Dinesh's photos with the keyword: Useful Delusions

www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier Action without a name, a “who” attached to it, is meaningless whereas an artwork retains its relevance whether or not we know the master’s name. Let me remind you of the monuments to the Unknown Soldier after World War I. They bear testimony to the need for finding a “who,” an indetifiable somebody whom four years of mass slaughter should have revealed. The unwillingness to resign oneself to the brutal fact that the agent of the war was actually nobody inspired the erection of the monuments to the unknown ones -- that is to all those whom the war had failed to make known, robbing them thereby, not of their achievement, but of their human dignity. ~ Page 305 (Excerpt: Chapter: Labor, Work, Action ~ “Thinking Without Banister” ~ Hannah Arendt

Source: Facebook post Martin’s www.chicagomag.com/city-life/may-2011/dorothy-martin-the-chicagoan-who-predicted-the-end-of-the-world-and-inspired-the-theory-of-cognitive-dissonance Prophecy attracted a determined band of followers, many of whom quit their jobs and gave up their homes to prepare for the end times. Some were drawn by newspaper advertisements that proclaimed the end of the world. The advertisements also caught the eye of a young University of Minnesota psychologist named Leon Festinger, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails who infiltrated the group in hopes of studying th after-effects of a prophecy that failed to materialize. He fully expected Martin’s followrs to lose their faith. But when December 21 came and went without floods or UFOs, the most committed of Martin’s followers grew stronger in their commitment. They doubled down. Festinger documented his experience in his book “When Prophecies Fail” His great contribution was the concept of cognitive dissonance: It is painful to hold opposing ideas in our minds, and we seek ways to relieve this conflict. . . . As Festinger discovered holding opposing notions is painful, and people look for ways to remove this source of pain. In sacrificing the facts can ease the unpleasant feeling, and facts turn out to be expandable. Cognitive dissonance helps to explain a lot about the world -- from voters who refuse to acknowledge they made a mistake in electing a demagogue to organizations that fail to back away from misguided policies, even in the face of mounting evidence. . . . Page 114

. . . . Traditionally, people suffering from depression were thought to harbor an unrealistically negative view of world -- a delusional negativity was seen to be the cause of their despondency. Alloy and Abramson were surprised to find depressed people showed a “surprising degree of accuracy” in judging how the blinking light affected by their manipulation of the button (in the Lab. Experiment) Meanwhile, the non-depressed subjects consistently ‘overrated’ their ability to control the blinking light. In other words, the gap between the groups was not caused by the healthy group seeing reality clearly and the depressed people seen the world with delusional pessimism. No, the “healthy” group had a ‘delusion of control’ while their ‘unhealthy’ counterparts were ‘seeing reality clearly. The subtitle of the psychologists paper was “Sadder but Wiser.” . . . Page 88 Excerpt from: