RUTHFULLY YOURS

A lazy eye, technically amblyopia, is a childhood disorder of sight in which each eye sees a single object but the brain does not fuse the two objects into one single object – the child sees double. Double vision is intolerable to a human being so the brain turns one eye off – hence the name lazy eye. The vision in the turned off eye weakens sometimes to the point of blindness. The goal of treatment is to have both eyes see the object and for the brain to fuse the twin images into a single object. Treatment for amblyopia is designed to force the patient to use the lazy eye. Usually the child wears an ocular patch over the strong eye that forces him/her to use the weaker eye thereby strengthening its vision. Treatment is extremely uncomfortable for the child and often resisted because the vision in the lazy eye is so much weaker than the vision in the strong eye.

So it is with cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a theory developed in the 1950s by American psychologist Leon Festinger who said that inconsistency between thoughts or between thoughts and actions leads to discomfort (dissonance) which motivates changes in thoughts and behavior. When the cognitive dissonance becomes too overwhelming the person turns one of the thoughts off. People cannot tolerate double vision and they cannot tolerate inconsistency – they seek homeostasis.

According to Festinger, “The motivation to reduce dissonance is directly proportional to the magnitude and importance of the discrepant cognitions, and inversely proportional to the magnitude and importance of the consistent cognitions.” So, the more important the subject of the discrepancy the more motivated the person is to end the discordance.

Cognitive dissonance in the 21st century has been weaponized and is the preferred leftist strategy being used to destabilize and drive America crazy – it is a malicious tool of social engineering that impels behavior change. The purpose of leftist cognitive dissonance is submission to its tenets of political correctness, moral relativity, and historical revisionism. The left wants its contradictory ideas and norms to overwhelm the population with anxiety so that traditional norms are turned off and unconventional leftist norms accepted. The left wants one eyed vision.

http://washingtonjewishweek.com/47645/summer-is-a-time-for-jewish-unity-and-savi

Working for Jewish unity should have been an imperative for Jews the world over this summer. All summer long Islamic terrorists in Gaza have been sending incendiary kites in order to set fire to Israeli farmland and forests. The terrorists have also been launching barrages of missiles aimed at Israeli civilian neighborhoods. One firebomb balloon landed in the yard of a kindergarten in the southern Israeli moshav of Tkuma. All of this while the Jewish people were in the midst of the very season when we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple.

To make matters worse, there were reports of Jews in the United States and in Britain seemingly showing more concern for our adversaries than our fellow Jews. News headlines about Kaddish being recited for Hamas terrorists, Birthright participants being led off of tours to learn about “the occupation,” and Jewish summer camp counselors conspiring to teach their campers the Palestinian narrative seemed all too frequent this summer.

That is why the news that a Magen David Adom ambulance was donated by a coalition of synagogues in suburban Philadelphia was especially encouraging and heartwarming to hear just before Tisha B’Av.

Unfortunately, at this time, Israelis need to know that Red Magen David Adom ambulances must be depended upon once again to save the lives of Jews.

The Talmud Bavli in Sanhedrin 37a states: “Anyone who saves the life of one of the children of Israel, the verse ascribes him credit as if he saved an entire world.”