Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance

Experience tells us that it is difficult to reconsider things that we have built our identity, lives and dreams on. The thoughtful questioning of identity for me was a step on the road to truth. The acceptance of the idea that I could not always be right was what led me to greater maturity in Christianity.

This weeks NYTimes magazine has an interesting article on military wives and this quote spoke to both of my experiences and many of the comments on various threads regarding why political change is so difficult.

Lies my Culture Told Me

We are born into a culture and whether we like it not, we usually first adopt the value system of that culture. This value system may be consistent with our personal idea of what we would like our values to be, or it may be quite inconsistent with what we believe. It may be inconsistent with our cultures laws or stated values as well. Take this statement from the American constitution '... all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain rights...'