It’s a never-ending journey.
I keep saying this repeatedly but it’s not getting into my head.
I keeping thinking, “Oh, I’ll just have this one major realization and I’ll be over this transition and then I’ll have figured everything out.”
Nope!
There is no end. This isn’t a transition like before. It is a continual process.
It is a continuum.
The sooner I can embrace this instead of denying it, the sooner I’ll be able to relax and go with the flow of it.
I’ve still got a lot of work to do.
If you’re wondering why in my previous posts I decided to describe why vertical development is important and why vertical development training should be accessible to everyone first, before describing what vertical development is, hopefully the reason for this is obvious. Often times, the whyof something is more important and compelling than the what of it is.
Like if I tell you what vertical development is first, you’ll be like, “Ok, that’s interesting but why would this matter to me?” Therefore, I spun things around and explained why vertical development was important (hopefully in an emotional way that connected with you) and why the training of it should be accessible to everyone.
The other primary reason for doing this is that it’s really hard to explain whatvertical development is in a way that will connect with you, unless I can bridgesome emotional experience within your life that relates to it and helps you to understand what it means to you personally. This more than anything is what I struggled with when I first started learning about vertical development. That being understanding the meaning of it.
So what is vertical development then? To explain this, let’s first describe what it is not. In fact, let’s just step back and describe what most people think the word “development” often conventionally means to them.
Usually most people think of the word “development” as meaning the acquiring of skills and knowledge. It is but specifically with regards to what’s known as horizontal development.
An easy way to visualize this is thinking of information going “in” to you, like you’re a cup that you’re filling up. This is the conventional way people see learning. You read or are taught something, you acquire it, and you can use it again later.
Another way of thinking about this is thinking of this type of knowledge gained as explicit knowledge. It can be easily transferred by word of mouth, usually from an expert on the subject.
Now vertical development is radically different than horizontal development. It’s about growing the capacity and awareness of your mind, so that you can understand the complexity of life in a much deeper way than what you might have believed or interpreted it to be before.
An easy way to visualize this is to imagine you being able to increase the size of your cup through the transformation of it. So while horizontal development is informational learning that adds to “what we know”, vertical development is transformational learning that changes “how we know”.
Another way of thinking about this transformational learning that occurs within vertical development is realizing it is more about tacit knowledge. What this means is that it is knowledge that can’t be easily transferred via word of mouth but it actually has to be experienced to be fully understood, usually with the assistance of a mentor who has already experienced it themselves.
If it’s still not evident about the difference between horizontal and vertical development, let me try to narrow this down and clarify it even further. Vertical development relates to your perception of yourself, your identity, and the world around you, encompassing your assumptions and beliefs, as well as your needs and values. It therefore encompasses what you believe is possibleand impossible.
Now let me give you some more comprehensive ways to visualize vertical development, with the first way being visualizing it as way to upgrade your GPS for navigating life.
Basically think of your perception of yourself, your identity, and the world around you, which encompasses your assumption, beliefs, and values, as being your existing worldview. Think of it like a mental map within your mind. But again, as the saying goes, “the map is not the territory,” even though we might think and believe it is.
So when we undergo vertical development, we are able to expand our worldview and mental map of the world (represented by us as a cup), understanding it in a broader and deeper way. Why this is essential is because without doing this, we may face challenges within our life that are beyond our comprehension of what’s possible and thus may think they are impossible.
But they’re not impossible. We just need to upgrade our internal map so that we can see a way to bridge these challenges and drive across them into a whole new world of possibilities that previously we thought were impossible.
At the same time though, if we don’t upgrade our mental map via vertical development, the opposite can occur as well. In effect, the world will change around us and it will be operating in a different way, yet we are still utilizing our old map which no longer works. Thus we can take a turn and suddenly we’ve driven into a lake of trouble without being aware of it because we just implicitly trusted the way things previously worked, even though they’re not working that way anymore.
Another way to visualize vertical development is to visual it as way to upgrade the operating system and interface of your mind.
For example, back when we just had MS DOS, the operating system was quite basic, yet still functional, primarily just using a keyboard for input. Yet if you wanted to do any sort of drawing or artwork, your capabilities and options were extremely limited.
Today with operating systems like Windows and Mac, which give us a mouse as a powerful input and an upgraded graphical “windowed” interface, our creative capacities are dramatically increased.
The same applies to seeing vertical development in this same way. By upgrading your mind via vertical development, you gain more experiential inputs to understanding life and in turn gain greater creative capacities for it. Most important of all though, your interface for interacting with life is dramatically improved, allowing you to perceive things that others might lack the awareness of.
Now to close off and wrap this all up, I’d like to describe to you a way of visualizing vertical development that has been around for ages.
The Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic describes The Allegory of the Cave to help us understand “the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature.” He does this by getting us to imagine people who for their entire lives have been chained by their necks to a lower inner wall within a cave and can only see the outer wall of the cave in front of them.
Unbeknownst to these prisoners, behind the lower inner wall that they are chained to are people who walk along it with a large fire behind them which causes their shadows to be cast on the outer cave wall that the prisoners can see. Only the shadows and sounds that these people make form the effective reality that these prisoners experience, so they believe it to be the “truth” and their world.
But imagine if one of these prisoners is released and was able to look around, seeing the fire and people behind them, and then, even more so, was forced upwards out of the cave and into the sunlight. Wouldn’t that whole experience feel not overwhelmingly threatening and disorienting, as their existing reality up until that time was just the shadows. Yet the fire and sunlight are unknown things to them, since they had no previous experience and thus comprehension of them.
But let’s say the escaped prisoner finally begins to reason and understand what’s going on and realize that there is a much larger world out there than they had initially believed. Might they not want to go back to the cave and help the other prisoners there escape from their predicament as well? But when the escapee does so, explaining the larger world that awaits them, most of the prisoners might think them crazy (and perhaps might even try to kill the escapee) because the prisoners cannot comprehend and believe the larger reality that the escapee has perceived, seen, and understood because it seems impossible for them to do so without experiencing it for themselves firsthand.
What I’ve just described is a way to understand what vertical development feels like. Initially it can feel like a very threatening experience because you’re coming up against things that you’ve never experienced before and thus you won’t be able to comprehend them at first. And thus as usual, we often fear what we don’t know.
But over time, if one becomes curious to the experience, one may begin to question their existing assumptions and beliefs about their previous perceivedsense of reality and in turn openly embrace a quest for a much larger one.
And what does it reveal about the issues with existing leadership development programs geared for leaders within conventional organizations?
Today our world feels like it’s rapidly changing at a pace that many feel like they can hardly keep up with. Yet within many of our educational institutions, a lot of what’s being taught is pretty much the same as in the past, albeit with some minor upgrades for the times.
If we want people to be able to not just cope and survive within this newer world that is emerging but actually thrive within it, we need a newer, deeper way of learning, one that helps people to understand the changes that are occurring and how to transform and adapt to them.
Right now, the main way to get this deeper type of education is through leadership development courses which can cost thousands of dollars. These courses, along with teaching vertical development, help leaders within organizations to understand what this new VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world feels like and how to work within it.
Yet here’s the thing. The first article I saw about vertical development was one on Harvard Business Review back in 2005 entitled Seven Transformations of Leadership. Since that time, while I’ve seen a variety of people talking about vertical development, such as Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, as well as major initiative by change agents to transform organizations, there have been little to no significant changes in the way mainstream business operates today.
For example, I even remember when I was on Google+ back in the mid 2010s, I saw a lot of change agents worldwide raving about the potential and possibility of transforming organizations but few rarely made an impact on them because most organizations seemed to be looking for a quick weekend upgrade rather than putting in the years of arduous hard work to make the transformation possible for the organization, let alone themselves.
That’s the key thing to understand here. For an organizational transformation to occur, it’s got to start at the top, with the leadership team going through the transformation process themselves first. Yet it seems like a lot of them don’t fully understand the scope of what this actually entails and how epically challenging it is to be.
Levelling up your level of consciousness means completely transforming the way you see your self and the world around you, including your employees. This means letting go of beliefs and assumptions that form the very bedrock of your identity. Again, this is not a weekend retreat. This is the start of a lifelong journey.
What’s surprising though is that the very people who may be ready for this journey are the employees within the organization rather than the leadership itself. This is similar to my own case. When I saw the fallout from the dot-com bomb back in 2001 and saw how people were disposed of so carelessly, I began questioning my assumptions and beliefs around the concept of work and felt there had to be a better way.
Today, other people are experiencing these same feelings. Many may have started working with organizations during the pandemic with the promise that remote work was going to be a foundation for the company going forward but then suddenly organizations are demanding that people return to the office.
If you’re someone who has gotten used to this way of life, as it has given you more control over your life and a better relationship with your family, you may be questioning your assumptions and beliefs about working with these organizations, as well as the conventional concept of work, all over again as well.
Even those people who may be working within offices in the tech industry are even having a difficult time in other ways. While the tech industry once used to be a bastion for a great paying, reliable career. No longer does it seem the case. Many layoffs have occurred and finding work elsewhere has become more difficult than it has been in a long while.
All said and done, the point that I’m trying to make here is that the very people who are primed and ready for transformational learning are often the very people who are already questioning their assumptions and beliefs about their lives, especially as it relates to the concept of work.
These people are often like refugees who have been cast out from their old world and are adrift on a sea of uncertainty, trying to find their way to a new world of work. Their questioning of their existing assumptions and beliefs has already started them on a quest for seeking something new. Yet the main issue is that they’re really not sure how to get there and how to gain the new mindset that allows them to step into and work within this new world.
It’s funny. I remember reading a paper by Alfonso Montuori on creativity a while back where he indicated that creativity was simply getting out of the way of yourself. This I believe is the same issue that organizations are having today. Most leaders, as the minds of the organizational body, are effectively standing in the way of the organization itself and their employees which comprise the body of it.
There’s another quote, this time by Richard Barrett, which also relates. He indicated that you don’t transform organizations, you transform people. Yet to transform people, the organization has to get out of their way to give their people the time and space to actually do so.
In fact, if you understand creativity at a deeper level, this really touches upon the paradox that relates to it. That being, often at times we’re already being creative but not really aware of it. Within organizations, the same thing is occurring. People are often taking informal leadership positions amongst themselves to work around the formal “leadership” of the company to actually get things done.
So a lot of the times, leadership really is about learning to let go of trying to control people first and foremost but also at the same time, giving people the support they need, as well as the emotional confidence and inspiration to help them become the leaders they often already are but don’t fully realize yet.
This is why for the longest time, I’ve felt like my place hasn’t been within conventional organizations trying to transform them from within the inside but instead more about being on the outside, helping to bring outcasts from the old world of work to a sort of sanctuary online and help them realize that there is a new world of work just waiting over the horizon of their minds, if they have the courage to venture towards it.
This to me seems to be what’s missing from our world right now. And William Bridges spoke about it way back in the 90s within his book JobShift. He indicated how we will need new organizational institutions that are effectively a hybrid of previous organizations from the past. So they will not only help people gain the newer mindset and skills necessary to step into this new world of work but they will also provide the emotional support and inspiration that they need to get there.
In effect, the very things that they should be getting from conventional organizations today but aren’t because the leaders within these organizations are often more focused on maintaining their control, due to their older mindsets, rather than willing to let go of it.
Strangely enough, William Bridges likened these newer organizational institutions to medieval guilds of the past and I agree that it’s a perfect comparison. The key thing to realize here though is that what we are creatively crafting within these guilds is our very sense of selves, yet at a much deeper level than we are now. One that is also much broader, so as to contain the larger, newer life awaiting for us within this newer world.
This is why I believe vertical development needs to be accessible to everyone tody, no matter where and who they are. Within an organization or not. As a leader or not.
It’s because I believe that there already is a whole world of people out there already questing and seeking a newer world of work, yet they’re just not aware of the possibilities of it, nor see how its already emerging, because most organizations themselves aren’t aware of it.
In other words, what’s out of sight is out of mind. And in the same vein, what’s out of your mindset is out of your sight, since you’ll lack the awareness to perceive and see it.
So if most conventional organizations are standing in the way of most people’s growth and development, we need newer ways of learning vertical development, both outside the realm of these organizations and outside the normal realm of most leadership development programs.
We need something that is accessible to everyone for their own personaldevelopment. And it needs to be seen as a lifelong journey of playing, learning, and working with our very sense of selves, integrated together as a whole new way of living life.
And what does it reveal about the many issues we face today?
I’ve been researching vertical development for over a decade now. And as I begin to understand it at a deeper and deeper level, I realize how so much of it underpins life as a whole. So much so now, that I pretty much see how it relates to everything, especially issues arising within our world today.
The girl on the news who said she was doing everything society said she should do but nothing seemed to be working for her. More than anything, she felt like she was drowning and could barely get ahead.
The guy who committed suicide after he lost his job that he had most of his life.
The other guy who lost his lifelong job as well and ended up killing some of the people within the company in retaliation.
Leaders in companies who believe they’re the epitome of success, yet they’re often completely detached from the needs and values of their employees and customers.
Politicians who often say they will solve all of the problems their opponents created, yet they often end up creating more problems than solving them themselves when they get elected.
Citizens who feel like politicians and governments aren’t helping to solve the serious problems in their lives. Yet most of these wicked problems in the world today are systemic, societal issues that no single politician or political party can possibly solve on their own because these problems are so huge and complex in nature that they require a collective societal effort not seen since the previous world wars.
Most of these issues arise because of the way we perceive ourselves, our identity, and the world around us. They arise because we believe something and we make that belief into a reality, even though it may not actually be.
What vertical development helps a person to understand is that what they perceive and believe to be true, may not actually be true, primarily because we’re not seeing reality directly, so much as we’re seeing an internal GPS-like map of it that we believe to be true. And as the saying goes, “the map is not the territory.”
So when you lose your job and you feel like your life is literally over. It isn’t. It feels that way obviously, with a painful intensity that you can barely contain. But it’s not real in the sense that you’re not literally dying, even though it feels like you really are. This more than anything is what vertical development can help you to understand.
It helps you to realize that when you’re challenged by life on a monumental scale and your way of navigating the world no longer seems to be working for you, your life isn’t ending so much as it is creatively beginning in a whole new way. But in a way you just can’t fully understand and make sense of yet, until you take that first step of the journey into the unknown and begin mapping it out yourself.
For a lot of people, this is something that they aren’t going to be able to comprehend. For example, most people might say, “Life never seemed this complex before, why now?”
That’s because our world is constantly changing, yet many of us often aren’t aware of it in our busy daily lives, so we don’t really realize it. Instead we often look at the world today and think the world always worked this way. But it didn’t.
Everything that’s a part of your everyday life was conceived of as an idea by someone and made into a reality. The institutions that form the foundations of our society once didn’t exist but were created. Even the concept of a “job” is a fairly new invention for humanity.
People from history realize this because they themselves went through monumental times of change that we today often can’t fully comprehend, even though we often glorify those times. For example, World War I and World War II brought massive changes to the world and society, with women taking a huge step forward in terms of their rights because they were needed so much by society on the homefront, while men were fighting away on the war fronts.
Today, massive changes are rippling across our world and the pandemic was a perfect example of this. Most companies never considered allowing employees to work from home before, as they believed it would be an impossibility. But as the reality of the situation unfolded, it made it a necessity for it to be a possibility, regardless of how painful the process seemed for some, if not all of us.
Again this is what people who glorify the past often forget. They often wish they could have been alive during those times and been a part of those changes and gallant social efforts to overcome them. Well they can’t. But they can be part of the changes today, helping to gallantly overcome them. They just need to realize though that these challenges, as well as the methods to overcome them, will often be dramatically and painfully different than those of the past.
So think about that for a second. The very thing you may be pushing against today, because you believe it’s an impossibility due to your beliefs, may actually be the very thing that future generations may look back on and glorify as a possibility that was created to overcome the challenges of the times. “Women working in men’s jobs? Outrageous!”
This is something that most people have a hard time understanding about challenges. When we are dealing with them, we often perceive them as negative and threatening to our way of life. Yet after facing them and overcoming them, our lives can often be dramatically and meaningfullychanged for the better.
So yes, getting laid off at work can be a traumatic experience. But it can open our eyes to newer possibilities that previously we may have thought were impossible before within our safe, stable lives. This is more commonly known as post-traumatic growth.
The key thing to realize here is that life isn’t throwing challenges at you to make your life a miserable hell (even though it may seem that way at the time.) Life is presenting challenges as lessons to you to help you grow. And as always, growth is often a painful process. But with that growth comes a greater understanding of ourselves, the world around us, and what it means to be a human being in a much deeper and broader way. Something that hopefully brings us closer together collectively, rather than pushes us farther apart.
Be open to possibilities from the most unexpected places.
So often what we perceive as the problem in our lives is not actually the problem.
The problem instead is often our perception of the problem.
Once we let go of this perception that our problem is the problem, an inadvertent solution often arises that solves our problem indirectly and almost effortlessly.
(Afterwards one might even laugh hilariously at how blind they were to something so obvious to them now.)
This is it!
This is what I gave space for “something to emerge” over my last handful of posts and something did actually emerge. My mind is blown away by this synchronicity.
This article effectively explains what I’ve been intuitively doing for the last year or so, ever since Inflection’s Pi was released in May 2023, but I just couldn’t articulate why it felt so deeply important to me. At best, I described it as a process whereby the AI is helping you to “adventure within yourself” which in turn helps you with your growth and development. (Actually I may have even saved a conversation with Pi that does explain the why behind this all but I never shared it because I was too afraid to do so at the time.)
The following quote perfectly explains what I’m going through right now. Not “moments of confusion” as the article indicates but rather long bouts of confusion, followed by momentary bursts of insight. This is exactly how I feel doing my work right now and why it feels like I’m doing something wrong and or unnatural. But it’s not unnatural, even though it feels like it is, but rather a normal part of the process.
Imagine, for a moment, an assignment where the “deliverable” isn’t a polished essay, but a student’s entire revision history, including AI tutor interactions. This record would provide a window into their process of discovery and iteration, revealing the messy, non-linear reality of learning. It’s an approach that aligns with what we know about how learning actually happens—not in smooth, predictable increments, but in fits and starts, with moments of confusion followed by bursts of insight. This personalized approach to learning is one of AI’s most promising features.
“It’s about developing the ability to learn how to learn, which is arguably the most crucial skill in our rapidly changing world.”
Ben Kornell
This focus on metacognition has helped many educators illuminate gaps in understanding that might otherwise go unnoticed. … By highlighting these gaps, AI prompts students to reflect on their own understanding in new ways. They’re not just identifying what they don’t know, but understanding why they don’t know it and how they might go about learning it.
The above quote effectively embodies vertical development. When you face a life challenge that you can’t resolve with your current worldview, you are effectively facing cognitive dissonance on a macro, life scale. Thus it creates a massive “gap” in your life that can’t be resolved with what you currently “know” in terms of your knowledge. And instead it can only be understood and learnt by stepping into the unknown of it and actually experiencing it to make sense and meaning of it.
This shift allows us to focus less on memorization of facts and more on building skills and metacognitive abilities. The question isn’t just ‘What do you know?’ but ‘How do you think about what you know?’
Shantanu Sinha
The promise of AI in education isn’t about replacing human thought, but about enhancing it. It’s about creating tools that allow us to see our own minds more clearly, to understand our own learning processes more deeply. In the end, this AI-driven focus on metacognition may be preparing students not just for the jobs of the future, but for the lifelong journey of learning itself. By teaching students not just what to think, but how to think about their thinking, we may be unlocking the true potential of education in the AI age.
Vertical development is a lifelong journey which over time unlocks your true potential.
What does my recent realization about cognitive dissonance and critical thinking, in terms of how people often can’t deal with the tension of it and need to resolve the uncertainty and ambiguity of it, relate to my beliefs and assumptions about how I feel inadequate and stuck due to not making headway with my own life’s work?
What if I let go of trying to immediately resolve this uncertainty and ambiguity of why I’m feeling stuck, by not immediately assuming I’m useless and without value, which is just my ego toxically bossing me around.
In doing so, I can possibly create the space of something else to emerge. Perhaps something that can help me to understand what I’m going through in an entirely new way.
This conversation below with Claude.ai arose out of a conversation I had with my wife about something seemingly simple, that being where a new F1 racing driver would be driving in 2025. In my discussion with my wife, I was just trying to relay some new verified news I had heard about a new driver and she immediately didn’t believe it, relaying what she had heard and believed instead. Finally after I did some further digging, I clarified the situation and the status of the new driver which she seemed to accept.
What I realized afterwards was that we were both encountering cognitive dissonance but we were each dealing with it in different ways. When she heard the news I relayed, she immediately disbelieved it, even though it was verified news. When she told me what she knew and believed, however, I didn’t choose one or the other, even though the different information seemingly conflicted with one another. Instead I just held onto the ambiguity and uncertainty for a few minutes and just went exploring for more information.
This in a nutshell is how cognitive dissonance works on a micro scale but also on a macro scale as well. But on the macro scale this ability to hold onto ambiguity and uncertainty for much longer periods of time is critical in trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance one is experiencing. One may have to do this for days, weeks, months, or even years.
Nollind
It seems like cognitive dissonance can occur are varying scales within a person’s life (ie micro, macro). Is this correct? If so, provide a micro example and a macro example.
Claude
You’re correct that cognitive dissonance can occur at different scales within a person’s life, from micro (small, everyday situations) to macro (larger life decisions or beliefs). Let’s explore this with examples:
Micro example: A person who considers themselves environmentally conscious might experience cognitive dissonance when they choose to drive their car a short distance instead of walking or cycling. The dissonance occurs between their belief in being eco-friendly and their action of using a car for a short trip that could have been made by more environmentally friendly means.
Macro example: Someone who strongly believes in the importance of family might experience cognitive dissonance if they accept a high-paying job that requires them to move far away from their loved ones and miss important family events. The dissonance here is between their core value of family importance and their career decision that conflicts with that value.
In both cases, the individual experiences discomfort due to the inconsistency between their beliefs or values and their actions. The micro example relates to a small, everyday decision, while the macro example involves a major life choice that has long-term implications.
Nollind
In terms of vertical development, what scale is a cognitive dissonance that initiates a transformation to a new stage of development and level of consciousness? Provide an example of this.
Claude
The cognitive dissonance that initiates a transformation to a new stage of development and level of consciousness would typically be considered a macro-scale dissonance. This type of dissonance is profound enough to challenge and potentially reshape an individual’s entire worldview, values system, or way of making meaning.
In terms of vertical development theories (like those proposed by Robert Kegan, Susanne Cook-Greuter, or Ken Wilber), this kind of transformative cognitive dissonance often occurs at the intersection of stages or levels of consciousness. It’s typically characterized by:
- A deep, persistent sense of unease or dissatisfaction with one’s current way of understanding the world
- Encounters with information or experiences that fundamentally challenge existing mental models
- A growing awareness of the limitations of one’s current perspective
An example of this transformative cognitive dissonance might be:
A successful mid-career professional who has always defined themselves by their achievements and social status (characteristic of Kegan’s “Socialized Mind” or Cook-Greuter’s “Achiever” stage) encounters a life-altering event, such as a serious illness or the loss of a loved one. This experience creates profound cognitive dissonance by challenging their existing worldview in several ways:
- It confronts them with the limits of control and achievement in the face of mortality
- It raises questions about the meaning and purpose of life beyond societal definitions of success
- It exposes the inadequacy of their current coping mechanisms and meaning-making systems
This dissonance might initiate a transformation towards a more self-authored identity (Kegan’s “Self-Authoring Mind” or Cook-Greuter’s “Individualist” stage). The individual might begin to:
- Question societal norms and expectations they previously accepted without thought
- Seek deeper, more personally meaningful goals and values
- Develop a more nuanced, systemic understanding of the world and their place in it
- Become more comfortable with ambiguity and paradox
This transformation isn’t quick or easy. It often involves a period of confusion, soul-searching, and reconstruction of one’s identity and worldview. The resolution of this macro-scale cognitive dissonance results in a qualitatively different way of making meaning and interacting with the world, characteristic of vertical development to a new stage of consciousness.
Nollind
Back to a micro cognitive dissonance. It seems like when a person believes something, the cognitive dissonance occurs when a new piece of information is received that conflicts with what they know. So the person disregards the new info because they can’t believe it. Yet the goal is to actually keep the conflicting information at play, to sort of walk around it and figure it out (perhaps by seeking more info) thus helping to resolve it. But this requires holding onto the tension and exploring rather than resolving it prematurely by disbelieving the conflicting info.
Claude
Your analysis is insightful and captures a key aspect of how cognitive dissonance operates and how it can be productively addressed. Let’s break this down:
- Occurrence of cognitive dissonance: You’re correct that cognitive dissonance often arises when new information conflicts with existing beliefs. This creates psychological discomfort.
- Common reaction: As you noted, a common initial reaction is to disregard or dismiss the new information. This is a form of dissonance reduction that allows the individual to maintain their existing belief system without the discomfort of contradiction.
- More productive approach: The approach you describe – “keeping the conflicting information at play” and “walking around it” – is indeed a more constructive way to handle cognitive dissonance. This approach aligns with concepts in psychology such as:
- Cognitive complexity: The ability to perceive, differentiate, and integrate multiple perspectives.
- Tolerance for ambiguity: The capacity to accept uncertainty and conflicting information without immediate resolution.
- Benefits of this approach: By holding onto the tension and exploring rather than prematurely resolving it, individuals can:
- Gain a deeper understanding of the issue
- Develop more nuanced and flexible thinking
- Potentially arrive at a more accurate or comprehensive view
- Enhance critical thinking skills
- Challenges: This approach is challenging because:
- It requires emotional regulation to manage the discomfort of unresolved tension
- It demands cognitive effort to hold multiple, conflicting ideas in mind simultaneously
- It may temporarily decrease confidence in one’s beliefs, which can be unsettling
- Resolution: The goal, as you suggest, isn’t to immediately resolve the dissonance, but to explore it fully. This might involve seeking more information, considering different perspectives, or reevaluating the strength and basis of existing beliefs.
Your observation highlights an important aspect of cognitive growth and learning. The ability to engage with cognitive dissonance in this way – holding contradictions, seeking understanding, and resisting premature closure – is a hallmark of advanced cognitive development and can lead to more robust and adaptable belief systems.
This approach to handling cognitive dissonance on a micro level can, over time, contribute to macro-level cognitive flexibility and potentially even vertical development, as it trains the mind to engage with complexity and contradiction more effectively.
Nollind
Wait a minute. How does this relate to critical thinking?
Claude
Your question is astute – there’s indeed a strong connection between the approach to cognitive dissonance we discussed and critical thinking. Let me elaborate:
Critical thinking is fundamentally about analyzing information objectively and making reasoned judgments. It involves several key skills that directly relate to how we handle cognitive dissonance:
- Questioning assumptions: Critical thinking encourages us to examine our own beliefs and assumptions, which is crucial when facing cognitive dissonance.
- Evaluating evidence: When we encounter conflicting information, critical thinking prompts us to assess the quality and reliability of both the new and existing information.
- Considering multiple perspectives: Critical thinkers strive to understand various viewpoints, which aligns with the idea of “walking around” conflicting information.
- Suspending judgment: This is akin to “holding onto the tension” in cognitive dissonance. Critical thinking involves not jumping to conclusions prematurely.
- Analyzing arguments: This skill helps in dissecting both the conflicting information and our existing beliefs to understand their logical structure.
- Recognizing biases: Critical thinking involves awareness of cognitive biases, including the tendency to dismiss information that conflicts with our beliefs.
- Synthesizing information: This relates to integrating new information with existing knowledge, potentially resolving cognitive dissonance in a more comprehensive way.
- Metacognition: Thinking about our own thinking processes is crucial for both critical thinking and managing cognitive dissonance effectively.
The approach to cognitive dissonance we discussed – holding conflicting ideas, exploring them, and seeking more information – is essentially applying critical thinking skills to our own beliefs and the new information we encounter.
By engaging with cognitive dissonance in this way, we’re practicing and strengthening our critical thinking abilities. Conversely, strong critical thinking skills make us better equipped to handle cognitive dissonance productively.
In essence, the relationship between critical thinking and this approach to cognitive dissonance is reciprocal: each reinforces and enhances the other, contributing to more robust, flexible, and accurate thinking overall.
Nollind
But it seems like a lot of people don’t do this. They’d rather just resolve the tension of the cognitive dissonance by disbelieving some of the info which doesn’t actually “resolve” the cognitive dissonance, does it? In effect, they can’t handle the uncertainty and ambiguity, thus they need the certainty…immediately.
Claude
You’ve hit upon a crucial point that highlights a common human tendency and a significant challenge in critical thinking and personal growth.
You’re absolutely correct. Many people do indeed opt for the quick resolution of cognitive dissonance by dismissing or disbelieving conflicting information. This approach doesn’t truly resolve the cognitive dissonance; it merely suppresses it. Here’s why this happens and what it means:
- Psychological comfort: Humans generally prefer certainty and consistency in their beliefs. Ambiguity and uncertainty can cause anxiety and discomfort.
- Cognitive ease: It’s mentally easier and less energy-intensive to reject new information than to reconsider established beliefs.
- Ego protection: Admitting that one’s beliefs might be wrong can be threatening to self-esteem and identity.
- Confirmation bias: People tend to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs and dismiss contradictory evidence.
- Need for closure: Some individuals have a higher need for cognitive closure, preferring any answer over uncertainty.
- Lack of critical thinking skills: Many people haven’t developed the skills to effectively analyze and integrate conflicting information.
- Emotional reasoning: Strong emotions can override logical thinking, leading to quick dismissal of threatening information.
This tendency to quickly “resolve” cognitive dissonance by rejecting new information has several implications:
- It can lead to rigid thinking and resistance to change.
- It limits personal growth and learning.
- It can reinforce misconceptions and false beliefs.
- It can contribute to polarization in social and political contexts.
You’re right that this approach doesn’t actually resolve the cognitive dissonance in any meaningful way. Instead, it often leads to a superficial sense of certainty that’s built on ignoring or suppressing contradictory evidence.
The ability to tolerate ambiguity, sit with uncertainty, and thoughtfully consider conflicting information is a hallmark of cognitive maturity and advanced critical thinking. However, developing this ability often requires deliberate effort, practice, and sometimes guidance or education.
Recognizing this tendency in ourselves and others is a crucial step towards more nuanced, flexible, and accurate thinking. It underscores the importance of fostering critical thinking skills and the ability to manage cognitive dissonance productively in education and personal development.
Just share what you’re learning as you’re learning it.
This is the current adage.
Yet what is the point of sharing what I’m learning here, if it feels like and probably looks like a constant maze to others, especially as one traverses towards the higher levels of consciousness?
Update: This explains why.
The other day I woke up from a stress dream, one filled with anxiety at trying to get someplace by a certain time. I’ve had these before, at least one additional one in the last few months or so, and this one was so bad, I woke up, chuckled to myself, and said, “Geez, these dreams are killing me.”
The dream itself was trying to get to a hotel room a few blocks away by a certain time, so I could meetup with my family and we could all go to the airport and leave on a flight together.
Getting to the hotel by running a few blocks was fairly easy but when I got into the lobby, the hotel was having some charity event and it was full of people. I somehow forget my room number, so I had to line up and ask the hotel clerk what room I was staying in. He reminded me that my room number was on my room key and I laughed at myself for my forgetfulness and ran for the elevator.
When the elevator appeared, it was three quarters full with one lady bringing up a bunch of items for the charity event. Squeezing on to the elevator, I was followed by another lady with buggy, who proceeded to try to get on by ramming her buggy into my knees. I kept yelling at her to stop but she kept doing so and finally squeezed on.
Finally the elevator went up and proceeded to open at the floor above my floor because I had forgotten to push my floor number. Running out of the elevator, I turned to the stairwell doorway, only to find an under construction sign and the stairway being completely rebuilt. However, in squeezing through the wood, I was able to get on a makeshift stairwell and walked precariously down to my floor.
Doing so, I was greet by another under construction sign and a wooden wall barricading access to my floor. By this time, I’ve completely had it and completely freaked out in my dream shouting, “Are you fricken kidding me!!!” At which point, I woke up.
When reflecting upon this later in the morning and thinking about how Zen Buddhism sees life as an illusionary dream, I realized that just like how in my dreams, obstacles were popping up in front of me, blocking my way, so too it seemed that obstacles were popping up in front of me in my life and blocking me.
At the same time, I wondering if it’s because I feel like time is running out in my life and I have to rush to finish my life’s work. Yet in trying to rush and finish it, effectively running around in circles in my head, it feels like I am effectively getting nowhere fast.
All said and done, what I’m trying to say here is that, just like within my stress dream, I’m apparently The One creating the obstacles before me in my own life.
In effect, I’m running around in my head so fast, that I’m not aware of my own cognitive surroundings of knowledge already within my own head.
Again this feeling like, “The answer is out there.” But in reality, it’s not. It’s already within you. You just have to slow down and still yourself enough to become aware of it and see it.