Morning Thoughts: February 9, 2018

We encountered an invitation yesterday to a feast of cognitive dissonance that would take the cake, so to speak. It produced such a boggling that the mind strained to get over it.

First, as we all know, or should, cognitive dissonance bespeaks the state, prevalent in homo sapiens, of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

In other words, we have perfected the ability not only to believe, but also to act upon, thoughts that are in exact opposition to one another. To wit:

- Reducing the main source of input into the budgetary process will result in an increase in revenue into that same process.

- A man who mocks those carrying a physical shortcoming through life, who demeans women, violates his marriage vows, and lies without regard for societal damage is a “good Christian man” who was sent by a benevolent deity to rescue America from the “original sin” of universal health care.

- That it is okay to pay some man $4 Million dollars a year to teach temporary college students to play a sandlot game, but it is not okay to teach the wondrous beauty of  expressive dance in our state-supported universities.

That’s the one I’m talking about.

Not teach dance? What a cold and sterile world we would face without dance and the other arts. Why, we might as well not teach a youth, who might be the next Dylan Thomas, Ralph Ellison, Cao Xueqin, Walt Whitman, Alice Walker, or Dante Alighieri, to make whole words out of mysterious symbols. We might as well discourage the girl or boy who might observe a starry sky and, with their gifted hands, produce a masterpiece that would inspire generations for centuries to come.

We should, by this standard, not recognize that the agonies of losing a loved one might be soothed by Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

We could go on forever. Let’s just say that we take a youth and teach that youth nothing but the harsh, cruel, image of a would not ennobled by the beauty of a sunset and only guided, mentally, by the avenues of the mind that lead to greed and personal power. What would we have as a reward for funding such education? If not a Vincent van Gogh, then what?

I don’t know. Maybe a conservative politician?

None of the arts. Just cipherin' for us.