Cognitive Dissonance and Opportunities for System Change

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Like so many people, I am incredibly frustrated with humanity at the moment. We are trapped in a system that keeps promoting and rewarding immensely exploitative and destructive greed by a relatively small group of powerful wealthy people at the expense of everyone else and of the natural world. Despite decades of pressing signs that there will be devastating consequences for life on this planet, we mostly just continue business as usual, as if ignoring the symptoms will make the disease go away. In the meantime, climate breakdown is already upon us. In the first half of 2023, we have experienced an escalation of droughts, floods, fires, storms, and heat waves. We are constantly breaking records. Global average temperatures are through the roof, sea surface temperatures are exploding off the charts, antarctic sea ice is melting like an ice cube on hot asphalt in the summer sun. Anyone who has paid some attention knows that the changes are not linear, that there are so-called tipping points of drastic and irreversible change, like the disappearance of sea ice or the Amazon. Large areas will become uninhabitable, food security will break down, and many many humans, as well as domestic animals and wildlife, will suffer and die as a consequence. It is already happening.

While there has been knowledge that the burning of fossil fuels would cause climate change for well over a century, and increasingly pressing concerns about the effects for life on earth during the last 50 years or so, new projects for oil and gas extraction are still being granted worldwide. However, the painful truth is that, even if we were to switch to 100% green energy tomorrow, the problems wouldn't all disappear so that we could live happily ever after. Our societies are deeply organized around capitalism, around the neverending pursuit of economic growth. And even any societies that are not, they cannot hide from capitalism's devastation. When we talk about a global GDP growth rate of 3%, we often forget that it is not linear but exponential growth, meaning growth upon growth upon growth. And since economic growth is strongly tied to the extraction of resources, such exponential growth also means an exponential growth in resource extraction. It is becoming quite obvious to everyone who doesn't have their heads stuck up their arses that this is untenable, even if it would be fueled by green energy. Our unsatiable hunger for growth is already resulting in massive deforestation, destructive mining for minerals, and huge production industries that devour water and pollute water, soil, and air. The worst reality is that we don't even need this growth; it does nothing but serve the wealthiest people on this planet through the exploitation of people and nature, and has thereby resulted in ridiculous and outrageous wealth accumulation and inequality.

Most people who are aware of these realities feel quite powerless to do anything about it. After all, capitalism doesn't just destroy the planet, it keeps most of us trapped in often rather depressing and exploitative forms of employment, struggling to survive as the costs of living are skyrocketing. Capitalism is terrible for our mental health in so many ways, but most of all, I would argue that it paralyzes us in a constant state of massive and collective cognitive dissonance. In the following sections, I will discuss this problem and explore possible ways out by focusing on system change.

Capitalism and Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a term launched by Leon Festinger (1957) in his book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance to describe the situation where a person experiences an inconsistency between two cognitive elements, with ‘cognitive element’ meaning any knowledge, opinion, or belief about the environment, about oneself, or about one's behavior. This experience is psychologically uncomfortable and leads the person to try to reduce the inconsistency. There are various strategies they could apply in order to do so. The most obvious one would be to make an informed decision about which cognitive element is more correct or important and to adjust one's views and behaviors accordingly. For example, someone who enjoys smoking learns that it is bad for their health. They may struggle to accept this reality, but eventually decide to quit their bad habit. However, very often people feel so strongly bound by certain cognitive elements that they become creative in rationalizing it, or they might deny or ignore conflicting elements. For example, a smoker may argue that going to the gym every day balances out the negative effects of smoking, that there are also benefits of smoking, such as relaxing or socializing, or even that smoking is not so bad for your health at all. They may also refuse to discuss the health effects of smoking and avoid any exposure to news items covering this topic. Not all these strategies will be effective, so then the uncomfortable feeling of dissonance could linger and remain unresolved.  Festinger argues that certain cognitive elements are more resistant to change, for example if they involve behaviors that are difficult to change, if nothing at all can be done, or if the cognitive element is in complex relationships with other elements.

Even though most people are well aware of the destructive forces of capitalism, they still engage in the reproduction of capitalist principles and practices through their jobs, consumption patterns, political voting, and even conversations with friends. After all, capitalism has deep historical roots and has infiltrated and shaped our institutional landscapes, our behaviors, and our beliefs in ways and degrees we don't always realize. As a consequence, most people constantly experience some level of cognitive dissonance. The experience is much more distressing for some than for others, depending on how much they engage with the issues and how important it is to them to find a sense of moral consistency. Being in this state of distress for a long time without resolution can negatively affect one's mental health. This is why I chose to use the quote "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." It was assigned to Krishnamurti, who said similar things, although he never quite used those exact words. I have often found some comfort in this quote while I was struggling to find resolution for the cognitive dissonance throughout the various stages, interrruptions, and twists of my career. Although it is a helpful reminder that it says nothing about your worth when you are not successful in this world gone mad, it is also important to recognize that not being well-adjusted does have consequences in real life and may lead to serious health issues, poverty, and alienation.

Those people we would consider to be well-adjusted to society must not experience the dissonance quite so strongly and likely resolve any hint of it by avoiding exposure to certain types of information or by using various justification strategies. We often wonder how people like Jeff Bezos can look at themselves in the mirror and not be ashamed. This is probably how. He probably surrounds himself with people who don't challenge the moral questionability of his accumulated wealth through the exploitation of workers, nature, and humanity at large. He may argue that his wealth trickles down or he may buy off his conscience by donating to charity. Many people are not quite so eager or comfortable to play the capitalist game for personal gain. For them, looking away from the consequences or finding weak excuses is simply not an option. While it may be just as smart a decision to disengage from capitalism as it is to quit smoking, it is pretty much impossible to do so in the contemporary world. It's like the cigarette smoke is being blown into your face throughout the day and your job requires you to smoke in order to get paid money for your own survival. So what to do?

Many idealistic people will focus on the things they can change in their own lives in order to counterbalance and justify their unavoidable implication in capitalism and thereby try to contribute to alternative ways of consumption, to a healthier planet. They may start a vegan diet, they may buy organic veggies from local farmers, or they may pick up litter from beaches. While these behaviors have positive effects and may also make the person feel better, possibly even resolve the sense of dissonance for some, they are superficial solutions that tend to treat the symptoms rather than the disease. It's a bit like a smoker going to the gym to stay healthy. It will definitely contribute to the person's health and may counteract some negative effects of smoking, so it is better than doing nothing.

However, these types of solutions may also well have the opposite effect and work to justify and strengthen the habit of smoking, possibly even giving the smoker an excuse to smoke more. This is how many individuals and businesses end up greenwashing their activities, exaggerating the positive effects, thereby justifying the behaviors or the products. One study found that people who identify as pro-environment tend to emphasize actions that have relatively small ecological benefits and that environmental impact was best predicted by income level, with higher income leading to larger environmental impact. One example of this tendency is a new movement in the Netherlands focusing on cleaning up and raising awareness about the littering of cigarette buds, all the while, the world is getting covered in billions tonnes of dumped waste every year. Nothing wrong with fighting cigarette bud littering, but doing it through big collective events that get loads of media coverage seems outrageously disproportional to the actual problems of waste in our world. Are these people engaging in such actions as a strategy to resolve their cognitive dissonance without having to engage in more complex and overwhelming efforts?

There is growing awareness about the limitations and the pitfalls of individual lifestyle changes, so as a consequence cognitive dissonance may still linger. With increasing news coverage about the escalation of climate disasters, there is a growing trend of defeatism with people claiming that nothing can be done, humanity is doomed, and best enjoy life while you still can. It can result in self-destructive feelings of hopelessness, entrapment, and desperation. At the same time, more and more people calling for ‘system change’, not just to transition to green energy to solve the climate crisis, but to abolish capitalism and fight for sustainable and egalitarian ways of living.

The question is, can we tackle something as humongous as capitalism? It would be nothing like trying to quit smoking; a bit more like taking down the tobacco industry, but still a few scales up from there. Where even to begin? I ask myself this pretty much every day! The apparent impossibility of the task and the challenges to envision a different world discourages people from even trying. I also often feel paralyzed, redirected in my efforts, and restricted in possibilities for transformative action. This has motivated me to create this website and to use my writing through blogs to explore the opportunities that do exist, to deliberately and critically examine ways forward. Let's begin with examining the idea of system change and how it may be achieved.

Systems and System Change

It is valuable here to take a look at the work done by Donella Meadows. She was the lead author of the book The Limits to Growth (1972), commissioned by The Club of Rome, as well as the 20-year update Beyond The Limits (1992) and the 30-year update Limits To Growth (2004). These books warned that the trends of exponential growth of the human population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion would reach the limits of the planet and lead to a serious ecological and economic breakdown well before 2100 unless action would be taken to pursue a global equilibrium. Of course, the updates showed that the situation was worsening severely and the window to act and reduce the impact of unbridled growth reaching planetary limits was getting smaller and smaller. Meadows was an environmental scientist working on system dynamics. The books used a computer model called World3 to understand the dynamics between humans, human activity, and natural resources. Based on this work and her insights into systems, she wrote another book Thinking in Systems, published posthumously in 2008. This last book is especially valuable for thinking about system change and how to go about it. Meadows says the following about what systems are and do:

"A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world." (p. 2).

"A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. If you look at that definition closely for a minute, you can see that a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose." (p. 11).

Capitalism would be a system composed of elements like banks, investors, businesses, workers, and consumers, interconnected by rules about and flows of money and materials, with the purpose of pursuing economic growth. Of course, anyone trying to represent a system by designing a model can decide the level of detail required in order to better understand the way it works, with more detail leading to more accurate representation of reality but also increasing complexity. Systems are often much more complex and unpredictable that we would like to think. Because of the dynamics between stocks, flows, and reinforcing and balancing feedback loops, any change or intervention is likely to create effects we hadn't anticipated. The relation between cause and effect is rarely linear, there are often delays in effect over time that will take much longer than we imagined, and there will be factors we considered irrelevant playing a much bigger role in the system than apparent.

As Meadows indicates, there are many good things about systems when they work well. It's not like we could do without them. They emerge naturally in the world based on certain rules and consistencies. They can be resilient and self-organizing. However, they can also become dysfunctional when certain system structures cause problematic behaviors. For example, the cells in our body can divide and create new cells to replenish and repair, but there is a balancing feedback loop that stops new cell division when no longer needed. In cancer cells, this feedback loop no longer works and they keep creating new cells, leading to damaging growths in the body. Meadows identifies particular archetypes, or system structures that cause serious problems. She emphasizes that we often blame such problems on particular actors or events, leading us to make changes that won't actually solve the problems. She called these archetypes ‘system traps’, but they are also opportunities for intervention if we manage to recognize them and act to eliminate the root cause. 

One of the system traps she identifies is ‘policy resistance’, where various actors with conflicting goals and interests respond differently to newly introduced policies and will find creative ways to get around them, thereby not solving the original problem. The solution would be to align the different goals, usually by finding a more important overarching goal where everyone works towards the same outcome. Another system trap she describes is ‘success to the successful’, which is the well-known trend that those who are successful gain certain means to become even more successful in the future. Without a balancing feedback loop, this leads to escalating inequality where winners keep winning more and more at the expense of everyone else. The solution is the introduction of levelling mechanisms, such as progressive income tax, public welfare, labor unions, universal health care and education, etc. Many of these already exist in some form, but are often under attack by those who feel disadvantaged in their efforts to accumulate wealth and as a consequence not sufficient to actually level the playing field fairly. Meadows mentions several other system traps that are interesting, but I will just mention one more that is especially relevant, which is ‘seeking the wrong goal’. Now, in our capitalist system everything is organized towards the pursuit of Gross Domestic Product and its growth, which does nothing to protect the well-being of people in general and actually damages it in the long run. Thus, a better goal would be to pursue the best possible level of human well-being that is in balance with the natural environment and can be maintained into the future.

Meadows stresses that changing a system's goal is the most powerful way to influence the behavior of a system. It is also number 3 in her top-12 of so-called leverage points, where you can intervene in a system and achieve real shifts. These leverage points are points of power, but Meadows warns that they are often counterintuitive and people tend to push them in the wrong direction, worsening rather than solving a problem. So it is important to thoroughly research the system and look at previous responses to certain adjustments in order to gain insight into the right course of action. Other leverage points she mentions are strengthening balancing feedback loops and weakening reinforcing feedback loops and numbers 8 and 7, where preventing the accumulation of wealth through progressive income tax (weakening reinforcing feedback) would be more successful than anti-poverty programs (strengthening balancing feedback) in creating more equality. She also mentions the strengthening of information flows as crucial for accountibility and associated feedback loops (number 6), adjusting the rules, including incentives, punishments, and constraints (number 5), and strengthening self-organization of the system by promoting diversity, variability, experimentation, and thereby resilience (number 4). Her numbers 2 and 1 are paradigms and transcending paradigms, emphasizing that society's deepest beliefs about how the world works form a very powerful leverage point. The shifting of paradigms can completely transform a system, while she imagines the abandonment of paradigms as sources of truth could lead to societal enlightenment.

Now, all of this sounds wonderful, yet increasingly unrealistic and unattainable. Meadows acknowledges that the higher a leverage point is on her list, the more the system will resist changing it. It also seems quite obvious from all of this that abolishing capitalism in a sense of removing the system and creating a new one from scratch would be impossible. It's not one thing that you could take and discard. It's deeply embedded in all our institutions and even our way of thinking. This is why revolutions tend to fail: because they are unable to drastically renew the system in a short period of time. People often hold on to the things they know, and of course many people have tremendous interests in maintaining the status quo. So, instead, in order to transform the capitalist system into a new system, we need to focus on changing the connections and the goals. Mostly this would require making significant changes in international and national laws and policies, as well as informing and mobilizing the general public. Of course, this is easier said than done. We already know that making changes to the system could have unforeseen effects that could affect the lives of millions of people, so it is crucial to thoroughly investigate the potential effects of the changes to ensure they will benefit humanity and the planet as a whole. However, even when doing so, there are immense forces fighting such changes.

Meadows says "the system will resist" because she wants to emphasize that changing elements in the system (for example changing particular individuals in positions of power) are unlikely to make a huge difference. Replacements will usually take the position and repeat the same or similar patterns. While it's good to recognize this, it is also important to realize that there are particular groups of individuals who benefit immensely from the dysfunctional system we call capitalism. They are the wealthiest people on this planet and, as a consequence of the system trap 'success to the successful' have accumulated incredible power and resources to weaken democracy and demonstration rights, interfere with policy changes through extensive lobby, taking over the media and organizing disinformation campaigns, harass activists, lawyers, and NGOs with tedious and abusive lawsuits, or even murder environmental and human rights activists. While it is important to focus on changing the rules of the game, it is also crucial to keep exposing the businesses, organizations, and individuals who are ruthlessly enriching themselves and publically and relentlessly shame them to enlighten the public and strengthen public pressure for change.

It's quite obvious that achieving system change is not at all easy. It is an incredibly hard and long battle. Committing to system change means that you can't pat yourself on the back for spending some days picking up litter from beaches and be done. It means fighting for legislative changes that hold businesses responsible for the packaging of their products and the litter and pollution they cause. Even relatively small causes, like fighting against a particular new fossil fuel project, can involve many years of battle by multiple groups of people and may well still fail. Fighting for system change is an extremely frustrating and generally unrewarding process. People often overcommit, become desillusioned and burnt out. This is why community is essential. Sharing work, knowledge, skills, challenges, and frustrations; supporting each other in any way possible. Even though many battles may appear too big, too difficult, and doomed to fail, the work is always worthwhile since it contributes to a broad movement. As there are tipping points in climate change, there are also tipping points in social movements. One minute it seems like the cause is lost and no one cares, and the next moment tens of thousands of people are mobilized for demonstrations and actions, the media can no longer ignore the issue, and there is tremendous momentum for movement building, dissemination of information to the general public, and gaining legitimacy in the public sphere. One of the most important things we can do is to keep building capacity (people, knowledge, skills, networks, and not least importantly funds), not just to fight the current system, but to thoroughly envision a post-capitalist world and the pathways we need to create in order to get there. We need solid strategies and plans to push through once a tipping point happens, so to be able to use such a moment to achieve real structural change.