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How would you account for people self-persuading themselves when they take the job, and know to keep that belief alive for self-preservation ? We have inate ab
by hrktb 7y ago
How would you account for people self-persuading themselves when they take the job, and know to keep that belief alive for self-preservation ?
We have inate abilities to model reality in a way that helps us, not just in a cognitive dissonance way, but in strategic ways as well.
It's the classic "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.". It's wildly viewed as a skill, and in a lot of cultures marked as a sign of adulthood to be able to deceive yourself to overcome your primary reaction.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoFor many people the choices are limited - do work that harms others, or suffer harm yourself. People whose morals are strong enough to suffer the harm and deal with the uncertainty of trying to find morally-responsible work aren't that common. And as soon as you have family responsibilities, the pressures increase. The underlying problem is that compliant behaviours and attitudes are rewarded, sometimes generously, while dissident attitudes and behaviours are punished - often in ways that imply the dissident brought misfortune on themselves. There's absolutely no mainstream reinforcement of the suggestion that many aspects of the culture this happens in are toxic and have a skewed moral foundation, and plenty of reinforcement of its opposite - that the culture is healthy, generous, open, and perhaps even the best of all possible cultures.