Cognitive dissonance is the psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. The contradictions aren’t limited to thoughts and beliefs only. The dissonance can occur between beliefs and behaviors, attitudes and behaviors, or beliefs and attitudes.

The discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a belief of a person clashes with new evidence perceived by that person. When confronted with facts that contradict personal beliefs, ideals, and values, people will find a way to resolve the contradiction in order to reduce their discomfort.

An example of this would be knowing that your health is at risk by smoking, and continuing to smoke. Your belief is out of line with your behavior. This can cause anxiety and discomfort due to the inconsistency of belief and actions. To resolve the discomfort, one could rationalize “I switched to vaping; vaping, though not healthy, is possibly less risky than smoking.” This can help the person feel better about not acting in accordance to their belief and justify the behavior.

The purpose of this blog is exploring inconsistencies within Mormon doctrine, culture, and history, that could create cognitive dissonance and discomfort.

Here’s a personal example:

When I was young, the For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet was revised for the sixth time and reissued. Parents were encouraged to use this pamphlet for family home evening lessons in the home. There’s a section of the pamphlet that is on appropriate music and movies. It makes it clear that the prophet, who is the mouth piece of God on the earth, has revealed that only certain kinds of music and movies are acceptable to be listened to or watched by the children of God.

The specifics are vague, but the culture of the church makes it clear what is meant. No R-rated movies, and extreme caution used with any other movies that could offend the spirit. Rock, heavy metal, and rap are offensive to the spirit. You will know it is offensive to God and the spirit because when you watch or listen to this type of media you will have a dark feeling, or you will be feeling at peace and the peace will suddenly leave you. This is how you know you’ve “lost the spirit” according to Mormonism.

These lines were clearly drawn in the sand. Even though I had not heard much rap or heavy metal at all,  I “knew” that they were offensive to God and the spirit because I had been told so and conditioned to believe that from an early age. And I “knew” that the expectation of God for me was to be cautious with the type of rock music I listened to.

One Monday night, it was my turn to teach a lesson for family home evening. I was about 12 or 13 years old at the time, and decided to teach on what appropriate music was. I told my family members that I would be playing a few clips of different kinds of music, and that everyone should write down how they were feeling while the track played, and then we would discuss our feelings afterwards.

I don’t remember all of the songs that I played, but I selected a wide variety ranging from classical guitar, symphonies, piano, rock,  and heavier rock. Based on what I had been taught, I had already decided in my head which ones would “be appropriate and inoffensive to the spirit”, and which ones would be “offensive”.

I played the songs and then we got to the discussion of our feelings part. I asked everyone to describe how they felt when they listen to the music and we went around the table. The one song that I do remember playing, was a song from the green Weezer album called “Don’t Let Go”. I had assigned this song the category of appropriate, because I really liked the song and it made me feel good when I listened to it.

We went around the table and everyone said how it made them feel. When I got to my father, he said that this song made him feel anger. I was so caught off guard I didn’t even know what to say. I couldn’t understand why that song made him feel anger. There was nothing in the lyrics to suggest anything I associated with anger. For the most part the song is up beat, but there are a few parts of the song with a key change that uses minor chords.

In Mormonism, everything that is believed is based on feelings. It is believed that good feelings come from God, and bad feelings come from the devil. So if you are feeling bad feelings, it is because you do not have the spirit, and the devil has influence or power to affect you. My father made it clear that that song drove away the spirit, for him at least.

This was very confusing for me. I looked up to my father as the patriarch of the home, as someone much more experienced in the ways of feeling the spirit than myself. In my eyes, he was the authority on understanding and interpreting the scriptures and the whisperings of the spirit, and on knowing what it was that the prophet was trying to convey in the pamphlet we had been instructed to teach for him. As someone trying to understand how the spirit worked in my own life, I looked to him as an example to teach me. What he was saying was that a song that I enjoyed listening to and always felt good about was actually wrong and offensive to God.

This made me question if I really understood what the prophet was teaching, if I understood how the spirit works, if I could even tell the difference between good and evil. Because in mind, my father couldn’t have been wrong in interpreting the spirit.

This really bothered me.  I felt good when I listened to that song, but my dad felt angry.  How could I feel the spirit while listening but he couldn’t? Was I not in tune with the spirit? How could I then know what the spirit felt like?

To resolve this cognitive dissonance, I chalked it up to my dad having a different taste in music than I did, and moved on.

The question that I pose to you then, is this:

Is there a disembodied spirit out there floating the earth nodding his invisible head and tapping his invisible feet to certain types of music, and covering his invisible ears and running for the hills to other types of music?

I know cognitive dissonance is true. I share these things in the name of progress, understanding, and improvement.

Brother Ghost