I remember extremely well a few concepts from when I studied
Psychology in college. One is the concept of Cognitive Dissonance. This is the mental stress
or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time;
performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or
is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or
values. The example my teacher used was the person that is unable to quit
smoking and therefore “tricks” him/herself with ideas such as “Uncle Louis
smoked until he was 90 and he had a good life”, or “I will die of something in
any case so let me at least do what I like”, tricks to reduce that stress and come
to terms with that inability of quitting.
The Netherlands breathes cognitive dissonance right now in
every corner. We are getting a massive amount of stress from what we are seeing
happening in the world: the Brexit, the
US elections or the upcoming elections in the Netherlands and France with
Wilders and Mary Le Pen leading the polls for months. We are seeing a
terrifying increase in hate crimes in the UK, and the USA, we are enraged to
see that the next American Vice President would like to divert HIV prevention
funds to conversion therapy for LGBT people, or rule mandatory funerals for the
fetuses of women that had abortions or miscarriages. We are seeing a chief of
staff for the President Elect, Bannon that is the head of the alt-right
movement - which is simply the Ku Klux Klan,
without the hoods, the KKK with ties and suits. We are heartbroken to see that
the next leader for the Environmental Protection Agency does not believe in
climate change. And the list goes on, and on.
This is so much to bare, that we disconnect. We decide not to read the news anymore, take a break
from social media, and we go on with our life like if nothing happened, because
we are humans after all and this is too large, too painful to digest.
And we resort to hope.
We hope that the tiny chance there is that Hillary will still be president is
true, hope that Trump will be impeached, we hope he will actually back up from
the many things he said he would do. Here in the Netherlands we hope that
Wilders will end up in jail, we hope that the multiparty Dutch system will not
allow for him to be the next prime minister, hope, hope, hope….
The Guardian, the Huffington post, the New York times and
many historians are warning that we are in a very similar moment than the times
preceding the rise of Hitler and the second World War. So, why is the majority
not reacting? It is like the band that still kept playing while the Titanic was
sinking…
We hope and disconnect because is our defense mechanism and
because acting is deemed extremely complicated. Two things that are allowing us
to so something very difficult to get rid of the stress produced by cognitive dissonance:
One is our lack of time. We literally DON’T have time in our
busy lives. We have many responsibilities at work, we have families, we have
social lives, we have plans.
The other barrier is that we DON’T know quite what to do. I
would add to those two, the fact that we, liberal, progressive people live in very
comfortable positions thanks to our welfare systems (which we should keep), and
we live in an era where we expect the government (we pay enough taxes!) to
solve all of our problems for us.
Well, this is not going to be solved by the government. It
surely will not be solved by us looking away and not acting. We have to learn
from what has happened with Brexit and the US elections and stop hoping this won’t
happen here. We have one thing in our favor, and that is that the Dutch
elections are yet to happen. We can still do something so that Wilders
does not become Prime Minister. I truly believe that we need to think of the
worst case scenario, rather than keep hoping for the best to bring back to our
minds the sense of responsibility and the sense of urgency.
Wilders 1-page program affects us all. He wants to close all
mosques in the country and ban the Quran, he wants to stop funding to
development cooperation, innovation, arts and culture, and funding for green
energy (“windmills”), he wants to leave the EU. Even if he is right in some of
the problems the country has, HE is not the answer, and HE will be the Prime
Minister.
We all need to make time to act and we need to come together
to think of ways (big and small) that will make a true difference. How about we
use the money and the time we were going to spend in Christmas presents for
2016 in actions rather than buying more stuff that we don’t really need? How
about we give each other time to make a change – as small as it might be? How
about we give ourselves and others the gift of responsibility and urgency to
act? How about we engage with our employers about how him as PM might impact
the organization/company and ask our employer to “donate” some of our time to mobilize
and “poke” others to do the same? How about we rearrange our priorities in the
next 4 months to become part of the solution and not stay part of the problem?
We are starting somewhere, and are coming together to think
of more strategies and actions. Join us or others that are mobilizing. Send an
email to mariabordallo@gmail.com
