Nice summary. I would add that bureaucracies tend to promote the cognitively dissonant in the belief that they are team players (which, I suppose, they are), thus reinforcing this mindset. Now if they could only promote the bureaucratically dissonant, maybe we’ld be getting somewhere. A little intellectual subversion is good for the soul.

In this regard, I’d like to point out that Mr. Carlin’s memo was dated March 2009. There should have been time to consider its contents. The biggest point Mr. Carlin was trying to make was that a lot of science had been published between the time of the last IPCC study and the current congressional votes — yet the EPA had not, in his opinion, taken the later work into account.

But I guess it’s good enough for government work? That’s why we should not trust the government with anything important.

In your example, an employee has to make a choice between leaving their job and creating financial hardship for themselves and their family, or believing whatever the organisation believes. This is very simple because virtually every topic has something you can believe in without seriously compromising your other beliefs.

Politically, the phenomenon is called “going native”. This is when you believe that your organization’s interests are paramount, and that you automatically see everything from the organisation’s point of view. For example, this happens to virtually everybody that goes into government. No matter how revolutionary someone is before they enter the political system, once they get there, their master becomes the political system itself.

This explains why so many organisations continue to exist even when their goals have been reached. The IPCC and EU are the biggest examples. They now exist only to keep existing, because too many people rely on them to earn a living. Neither of them serve any useful purpose, and however much the people who work there might privately think that, they will continue to invent new things for the organisations to do. But those people are not being deliberately dishonest, they are just suffering from normal human cognitive dissonance.

I appologize, but I don’t really have the words for this and I don’t know the language of psychology. There is a certain type of person who comes to believe, really believe, their boss’s position on an issue. We often chalk this up from the outside to brown-nosing or an “Eddie Haskell” effect where people fake their beliefs, but I don’t think this is always true. I think there is some sort of human mental defense mechanism that people have a tendency to actually adopt (not just fake) the beliefs of those in power over them.>/blockquote>

That’s called Stockholm Syndrome, which you’re likely familiar with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Although it typically is associated with hostages, I could see that it could also apply to employees in some circumstances.

Just compare this outrageous falsehood to Ronald Reagans’ famous quote:

“The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us.

Business doesn’t pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business.”

And after the way the rammed this through the House with little debate, without legislators even reading it… and while quarantining the GOP from any meaningful input whatsoever, any foolhardy individuals who still believe Obama’s threadbare “bipartisanship” spiel ought to have their head examined.