cognitive dissonance

Think for yourself

Children are told to think for themselves.

Yet, that is mostly not what we really want them to do. Conformation to social norms usually takes precedence in the real world. So,

the real message is: Don’t think for yourself.

Do as we do.
And that is what most people end up doing.

What does that imply?

It implies that

children may get confused.

On the one hand they are told to make up their own mind, but on the other hand they are forced into obedience to social norms. In other words,

they are raised by their parents like princes/princesses but then subdued by their peers into slavery.

As a result people tend to live in a phantasy world. A world of make-belief, that we are rational and responsible moral agents. Yet, in reality

we are primates

copying our conspecifics. We imitate.

We imitate because

the whip of social coercion is painful.

It is painful and direct. Personal responsibility diverging from social norms is treated as treason.

It implies that

we are not nearly as rational as we often think we are.

This absolves us also from our moral responsibility.

It allows us to exploit animals and to destroy the world,

without feeling guilty, without remorse.

But not being rational and not being morally responsible also implies we are not much different from other primates and from other animal species.

We are animals.

People tend to hide in the crowd. They rarely want to take full responsibility for their actions. If they would, they should drastically change their habits, but if they don’t they should give up their notion of being special. Either way,

we need to change.

Either from thinking we are special, to really living up to it,

or from behaving like beasts to really accepting that we don’t deserve much better.

Think for yourself

AnimalMindedScience

This post describes my views, suggestions and campaign ideas related to the world-wide public consultation for the Dutch science agenda. Note that the deadline for submission of ideas has passed (May 1, 2015).

Introduction Tweets & Facebook posts on the approach method of #‎AnimalMindedScience Tweets & Facebook posts on key suggestions for #‎AnimalMindedScience First submission (English version): How to make the science agenda and society animal minded? Dutch version of the submission: Hoe kan de wetenschapsagenda en de samenleving het dier indachtig gemaakt worden? Conclusion Further specification in tweets

Introduction

The Dutch government and main science organizations have launched a public consultation on the future of science (Wetenschapsagenda in Dutch; science agenda in English). Until May 1 2015 all people in the Netherlands can submit questions concerning issues that should be addressed by science the coming years. By sharing these questions on Twitter and Facebook submissions can gain momentum when they are favorited/liked/shared. We believe it is important that the Dutch science agenda takes special interest in issues related to animals. For this we started a campaign on Twitter labeled as #‎AnimalMindedScience. The idea is that we want to solicit as much support as possible to emphasize this point. We therefor started a worldwide query for brilliant ideas concerning the Dutch science agenda (which we will translate in Dutch and submit before the deadline of May 1 here). In addition, for existing ideas such as the ones suggested below we’d like to request your support by way of Twitter retweets and/or favorites, and/or by Facebook likes and/or shares. But the very best place you can support submissions like ours is on the official site in English and/or Dutch! .

Tweets & Facebook posts on the approach method of #‎AnimalMindedScience

URGENT! Brilliant ideas needed to make Dutch science more ‪#‎AnimalMindedScience‬ <May1! Make NL science >> Animal Minded! PLZ vote for #AnimalMindedScience on Twitter or Facebook! Help make NL science more animal minded by RT or FAV sug < May 1! YOU can help make NL science more Animal Minded! How? Go to ‪#‎AnimalMindedScience‬ & Submit idea, OR RT existing one! Search ideas @ “#AnimalMindedScience & SHOULD” on TW / FB & VOTE by RT/FAV! E.g. #AnimalMindedScience SHOULD help make Animal Minded decisions E.g. #AnimalMindedScience SHOULD make animals happy

Tweets & Facebook posts on key suggestions for #‎AnimalMindedScience

#‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should show that lab animal suffering can be reduced substantially! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should prevent species from going extinct! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should show compassion in world farming! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should help feed the world without making animals pay the price! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should show that animals have feelings too! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should show that an apology is warranted for behaviorism, and its denial of animal feelings! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should study animal autonomy, freedom and justice! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should refrain from allocating budget to institutions responsible for creating welfare problems in the first place. #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should reduce population growth! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ helps people make AnimalMinded decisions. #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should help people control damaging desires (like >>$$$ and pwr)! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should show that what we eat determines who we are! #‎AnimalMindedScience‬ should make veggieburgers taste better than real burgers! And both cheaper and more healthy as well!

First submission (English version): How to make the science agenda and society animal minded?

Sustainability and economics are important themes. The Netherlands is only 41.5k km2 with 17m people and billions of animals. The balance between the interests of people and animals must be restored. Firstly, an animal-minded science-agenda demands a critical redirection of the budget for research involving laboratory animals to substantially reduce suffering. Secondly, it addresses wildlife issues such as species preservation, climate change and welfare in zoos, the exotic pet trade and fisheries. Thirdly, it solves pet problems (e.g. trade, abandonment, breeding, neglect and social isolation). Finally, but not least importantly, it solves production problems of livestock (e.g. breeding, housing, transport, slaughter and consumer demand). The animal-minded science agenda not only studies problems, but actually solves them, both at the perceptual and technological levels. This requires an elevated focus on ethics, psychosocial, epidemiological, big-data and technological research strategies. The current agnosticism regarding animal feelings is still dominant and needs to be counteracted. Similarly, the perceived importance of material hedonism needs to be challenged. Perhaps, science should even enable politics to discourage economic and population growth, and develop technological alternatives to the sacrifice of animals for medical ‘hope’ research, as well as alternatives to the consumption of meat and dairy products. Note: this English version was submitted here, but English was not allowed, so I submitted a Dutch version as well (see below, or here).

Dutch version of the submission: Hoe kan de wetenschapsagenda en de samenleving het dier indachtig gemaakt worden?

Duurzaamheid en economie zijn belangrijke thema’s. Nederland is slechts 41.5k km2 met 17m mensen en biljoenen dieren. De balans tussen de belangen van mensen en dieren moet hersteld worden. Allereerst, vereist een dier-indachtige wetenschapsagenda een kritische herverdeling van onderzoeksbudget voor proefdieren om het lijden drastisch te verminderen. Ten tweede, komt er aandacht voor wilde dieren, zoals behoud van biodiversiteit, klimaatsverandering en welzijn in dierentuinen, de handel in exoten en visserij. Ten derde, lost het problemen op met gezelschapsdieren (bijv. handel, wegdoen, fokkerij, verwaarlozing en sociale isolatie). Tenslotte, maar niet minst belangrijk, lost het problemen op met de productie van vee (bijv. fok, huisvesting, transport, slacht en (de behoefte aan) consumptie). Een dier-indachtige wetenschapsagenda bestudeert niet slechts de problemen, maar lost deze ook feitelijk op, zowel qua perceptie als technologie. Dit vereist meer focus op ethiek, pychosociale, epidemiologische, big-data en technologische onderzoeksstrategieën. Het huidige agnosticisme m.b.t. de gevoelens van dieren is nog dominant en moet uitgedaagd worden. Misschien moet het onderzoek aan de politiek wel de mogelijkheid verschaffen om de economische – en populatiegroei tegen te gaan, en technologische alternatieven ontwikkelen voor het opofferen van dieren voor medisch ‘hoop’ onderzoek en ook alternatieven voor de consumptie van vlees en zuivelproducten. Note: See English version above or at the Wetenschapsagenda website. Note: this version may be removed from the website of the science agenda, because they don’t allow English submissions. Later, the Dutch version was submitted as a separate question: Hoe kan de wetenschapsagenda en de samenleving het dier indachtig gemaakt worden? (above or here).

Conclusion

Please support these submissions on Twitter by retweet/favorite and on Facebook by liking/sharing. But the very best place of support is at the submissions on the official site in English and/or Dutch! There you can also submit new ideas that need to be included in the science agenda. But if you understand Dutch and live in the Netherlands, you can also submit yourself here.

Further specification in tweets

I love you now, little puppy
but when you’re grown I won’t
and when I’m grown I’ll be a stone.

Hè, you!
Scientist in your glass bowl
please come out into the real world
where feelings matter!

#AnimalMindedScience:
* replaces self-interested objectivity with objective other-interestedness.
* will reveal that our highest good is neither heaven, nor eternal life or beauty, neither omniscience nor omnipotence.
* shows respect for all soals, all subjects-of-a-life, equally, for justice overrides selfishness.
* shall bring mankind back down to eye-level with the other animals.
* shall support the democratic agenda of protecting the least-well-off, and one vote for all.
* will never never mind, as science has done.
* follows the golden rule: Don’t do to otters what you wouldn’t others have do to you.
* shall not be the slave of public opinion, nor its master. They will co-evolve mankind.
* would never do to society what science has done to animals.
* will transform the clever man (homo sapiens) into the wise man (homo sapiens empaticus).
* does not treat humans as if they were animals, nor animals as if they were humans.
* will never again never mind.
* is to science what man has been to ape in evolution.
* is a matter of keeping balance
* shall support the conservative agenda of preserving what is good about the past.
* shall support the democratic agenda and give animals a vote.
* shall support the liberal agenda of freedom for all.
* supports the Labour agenda of demanding labour rights for animals, e.g. to work for food in a species-specific way.
* shall never treat other animals as just animals.
* was not born out of idealisme, but out of necessity, both moral and physical necessity.
* The more #AnimalMindedScience will be rejected, the more it will be needed and demanded.
* bends what was straight, and straightens what was twisted.
* acknowledges that we belong to the family of soals (subjects-of-a-life).
* treats all soals, ie all subjects-of-a-life, as equals, and not some as more equal than others.
* turns our world upside-down. Linear suppression becomes soal (subject-of-a-life) centralization.
* is for animal welfare what cradle-to-cradle is for the environment.
* says ‘No!’ to more money making
* says ‘Yes!’ to tender loving care.
* blows dust on science, so as to get rid of nasty parasites.

The dark forces ruled society, ignoring the needs of helpless animals…

Foal on back:
I’m on my back
want you to get back
on track
Mind our fate
before it is too late

Owl:
I’m a wise bird of prey
I do as I may
Tell you to mind
And ever be so kind

Giraffe tongue:
I lick.
I like.
My tongue
is strong.
I tell a tale
of human primacy gone stale

Lion:
I’m sexy and I know it
I’m sexy and I’ll show it
Unless you’re a boar, you’ll listen to my roar

In nature power implies the ability to mate and perpetuate life. Powerful ideas like #AnimalMindedScience are sexy.

We belong to the animal kingdom. We shouldn’t rule it.

If we breed like rabbits, crawl the earth like ants, and dig burrows in it like rats, we won’t be the crown of creation, but a problem pest.

@AnimalMinded Digital soal. Interested in everything about animals, including farm & lab animals, wildlife & pets.

Look at me!
I’m the king.
My kingdom comes.

Willful blindness

Definition: Willful blindness is a legal term, which means that if there is knowledge that you could have had or that you should have had, but choose not to have, you are still responsible. Willfully blind individuals seek to avoid liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting his or herself in a position where he or she will be unaware of facts that would render him or her liable. For example, persons transporting packages containing illegal drugs have asserted that they never asked what the contents of the packages were and so lacked the requisite intent to break the law. Such defences have not succeeded and courts have argued that the defendant should have known what was in the package and exercised criminal recklessness by failing to find out.

Symptoms: Willful blindness can be recognized by the use of jargon. In order to ‘cover up’ a problem people will refrain from using ‘judgemental adjectives and speculation’. For example they will prefer using the word ‘issue’, rather than ‘problem’, and ‘discrepancy’ or ‘does not perform to design’ rather than ‘defect’. Concerning ‘animal welfare issues’ words like ‘animal suffering’, ‘rights’ or ‘exploitation’ will be avoided and the term ‘current/modern livestock farming’ will be used instead of ‘bio-industry’.

Other phenomena associated with willful blindness include inbreeding, obedience, reluctance to change, stress, fearfulness, suspicion and a tendency to cross one’s arms and point to others, indicating that the responsibility belongs to someone else.

Pathogenesis: Willful blindness is caused by a perceived necessity. It may affect individuals and institutions, especially, when there are severe financial constraints. In the process of cost-cutting, ignorance becomes incredibly valuable, because once you start cutting to the bone you don’t want to know about the consequences of what you just did. Silence facilitates willful blindness. Even when many people in an organization may have a responsibility to fix a problem, nobody may take that responsibility, and hence act willfully blind. Predisposing factors for willful blindness include a deeply compassionate culture, a very steep hierarchy and size. In very large and complex organizations a true assessment of consequences is often almost impossible. Further predisposing factors include being exhausted or overstretched. If so, you can’t see, because you can’t think. Also, too many people from the same background will share the same values, beliefs and blind spots. In organizations where it isn’t felt to be safe to raise concerns or ask challenging questions, employees will focus on their task, obedient and conformist, and they suppose that because anyone can see the problem, someone else will do something. This is the main problem of willful blindness: that people are afraid to speak out, because they know they will be shot down, or imagine that they will.

Examples of willful blindness include the above-mentioned drug couriers, web providers denying they were responsible for illegal copy-right infringements on downloads of their users, the production of unsafe cars and aeroplanes, and medical errors like the practice of using x-ray technology to diagnose pregnant women (causing child cancer).

In an organization displaying willful blindness there will be a tendency to protect the system. If necessary the problem will be attributed to ‘a few bad apples’, which means that the system is immune. However, in willful blindness there is almost always a systemic failure.

It is also important to realize that the context can turn good people bad. Really good people can be transformed into bad guys by playing roles in a particular situation where that situation is validated by a system. This is what happened in Abu Ghraib, the American military run prison in Iraq where jailers, exhausted and abandoned by their superiors, humiliated prisoners and took pictures on their cell phones. One of the prison guards was an American patriot. Before Abu Ghraib he was active in Kuwait, trying to learn the language and working with children. He worked in the Abu Ghraib dungeon, starting his job starts at 4 pm for 12 hours, until 4 am in the morning. He slept in a prison cell in a different part of the prison, and he never left the prison for 3 months. This caused environmental overload. In addition, half of the prisoners had no clothes. They were naked all the time because they didn’t have enough prison uniforms. The prisoners didn’t speak English and there were only a few showers. This led to a gradual dehumanization. The prisoners seemed like, smelled like and looked like animals. If so, you begin to think of them as animals and treat them accordingly. At no point did the guards think that anything they were doing was wrong. Such is the power of the situation in causing willful blindness.

Therapy: To counteract willful blindness it is important to create a culture in which everyone can and wants to speak out. An example is what is called the ‘just culture’ in the Aviation industry. When it comes to safety performance competing companies openly collaborate. Required for establishing a just culture is for companies to make a public statement and to live up to the standards. It will take courage, skills and practice, e.g. it would involves hiring of more ethical personnel and the cultivation of conflict. People must be willing to take action in defence of people in need and foster a need heroic leadership. It helps if you can think of yourself as a hero in training.

Prognosis: It is doubtful if we will ever get rid of willful blindness. It’s main function is to protect the status-quo (until it is no longer tenable).

Animal welfare solutions: In the way we are presently treating animals all ingredients for willful blindness are present. Hence, there should be no doubt that willful blindness plays a major role in protecting the immoral and illegal interests of people, organizations and institutions responsible for major animal welfare infringements.

Sources: Margret Heffernan’s TED talk ‘Dare to disagree‘ (also available here). See also Willful blindness on Wikipedia.