The Semantics of Deception

Learning, Development & the Wisdom of Reason

That feeling that your beliefs contain some logical fallacies is called dissonance. Dissonance precipitates action. Learning can be defined as you attempt to handle feelings of dissonance. Self-development is the result of utilizing learning to redefine your role and increase your information by quantity and sources. You can learn without developing, but you cannot develop without learning.

You certainly have been faced with situations that cause stress. When this stress causes you to question beliefs about yourself and your values it is called dissonance. In dissonant situations, you seek to find more information about the stressor in order to return to your previous, lower stress state. Learning is a way to deal with dissonance. In this way, learning is defined as knowledge acquisition to alleviate anxiety or stress.

This may be why people think that suffering is a way to learn valuable life lessons. The stress of suffering creates opportunity and motivation for learning. Yet, true learning results in behavior change through a process of conditioning. True learning is characterized by autonomy, license, and tangible products. Two issues present here: 1) stress does not always result in positively reinforcing behavior change; and, 2) Learning at its best is entered into willingly so that an awareness of the knowledge in context aligns with motivation to attend to transferrable skills.

Consonance is the opposite of dissonance. The desire for consonance motivates the creation of a structured worldview. That is, you learn to view the world and your place within it in ways that reduce your stress. But, often, this role definition causes stress in itself. Often, your carefully constructed understanding of the world is not sufficient to alleviate stress or explain the tragedies of the world. Because of this, you choose one of two basic options: learn more or refuse to believe evidence. If you chose to refuse to believe, you have to find some social environment in which to shield yourself from opposing views. If you choose to learn more, you have to find a social environment that will inform you.