Selling the Car Crash and Buying the Cancer
By
Cognitive Dissonance
For just a few minutes I ask that you suspend disbelief and consider what I am about to say from the perspective of your point of view. Forget what others may say or do. Ignore how you think the herd might react to the scenario I’m about to outline and look deep within yourself into that honest place we all possess and rarely visit.
Suppose you were told by an extremely trusted source, I think the word is impeccable, that sometime in the next week you will suffer a terrible accident, a car crash to be specific. While you will most likely not die in or from this accident, you will probably wish you had because the pain and suffering you are facing will test you like you have never been tested before. You have no details of the event, only that it is very soon, inevitable and will be life changing.
Or………you can choose what is behind the second curtain in this fictitious world of clear foresight and alternative scenarios, and instead of immediate pain and disfigurement you get to kick the can down the road and select the cancer, the big ‘C’, and hope for the best.
The good news is the occultist seer, your provocateur of prophecy, projects that the cancer will probably not kill you as well, though the mortality rate is much higher than the car crash. And it isn’t even an especially fast acting variety, so your life can proceed pretty much uninterrupted for a year or two, maybe even more, until the surgery (cut) chemo (poison) and radiation (burn) become unavoidable and must begin.
Besides, who knows what miracles medical science can come up with between now and then? There are success stories everywhere of cancer survivors beating the odds and living a long, healthy and satisfying life. Regardless, when contemplating the choice between an emergency responder using the jaws-of-life to extract you from your mangled motor vehicle or a handsome skilled surgeon extracting your diseased colon/lung/prostate while you are knocked out cold, is there really any choice in the matter?
So when, not if, you decide to buy the cancer and sell the car crash, will your perspective change at least a little with respect to those lying corrupt disingenuous politicians, central bankers, corporate executives, too big to fail bank CEO’s and millions of other ‘bad’ guys we blame for making matters worse when the ‘obvious’ choice to make was the car crash and not the cancer?
I suppose the more important question to be asked would be why we were even at the point where this choice between two extremely poor paths was presented. Then again, conditioned slaves can complain, bicker and debate all they want about their living conditions, but never about their actual slavery.
Intellectually we understand the ‘correct’ decision to make back in 2008-2009 was to bite the bullet and select the car crash. Sure it would be tough, real tough, and there is no doubt that much suffering would follow. Millions upon millions of people stood to lose their jobs, homes and personal retirement savings and public pensions. The collapsing dominoes and the resulting whoosh would have been shocking and unimaginable even to those of us who believe we had a fairly good idea how it would all go down.
Banks and business large and small would have gone under, hundreds of municipalities most definitely would have declared bankruptcy and countless lives altered in such a way that the memory would linger from generation to generation for as long, or longer, than the reverberation from the Depression of the 1930’s.
The shock waves of the car crash would have gone global and billions would have had their standard of living slashed in half or more. In fact the greatest damage would not be felt by the first world nations, but by the second and third world. The proof is the effects seen in the less developed nations as the first world exports massive cancerous inflation in the form of currency printing. When the first world catches a cold, the second and third world comes down with life threatening pneumonia.
Unlike the scenario I outlined above where you and I are personally facing the prospect of either immediate or delayed pain, the difference when contemplating a national/global car crash or cancer choice is our perceived lack of immediate proximity to the resulting pain and suffering. Real or imagined, based in fact or fiction, we all tend to emotionally and intellectually diminish our proximity to external danger by any number of techniques such as denial, rationalization, apathy and emotional distancing.
Part of the reason we believe the car crash choice to be proper was/is our clearer understanding of the inevitable implosion that results from the cancer choice. Only this time the death and injuries will be orders of magnitude greater than what might have been experienced in 2008. We perceive little to no personal benefit from kicking the can and believe great harm will result from doing so.
In reality the only thing we know for certain is that life would be very different from today if we had faced the music back in 08-09. Better or worse is the real question, though I suspect better……if for no other reason than the wound eventually heals or it festers and you die.
In addition, we recognize the large (and growing even larger) disparity of illness and symptoms that results from the cancer choice between those who have and those who have not. It is believed that if the car crash were chosen, while the have not’s will suffer under any scenario; the haves might actually be taken down several notches while also being pulled from the wreck, a dubious assumption at best……at least for the top one or two percent.
Worse, our sense of outrage is inflamed when we realize that not only are the elite not suffering the same cancer symptoms as we are, but are actually benefiting from, even prospering from, the cancer choice. If nothing else they appear to be bleeding the middle class dry while kicking the can down the road as far and for as long as they can.
Wealth has its own rewards and distinct advantages, and the belief that the wealthy would push the floundering swimmer underwater in order to support (let along enrich) themselves is outrageous, at least from the perspective of the now underwater swimmer.
The list of reasons why ‘we’ feel the cancer to be the wrong choice, oftentimes a belief developed with the benefit of hindsight, is endless and ultimately self personalized to fit our own worldview and denial/rationalization spectrum. Regardless of the specifics of your own view on this subject, the real value to be unleashed from this introspection is the better understanding of our ‘self’ that results when we look deep into that honest place we all possess and rarely visit.
05-05-2014
Cognitive Dissonance
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