[dankotanko1599]

The way I see it, say if someone smokes cigarettes... And one day they are confronted with irrefutable evidence that what they are doing is bad/wrong/dangerous - their mind is then uncomfortably split between two conflicting ideas:

1. "I'm an OK person, I'm not particularly bad, I try and do the right thing"

2. "How can #1 be true if there is strong evidence to the contrary?"

I think you're right, hackit2, this is usually not verbally articulated, but FELT as discomfort.

This internal discomfort can be resolved either by:

1. Facing up to the facts around cigarettes - This is hard, this sucks. If you're smart you have to face up to all sorts of uncomfortable stuff, from governmental benefits of addiction to your own mistakes.

2. NOT facing up to what is real. But siding with a group/ideology/thinking mode which is working on the front of modifying reality. Investing time in trying to change reality through narrative or rhetoric or disproving.

I think this framework happens to us all on some fronts... I think the catholic church might have hit up against some of this stuff when the earth ceased being the centre of the universe. I think they may have chosen path #2, cause they had a lot to lose.

[hackit2]

By articulating the internal discomfort the problem goes away because it mostly never about what you think the problem is because the problem is just a placeholder.

Apologies for the long sentence.