Breakfast:  skipped!
Lunch:  Grilled vegetable sandwich and mixed greens.
Dinner:  Homemade hash browns, some vegetable soup and yet another salad!
Cravings:  Take out Chinese
Mood:  Weary  (Is that a mood?)


Yesterday we were talking about cognitive dissonance. For those just joining us, cognitive dissonance is the state of great psychological discomfort created when your brain is forced to acknowledge two pieces of information that it finds counter-intuitive or contradictory. And since I sincerely believe that our national desire to succeed at any cost is now cohabiting in our heads with the idea that our success is killing the blue planet, we should all know how this dissonance works.   Especially since we’re coming up on a decision here.  We can reduce our individual dependence on fossil fuels or we can blame the evil oil companies or those stupid tree huggers or China or Congress for the problem and keep doing what we’re doing (Or we can do both!)

Here’s my chat with Carol Tavris, social psychologist and co-author of "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts."  She told me some more about how our sneaky little brains are processing this whole planetary disaster scenario (And please  blame her if you feel bad afterward):

 

FG: Why are we so paralyzed by the prospect of Global Warming?

Tavris: Once you open your mind to the evidence that human beings are contributing in a major way to a potential environmental disaster the next question is, “What are we going to do?” and it's not all clear what to do. It's not as simple as ‘wear a condom’ to combat the rise of AIDS.  That's clear advice. The environmental issue is really complicated and we are not good future planners.

Our economy is designed for short-term growth, not the future. Companies have stockholders that want to see immediate efforts. Short-term gain--that's the American way.  

Also, our culture has always been a culture of individualism and that’s a problem when solutions need to be system wide. We have this self-oriented approach. It's up to individual women to decide how to balance work and family. Our culture, which prizes individualism, won't help. We need to solve the overarching question of how we make government save us from the effects of global warming. If we look only to ourselves, there's no consensus. All of these individual decisions do make a difference. We do need to think globally and act locally; but that lacks consensus. Besides, nobody wants to feel like a chump. If everybody else is wasting water and you’re refusing to water your lawn, you're going to fell like a chump and you’ll want your town to pass an ordinance forbidding anyone to water their lawn.

[Just for the record, that’s not what I would want, I would want to cut all my neighbors’ hoses in half with a machete, but that’s just me.--FG]

FG: So that explains why environmentalists are constantly being attacked for being self-righteous and idealistic, right

Tavris: When a decision is difficult and ambiguous, what will happen over time is that the rightness of your choice will get stronger while the wrongness of the choice you didn’t make also gets stronger. [You can also apply this argument very well to the ongoing and always hostile ‘dialogue’ between mothers who work outside the home and those who don’t.] The venom stems from having to consider the road not taken--especially if it’s something you might really have enjoyed. It makes you feel good about all the things you're giving up. [This is totally what happened to me over Labor Day weekend!]

FG: So we’ve doomed all the penguins and polar bears on the planet because we don’t like to be reproached?

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Tavris:  A larger way to see this is to understand that most people see themselves as good, kind, caring, competent human beings. Therefore, when they are faced with evidence that they are doing something that might be bad, unkind, foolish, or stupid, they are thrown into "cognitive dissonance" -- a hardwired mental state that is as unpleasant as extreme hunger. It's precisely to maintain our views of ourselves as good people that we often justify and continue to do bad things. This is how the CEOs of big polluters sleep at night. They reduce dissonance by saying "the economy is more important than the environment"; or "my workers need these jobs"; or "my stockholders won't support the cost of going green."  Another way of reducing dissonance is to dismiss the evidence of the human role in creating environmental problems as left-wing propaganda.

 
That Carol Tavris is smart, right?  And I think it’s OK, as I’ve said before in this blog, for us to take a minute to reassure ourselves that we’re good people and we did not mean to melt the polar caps.  But if we want to continue to think we’re alright then we’re going to have to make another decision – to do something to slow this problem down (cut waste, capture gas flaring, use less electricity, demand governmental action, cut hoses in half) or do nothing and let the next generation of good, kind and competent people take care of it.


Good News:  I’m halfway done!  I eat all the carbs I want and I’ve lost 8 pounds.
Bad News:  I may not be as kind or competent as I thought I was!
Worries:  You wish Carol Tavris was doing this blog, don’t you?