other hand, some choices are a bit more complex and, if we are to live well, need some thought. But of course, we usually make decisions intuitively and immediately rather than giving them that much though and we usually do so because we have a sense that a decision must be made rather than that we need to take the time and energy to actually investigate the actual question. Allow me to explain.

If you are faced with a choice of two options you generally know you have to choose one or the other. In almost all cases to not choose is to get the default option so you intuitively know you must choose especially if the non-default option appeals to you in any manner. This causes some dissonance in you-- an instability to the settled state of your mine. You wish to choose the "right" one because your value of yourself includes making the "right" choice. It's important that to your confidence level to make good decisions. Thus you stop, consider, and choose. But the length of time you actually stop, consider, and choose, is usually very short. You choose intuitively. You sense the "right" choice and the, if asked to explain, find reasons for your choice.

That your choice is seldom rational before the choice, has been studied for ages and observed in almost all cultures. In fact, part of human cohesion reflects the general sense of right and wrong within a social group, and thus the "rightness" of your decision is probably already set by the social group of which you are a part. So we usually go with the immediate, intuitive, and sometimes even "obvious" (socially determined) choice. But note we seldom actually invest much time in answering the actual question in any rational manner. In almost all cases the intuitive, instant, and immediate answer is "good enough." After all, what are the long term consequences of choosing chocolate over vanilla? All of which sets up an important distinction between choosing and discussion.

Choosing this or that is part of discussion. We choose our stance, our position, our view, and we lay it out there for others to examine, comment upon, agree with, or reject. And then we react to their ideas, thoughts and opinions. Yet, as noted above, in almost all questions we choose before we examine. Why? Because we move to resolve the discomfort of having to choose before we find the reasons to choose this or that. In other words, most of our choices are done intuitively, immediately, and without a lot of rational fanfare because we are not choosing the answer based upon rational thought but upon it's ability to resolve the internal dissonance within us. Choice is driven by dissonance and resolving the dissonance is the first thing we seek to do. Unfortunately, that immediate resolution may actually harm the discussion. Here's why.

In resolving the dissonance (making a choice from the choices before us -- the possible views of the matter), we usually assume that because we have done away with the dissonance we have, therefore, answered the question at hand. The resolution of our internal dissonance is taken as having solved the problem. And once we have decided if we then make some overt act or say something indicating our choice, the actual act of confirming our decision strengthens our commitment to it. This "seals the deal" and the dissonance is resolved. If we then ask or are asked, "why?" we choose what we chose, if the question is part of a discussion we usually cast about to find some reasons. As we discover those reasons we become more and more committed to our point of view until we are fully and completely convinced.

In the long run though, the field of our immediate knowledge out of which we make intuitive choices, may not include awareness of other factors. And, If we are driven to consider the matter for a longer period than intuition needs, we may find reasons for and reasons against the choice we made. The problem is, most people do not wish to consider that they may have been wrong in the choice that resolved their internal dissonance. The choice gave them a sense that they had resolved the issue and the need to revisit it only raises more dissonance. To avoid this, therefore, one finds more and more reasons to confirm the original choice until, in the end the conversation is usually ended with, 'well you have your opinion and I mine, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree." This is a defeat of good discussion and a cop out in many cases. The issue may be complex but to say that it is not resolvable usually means one or both parties are more desirous of avoiding the discomfort of deep and difficult conversations than answering the actual question at hand. One of the chief ways of circumventing the actual questions raised is to claim the motives of the other person are that they are only asking out of their own discomfort. Assuming the single motivation (of discomfort in this case) is an ad hominem remark, of course, as I've written elsewhere. But it is often used because the questions being asked are uncomfortable and the one being asked is, in part, trying to avoid the displeasure of reexamining what they have already decided.

It's this consistent attention to our immediate discomfort (dissonance), drives most of our discussion. Somebody says something that, to us, "doesn't feel right," and we immediately grab the first idea that shows it's not right, thus explaining our discomfort and giving us a reason to relax because now we know we are still right and they are not. All of which means we don't really engage in discussion of the subject very well as we are focused on our own comfort more than the more complex problem leading to or underlying our discomfort. Our answers, therefore, tend to only effect the immediate state of things and, in the long run, don't resolve the underlying issue at all.

In the end, I think, discussion is best when it's calm and rational. And it begins with a simple statement you must make if you are to engage well. "I could be wrong." In other words, whatever commitment you have made in the past, whatever decision you have reached, should be "up for grabs." That's the first rule and it's as scary as it gets. Nobody wants to believe they have been a fool and made a bad choice. We all wish to beleive we are quite capable of ferreting out truth from lies and right from wrong, even though, we probably get it wrong about as much as right.

Second, having recognized our tendency to react (by moving to resolve the dissonance we feel) ahead of answering the question, we need to develop an ability to endure uncertainty. Humans do not like ambiguity since it means we can't make choices confidently. But the answers to most important questions are historically ambiguous and if we are to be courageous we have to admit and even embrace that aspect of the human experience.

Third, if we enter the discussion humbly ("I could be wrong") and courageously, ("It's okay that I don't really know for sure"), we can then be okay with making choices based upon our "best guess." I've been wrong as many times as I've been right and most of the time my "best guess," is only pretty good. Living "pretty good," though, is not a bad thing since it's about as good as you can live, I think. So we make choices. We make them humbly and courageously because we know it's okay to be wrong and okay to change ones mind.

That's my take on it, anyway.

AJ
 
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