| by Victor Cherubim
( April 11, 2013, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is said that our brains reconstruct the past based on our present values. As we flip the pages of our lives, we will not fail to notice how our values have changed with time. There perhaps, is unease between now and then. Our brain reconstructs the memory and deletes those items which are dissonant. That is in a sense, or in essence, human nature.
In social engineering, however, appears to be an exploitation of the various social and psychological weakness in individuals, societies or even nations, for possibly ulterior motives. Exploitation of the weakness caused by inducing cognitive dissonance in targets is one ploy used by perpetrators to discredit individuals or even nations.
Knowledge is based on forgetting our past mistakes and moving on to new avenues of the
present, for progress. But the world always wants to harp on our past misdeeds, as if we are the only ones who have ever made blunders. It is very much like a heat seeking missile targeted to destroy rather than to build.
The sad part of it all is that the perpetrators are the same accusers, who hide behind their smokescreen of their actions and way lay innocent bystanders, the general public, for that matter world opinion, into castigating the misdeeds of others.
There is no denying that Sri Lanka has fallen into a trap set up by unscrupulous perpetrators of violence, giving all assistance in the name of obliterating such terror. They were the very instigators of terror for their own geopolitical reasons. Having got what they wanted done by proxy, they now point a finger at Sri Lanka, producing all nefarious evidence to discredit the nation. Could be an intimidation of sorts?
There is an urgent need for us to grasp the nettle. But instead, we are so engrossed by the
Digital Age. The digital memories of the war are socially engineered cognitive dissonance. Instead of placing our trust in our centuries old culture, tradition of our pristine civilisation to take our bearings from our natural human brain, we have wanted to be with the Joneses. We thus now find it impossible to remove our digital data footprint of the last 100 days of the near 30 year old war. Digital data can hardly be erased. It is nearly impossible to delete.
As Prof. Mayer-Schonberger argues,” digital memories will only remind us of our failures of our past.” Reminding us over and over again of our past shortcomings in excruciating detail, is not human rights. What has been captured in the videos of the war, sold by our traitors to our enemies, can never be retrieved. There is a great deal of political traction in shuffling blame for the ills of present society to a scapegoat. While we are constantly harassed of our actions, we have also - a right to be forgotten.
“Api venuwen api” – all of us, for all of us, was the defining slogan in the last years of the war. This attitude slogan has been adapted, to satisfy our peace time effort in promoting reconciliation and accountability. The Army has stated that it has recognised the right of accommodating this change in peace time. International Committees cannot change the reality of what Sri Lanka is. What the government can do is devise accommodations for all including Tamils and Muslims and their religious and cultural traditions to be received with respect and recognition. What form of accommodation is a matter for the people of Sri Lanka to decide and devise.
Do we foresee attitudes change in Sri Lanka?
The world is demanding an international effort rather than a Sri Lanka led effort, if Sri Lanka is not forthcoming to implement the actions decreed by the UNHRC resolution.
But attitudes are the evaluations and associated beliefs towards a people or toward some object. When there are two attitudes or when attitude and behaviour conflict, no amount of international pressure can shift attitude to change.
The three bases for attitude change are: Affect, Behaviour and Cognition. We develop attitudes on things if they are pleasurable or painful. We live in a world where the options appear as infinite, but in reality are finite, as they seem immediate, but in real, do take time.
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