GMO, Vaccine, and Cognitive Dissonance

Rock or Sandcastle?

“I have this sister-in-law who, before Covid, was all in on how deadly GMO food was. Now, she’s lining up her 6 and 8 year old kids to get their 3rd booster. Literally an untested genetically modified organism injected into their blood.”

“My earth-conscious husband used to rail about what we’re eating in our food. Now, he’s pressuring me to get boosted.”

“What happened to the people screaming about ‘My body, my choice’? Why are they some of the harshest zealots for pushing vaccine mandates?”

By now, it seems familiar, doesn’t it? Someone we know who, BC (before Covid), seemed to have principled stands, particularly about health and bodily autonomy. Yet for the last two years, you’ve seen them fall down the rabbit hole of Covid authoritarianism.

It’s confusing, isn’t it? It’s frustrating, frightening, and frankly just plain weird. Or is it?

It’s called Cognitive Dissonance. One definition is:

The psychological tension that occurs when one holds mutually exclusive beliefs or attitudes and that often motivates people to modify their thoughts or behaviors in order to reduce the tension

It’s important to note in that definition the word “tension”.

We live in a world of tension. We have since the beginning of time.

• When will the barbarians be at the gates to sack my village?

• What if that tiger gets me instead of the other way around?

• What decree is the king going to hand down today?

• What if I get a bad medical diagnosis this time?

• What if my child doesn’t get off the bus today and no one knows where they are?

• Am I good enough? Do I matter?

• What if aliens DO land in the middle of Washington DC?

Our world is, and always has been, volatile. The entire natural universe (and part of the spiritual) is against us, and to think otherwise is fantasy. Fiction. Not real or sane thinking.

As we watch the Western world crumble over these past two years, and we’ve seen humanity go as berserk as we’ve ever seen in our lifetime, it’s important to understand that unlike any other time in world history, our Western civilization has been the exception, rather than the rule.

We have enjoyed the greatest wealth, the most equality, the most individual liberty than any other humans in all of history, regardless of what certain narratives try to tell you. Absolutely far from perfect or universal worldwide, but overall, most of us have been living at the pinnacle.

Do you remember when the biggest angst you had was if your football team was going to beat your biggest rival this weekend? When your Starbucks coffee didn’t quite taste exactly the way you wanted? Me too.

We’ve taken for granted that the world is still harsh. There are still very real forces that want to see our destruction.

For instance, I don’t want to be next to a crocodile. There are billions of little microscopic bugs that I’m swallowing into my body at this moment. A meteor, even the size of a pebble, could come hurtling through the sky and hit me in the head like a bullet, and that’s the end of Brian Herr.

So there’s the external, natural world that’s ever-present. I think many of us have been on board with this reality for most of our lives. And thanks to places like The Weather Channel, we’re very aware of how deadly nature can be. They are as good at whipping up the environmental fear porn as anyone.

While many of us have lived with the inevitable reality that the natural world is dangerous, for others, this has and continues to produces great anxiety. One of many.

There’s the search for meaning. “Who am I? What’s my purpose? Am I doing what I’m meant to do? Why am I so unfulfilled in this X (relationship, career, financial situation, etc.)?

Then there are the more insidious forces working against us.

Corporations and tech oligarchs, all bombarding us with their version of reality, nudging us to buy their solutions or share our secrets.

A pop culture that’s ultimately nothing more than twaddle for adults, yet consumes us with the fact that we are somehow less than them, inadequate, unimportant.

Governments encroaching on our individual liberty.

Radicals looking to overthrow all the systems we’ve known. Systems that while imperfect, have brought humanity out of the stone age and into the greatest time of prosperity the world has ever seen so that they can try their version of the same tried and failed policies again, only this time harder and more ruthlessly, because “this time it’s going to work. We just haven’t done it right before.”

Anxiety. Tension. So, so much of it.

When we’re faced with overload, as most of us face each moment of our waking hours, something happens. We go numb. We disconnect. Or we do more of what’s feeding us that anxiety and tension, like a vicious circle. Very few of us deal with that tension in a healthy, constructive way.

And it’s into that tension and anxiety that a new narrative can be sown.

It doesn’t matter how contradictory that narrative is, because the flailing, ungrounded mind and heart are simply looking for the next thing that’s going to bring them relief from that tension.

If you’re reading this with the thought “but why haven’t I been affected? What makes me different?” there’s a good chance you have some connection to something firm and unwavering in your life. Some authentic roots to the earth, to your spiritual dimension, to your fellow humans. You’ve tied, at the very least, some parts of yourself to the bedrock of the eternal.

There really are eternal principles to this universe that work, whether you’re aware of them, whether you believe them, or not. If you’ve created a life where you knowingly or unknowingly pinned your core to one of more of these principles and made them part of your DNA, then you are less apt to fall prey to the madness of the transient, flailing mind and heart. You have anchors into some of the bedrock that guides the universe, and that can’t be emphasized enough.

The fact is, while Western culture and the Enlightenment have produced a golden age, the last 50 years or more have also created an artificial reality, debased from what’s true and universal. We’ve pursued Band-aids instead of true healing. We sought temporary pleasure, regardless of how fleeting, over long-term strength.

Many of us have been building sandcastles next to the incoming tide, and that’s the only life we know. Every time we look up, that next wave is threatening. So we abandon that construct for another one, never moving off the beach and only moving laterally against that ocean.

• Pop a pill. Take an injection.

• Imma get hammered shmammered tonight at the bar

• Abandon that relationship, no problems, no repercussion

• You don’t need faith in anything

• It’s all about you, all the time

• Just get on a government program

• Eat and drink whatever you want, whenever you want

• Don’t think. Just do what we tell you. JUST DO WHAT WE TELL YOU.

Into that vacillating void comes Covid.

To those that were building the sandcastles, Covid represents an entirely new lens through which to build their lives on.

It’s really just the next sandcastle, but it’s NEW, just like GMO or going gluten free or relationship or a new social media profile. Only THIS is big, baby. Worldwide. It’s something that “we’re all in together”, and that makes it 100% legit. It’s settled. The news and social media keep telling me so.

Once those seeds are planted into that soil, there will be a harvest. But it will be a fruitless harvest, simply because the seeds are void of anything real. It doesn’t matter how much fact, how much evidence is presented to this person, because their soil can’t accept it. The right combination of nutrients just aren’t present. They’ve been prepared over many years for these empty seeds.

So for you, those who have tethered yourself to some aspect of solid, foundational, universal rock, your job is to understand that from here on out, your mission, if you choose to accept it, if you think it’s worthwhile, is to try to change that soil. To slowly convince your friend or family member to get off the beach.

Sow good seed, relentlessly, but gently and humbly. Understand that their current “soil” wasn’t cultivated in a day, but over their entire lives. Undoing that is a long-game. Remember, they’re doing whatever it takes to reduce tension, to quell anxiety, even it means accepting new stories that are completely contradictory to the old ones. They’re just trying to run away from that previous pain and will do whatever spiritual, physical, and mental hurdles they need to do so that it NEVER comes back.

Many don’t want to acknowledge that their lives have been built on nothing and are empty of any real nutrients, any firm tether. If they’re worth it to you, stick with it. But you can’t harvest good fruit from bad soil. You can’t secure what doesn’t want to be tethered to bedrock. Use your time and energy wisely, patiently, work on your own soil, and maybe, just maybe, the fruit you grown in your own lives will one day be appealing enough to that person you so badly want to reach.