We created The Prepared Patriot Series to help you and your loved ones stay physically, mentally, and spiritually grounded in our post Constitution, post Christian America. This week the focus is on staying mentally fit in our woke-saturated world, with its open hostility of anyone who does not bow to their brand of reality, moral superiority, their version of ‘science’, or even questions their authority.
You owe it to yourself to know how embracing woke ideology eventually leads to cognitive dissonance. In this article you will learn:
- Definition of cognitive dissonance (CD)
- How CD negatively affects your mind
- What you can do to fight back
Let’s start with defining what exactly is the term cognitive dissonance. CD is a mental conflict that occurs when you hold two contradictory beliefs, values, attitudes, or perspectives about the same thing. CD can cause discomfort, stress, and anxiety. And the degree of these effects often depends on how much disparity there is between the conflicting beliefs, how much the beliefs mean to that person, as well as with how well the person copes with self-contradiction.
Examples of CD: The vegan who purchases a leather bag, the environmentalist who buys a gas-guzzling SUV, the patriot who buys American flags made in China. Learn more at Psycom.net here.
While CD is not a mental disorder per se, it can cause a significant degree of psychological discomfort, confusion and anxiety if not recognized and dealt with. That’s because the vegan, the environmentalist and the patriot will eventually seek unhealthy mental and behavioral tactics to alleviate their discomfort. Examples include:
Rationalizing: Because we would rather stick to our beliefs than challenge them, we tend to resolve CD by constructing a set of ‘reasons’ why we are acting in contradiction to our beliefs. In other words, we rationalize the issue away by saying to ourselves our behaviors are necessary, or there are no other viable alternatives.
Minimizing: If we instinctively sense that what we are doing is harmful, immoral, or irrational, we may prefer to minimize the distressing effects rather than adjust our behaviors. We may tell ourselves the contradictory behavior isn’t really all that bad.
Internalizing: Prolonged CD can lead to becoming upset with ourselves for being hypocritical, which can lead to shame, anger, stress, or a feeling of being hopelessly stuck or weak.
People-pleasing: Because wokeism demands total conformity, CD results when we become increasingly concerned with pleasing social justice warriors above what God commands of us. Wokeism becomes our master.
Self-censorship: The inner contradictions of CD lead to constant questioning of our inner moral compass, which leads to a lack of confidence to speak our minds or stand up for our principles.
It’s tactics like these that lead us to pretending to go along to get along with woke mandates, the unrelenting pressure to conform, or even denying reality itself, that eventually results in a constant inner state of tension and confusion. So, how do we reverse the effects of CD? Here are a few practical tactics to get you started.
- Self-assess: Take time alone to reflect on your values vs your actions.
- Identify what situations or habits trigger you to compromise your values, and then make a plan to avoid compromise next time.
- Make a commitment to yourself and to God to live not by lies, but by the truth.
- Start by making small changes.
- Join with others who hold similar values for moral support.
- Learn more tactics here.
- Visit our Activist Training page to better equip yourself.
For us liberty-loving conservatives, the pressure to conform to woke ideology at work, school, government institutions, pressure from family members, even church members, has never been greater, and will most likely only intensify. Remember, wokeism is not a passing fad, but is rooted in the World Economic Forum’s ‘Build Back Better’ blueprint for a new world order. It isn’t going away. And its adherents demand total allegiance They are never going to leave you alone.
The good news is that wokeism is a house of cards that will inevitably collapse under its own rejection of nature on gender, sexuality, the laws of economics, energy, race, speech, and rationality itself. Read how wokeism is already collapsing on itself here.
More good news: Courage is contagious, so, in the meantime, we encourage you to join MVLA’s growing network of truth-following citizen activists. Visit our homepage regularly for upcoming events in the Magic Valley and our state for future trainings and gatherings to equip and encourage you to become and remain active and engaged citizens.
We are seeking volunteers to help with upcoming event planning and organizing, supporting legislation, activism, writing or researching articles. Contact us at news@mvlibertyalliance.org.
