Well, shit.

Had a knew realization upon waking up this morning and seeing a publication on Facebook. Realized that those with power, even if it is on a limited level, will feel the need to exercise that power in order to hang on to it.

As a kid, I learned, from my intuition, to ignore certain people. My problem this morning is that I did not do that. I “listened” to what they were willing to espouse. In the old face to face world you could read the body language and you could walk away upon realizing that the speaker was stuck in a paradigm that would not hold up to reasoned analysis from the outside.

Those people have exercised power in the past, but not beyond the parameters of their paradigm. The internet, though, allows people to stay within their paradigm. Cognitive dissonance will insure that those in the bell curve of intelligence, awareness, understanding, etc., the ones that know what they have been taught by doing the dance of the particular school in which they found themselves, will always find the paradigm they “know”.

Cross examination would remove the barriers, for those who witness the questioning, but maybe not for the person being questioned. All but 1% of people never cross examine themselves in any honest fashion, such that they never defeat cognitive dissonance. After all, one target on everyone’s spectrum of needs is to look after your own interest. Here, though, is one key question that is rarely asked: How far must you go down a path before you see that it leads to the “wants” of someone else in lieu of your “needs” (and the needs of others)?

Too many people believe that they have a right to get their wants regardless of the impact of the needs of others. That will never change in the absence of an inflection moment and those moments are rare if not initiated by a traumatic event. I don’t see the middle 80%, the Bell Curve Folks (BCF), ever getting “it” until they have no choice but to experience it. (Many analogies apply for this behavior, like Lemmings (who literally are born without depth perception).)

For those at “the top”, they should see that such an event will disrupt their wants greatly and thereby move to adjust accordingly. Oh, wait, there is that cognitive dissonance and those with the most leverage are often well removed from the understanding that allowed them to have leverage, since it was done by someone earlier in their path of origination. Ah, it will get down to a face to face at some point and the light of realization might come just before all lights go out.

Well, there’s a brain fart for you!