"The longer I live, the more convinced I am that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum." George Bernard Shaw
"Is it possible to control man's mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychoses of hate and destructiveness? Here I am thinking by no means only of the so-called uncultured masses. Experience proves that it is rather the so-called "Intelligentzia" that is most apt to yield to these disastrous collective suggestions, since the intellectual has no direct contact with life in the raw, but encounters it in its easiest, synthetic form upon the printed page." Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921 Source: Einstein letter to Sigmund Freud, July 30, 1932
“...all experience hath shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” The Declaration of Independence (originally titled, “The unanimous Declaration of thirteen united States of America” but never officially changed. This is one of the most important phrases in this profound document. Yet we ignore to our own detriment and destruction.
18+ Reasons our Mind Resists Change and Miss what’s obvious: Widely recognized psychological and behavioral reasons. If you find more or disagree, please comment. chuck@igc.org
Identity Protection: If a change somehow threatens how someone sees themselves — their role, beliefs, or status — the mind automatically resists.
Biological Threat Detection: A sudden change can trigger fight, flight, or freeze — a survival instinct from our evolutionary past.
Social Norms and Group Loyalty: People align with their tribe. If their community or peer group isn’t on board, they hesitate.
Emotional Attachments to Old Ways: Old systems often carry memories, pride, and meaning — letting go can feel like personal loss.
Comfort of the Familiar: Familiar words and routines offer emotional comfort, even if they’re inefficient, ambiguous, or out of date. Especially an unshakable belief in some constantly used ambiguous words like Independence, Peace, Terrorism, or Democracy. This is very close reaction to the diagnosis of anosognosia in people with Dementia and Alzheimer’s. A refusal to accept reality.
Social Risk: People fear criticism, exclusion, or losing status if they support a change the group might reject.
Loss Aversion: People fear losing what they have more than they value gaining something new. Even small losses can feel huge.
Ambiguous Rewards: If people don’t see what’s in it for them, they hesitate to participate.
Nature’s (genetic) Cognitive Efficiency: The brain prefers autopilot. It saves energy. Change requires new neural and calorie costs. The brain pushes back. Technologies thinking for us rises our mind’s opposition to change.
Uncertainty Avoidance: The unknown feels unsafe. People prefer predictable discomfort to unpredictable possibilities.
Fear of Failure: Change introduces risk: embarrassment, mistakes, wasted effort. Safety feels smarter.
Information Overload: Too much data or too many options create paralysis, not progress.
Short-Term Pain vs. Long-Term Benefit: Human brains discount the future. A small inconvenience now outweighs a big benefit later.
Memories of Past Failed Attempts: “We tried that once” becomes a powerful psychological barrier.
Less Agency: If people feel a change is forced on them rather than chosen by them, resistance intensifies.
The Intelligence Trap: When an intelligent mind believes it can’t be wrong, which often increases with its IQ. (If the Taliban and Marjorie Taylor Green can change their minds. So can you)
We are not our mind. It is a tool we have for solving problems. When we believe it as who we are. Then being wrong is experienced as a threat and it uses the mind’s intelligence to create a rational excuse that ignores or rejects wisdom and blocks curiosity in defending its own belief. Our mind can easily override our bodies hardwired DNA intelligence and wisdom from over millions of years of trial and error as a social species whose basic instinct is to survive, thrive, and even flourish.
The Mind’s capacity to believe anything and create concepts or principles it is willing to kill and die for. Concepts or principles that can be useful in bonding with others enabling a tribe to grow and prosper like a national identity, religion, political party, economic policy, or a conspiracy theory. Then justify killing and dying in mass numbers - or let other people and species suffer or perish defending it. This is unnatural and ignores the reality that we are the human family and 99.9% genetically the same. With the capacity to cooperate and coordinate in large numbers to prioritize protecting each other and the environment that all life needs to survive and thrive. And someday Flourish.
Hostile attribution bias is defined as the tendency to interpret others' ambiguous actions as intentionally hostile or threatening, even when there is no clear evidence to support this interpretation. This cognitive bias can lead to increased aggression and conflict in social interactions. It is a type of cognitive distortion where individuals perceive others' behaviors as aggressive or negative, which can affect their social interactions and relationships.
Our mind’s 12 Biases: To often the hardest thing to see or understand is the thing we’ve decided not to look for. Why do we do we this? “We can’t handle the Truth!”. Each of these have a reason why.
1. “Can’t see the forest for the trees” Bias: Attentional bias / Narrow framing: What’s happening? We over-focus on details and lose sight of system-level patterns. Common in policy, engineering, and committee work. Related research: Systems thinking failures; bounded rationality (Herbert Simon).
2. “Hiding in plain sight” In attentional blindness: What’s happening? If we’re not expecting something, we literally don’t perceive it—even when it’s visible. Classic example: The “invisible gorilla” experiment (Simons & Chabris).
3. “The elephant in the room” Pluralistic ignorance / Social conformity bias: What’s happening? Everyone sees the problem, assumes others accept it, so no one speaks. Why it persists: Fear of social cost > fear of being wrong.
4. “Turning a blind eye” Motivated reasoning bias: What’s happening: We ignore information that threatens our identity, beliefs, or interests. Key insight: This is not stupidity—it’s emotional self-defense.
5. “Right under your nose” Familiarity bias: What’s happening? The closer or more familiar something is, the less we consciously evaluate it. Irony: Repetition breeds invisibility, not clarity.
6. “The writing on the wall” Normalcy bias: What’s happening: We underestimate change and assume tomorrow will resemble yesterday. Seen in: Financial bubbles, climate response delays, institutional decline.
7. “Missing the big picture” Reductionism / Analysis paralysis bias: What’s happening? Breaking problems into parts without re-integrating them into a whole. Result: Elegant answers to the wrong question.
8. “Overthinking it” Cognitive load overload bias: What’s happening? Too much analysis crowds out insight; simple signals get buried. Related law: Hick’s Law—more options = slower decisions.
9. “Couldn’t see it if it bit them” Confirmation bias: What’s happening? We actively screen out evidence that contradicts what we already “know.” Key danger: Intelligence often makes this worse, not better.
10. “Low-hanging fruit (ignored)” Effort justification bias: What’s happening? We distrust easy solutions because we equate difficulty with value. Cultural note: Especially strong in expert and academic circles.
11. “Lost in the weeds” Tunnel vision Bias What’s happening? Immediate tasks crowd out strategic thinking. Seen in: Bureaucracies, crisis management, long meetings with short agendas.
12. “Face-palm obvious” (after the fact): Hindsight bias: What’s happening? Once we know the answer, we believe we “should have known it all along.” Danger: Leads to unfair blame and poor learning.
Summary: Most failures of seeing the obvious - are not failures of intelligence. But failures of attention, incentives, social courage, and wisdom. The obvious, it turns out, is often obscured by perfect human thinking and intelligence.
"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." - George Bernard Shaw
"Dear sisters and brothers, The so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don't. Why is it that countries which we call ‘strong’ are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?” Malala Yousafzai, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture
We used to be human “beings”...now we are most human “thinkings”. The phrase “I think therefor I am” should now be “I think therefor I am probably wrong”. The Insanity of Humanity is that we think too much - and too highly of our intelligence – rarely seeking wisdom or objective Truths that we should all hold to be self-evident. cw
“One thing is sure, a great change of our psychological attitude is imminent. That is certain. And why? Because we need more — we need more psychology. We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil." Carl Jung 1959, BBC’s Face to Face TV series aired a 40-minute interview with Carl Jung at the old age of 84 years old—18 months before his death.
"One of the serious results of propaganda is that it has caused the public to think that education and propaganda are the same thing, and thus to make an ignorant multitude believe it is being educated when it is only being manipulated. Education aims at independence of judgement. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd." -- Everett Dean Martin (1880-1941) American minister, writer, journalist, instructor, lecturer, social psychologist, social philosopher, advocate of adult education
Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929)
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