If you are the victim of a con that you truly believe in, as evidence comes in against you, you are very likely to defensively double down.
This is actually the moment when instead of doubting and saying wow I was wrong you say NO! I'm so right .
It is a psychological process that is born out of cognitive dissonance which means that your perception of the world and the evidence at hand are no longer matching.
does this remind you of anything??

I would say it also depends on how much you have invested in the con.

A new convert to the church may "truely believe" in mormonism, but when they hear it isn't what it claims they look into that assertion and it can be rather easy to walk away from and admit you bought into the con. I've seen that happen a few times.

A person that has spent their life in the church, raised their kids in it, paid money to it, etc., would have a much harder time and would double down as you mentioned. I've seen that happen a few times too.

I doubled down for a few months, but then I finally got it. It really hurt to realize that my tithing was wasted. In the last few years before I left, SLC was grabbing for the fast offering money, too. You can't even try to help people without being conned by the Mormon "authorities".

That was me doing missionary.
Yeah -- was just a con, didn't know it.

(Isn't that called a chump?)

" . . .cognitive dissonance which means that your perception of the world and the evidence at hand are no longer matching."

That sentence begs for me to over think it. On the surface it is the definition of Cog-Dis. But digging deeper, I wonder how complicated things become because we had been trained to perceive evidence "the Mormon way." Which handicaps the evaluation of the evidence most likeley. This fortifies the tendency to go with what you know because we like what we are used to. Security blanket.


Not just Mormons or religion subject to this. I had a client bring me an artistic product that they had used for years. They wanted an upgrade because it never looked like it was supposed to look, and in fact was not that attractive or well made.

We made a new prototype that matched their art exactly. Everyone was wowed. Interestingly the client said the following which I still remember decades later. "I am having a hard time with this because I have looked at the old one so many years, it is right in my mind and the new one looks wrong."

He understood what was happening and that he needed to get used to the new improved look. But it was very unsettling for him.

Sometimes doing what is right feels wrong.

> Sometimes doing what
> is right feels wrong.


...and the reverse?

Ecstasy!

Why, you young roue!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eml_XI7C69s



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2021 07:39PM by elderolddog.

Thank you. Whoa.

It was a lie from the beginning
It's a scam and ever shall be
Fraud without end, Amen, Amen...

I've gotten a bit more cynical about people as I've gotten older. So nowadays, I'm willing to take a harder look at what someone else might want from me -- my money, my time, my resources, etc. There are simply too many people who are in it for themselves, and who don't mind taking you down in the process. It's not everyone, of course, but it's enough people that you need to be aware of them. I think the Mormon tithe is a good example of a con. No church needs 10% of members' income to run. Most churches do it on 3% or less.

I'm also more cynical about people now, especially since my BS meter has gotten fine tuned after waking up about TSCC.

In one the Lord of the Rings books, one of the characters said: "He can see through a brick wall in time". And no, he wasn't referring to Martin Harris looking through a mountain.

I've always been a quiet observer of people, until I can figure them out, but even more so now.

Gawd, I've fallen for so much shit during the course of my life. I guess just starting out mormon makes you accept the absurd more easily. Then it's not just church, it's family and people around you who are really good con artists who reel you in like suckers. There are so many things that when I got on the other side of it all I could think was "where was my brain?" It gets harder and harder to trust anyone or anything when you see where trust and belief in people got you.

I was fascinated by the Leah Remini series on Scientology. When they had a group of former members, some who had been very high up in the Sea Org (similar to the mormon p-hood) and they are asking themselves why they didn't see it, just the exact same way former mormons do. We look back on it now and it's so freakin obvious that it's just embarrassing to admit we fell for it. And we know the exact moment when the cognitive dissonance broke the shelf.

But there's a new idiot born every day and super good con artists prepared for them. And the more they accept one con, the easier it is to accept another. Although the majority of people who really fall for cults and cons are lower educated, it's not always the case. Very educated people can be very gullible. I know if my father were still alive, he'd be the biggest Qanon supporter on the planet. So just because after a lot of experience, we recognize it much easier does not mean that at some point we weren't as bad as any of the rest of them.