Chapter 9

I’m sitting here at my computer on a beautiful Saturday evening and for some reason I can’t get two words out of my head, “cognitive dissonance”.  Most of you probably know that my interests lie about as far from psychology as you can get.  My degree is in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and I’m all about quantifiable, measurable things.  I know that you can usually manipulate numbers to come to a convoluted conclusion, but I like to think that pure science and reason should prevail.  I’m not that touchy feely guy.  I’m the guy that tells the crying little kid (or the occasional adult) to grow a pair and get over it.  Not that I don’t have a sensitive side, but I like to save that for things that really deserve it.

But back to cognitive dissonance.  It’s basically defined as believing in, or about, something so strongly that when undeniable evidence to the contrary is presented, you find some way to mentally convince yourself that you’re still right.  I heard a great example last Friday from the Head of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Protection Agency.  Someone at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon asked him why, after years of espousing the joys of clean natural gas, radical environmentalists suddenly attacked natural gas development so rabidly.  He began the answer with cognitive dissonance.

He said that for years they had hammered on coal and oil because they were trying to break down the U.S.  economy and force us into energy sources that are not capable of sustaining our standard of living. They knew the science of natural gas and knew that it was clean and safe but it was only available in the U.S.  in extremely limited quantities and was not a threat to their world view.  However, when recent discoveries proved that we have an almost limitless supply of natural gas and we can continue our evil capitalist ways, their paradigm suddenly shifted.  Instead of celebrating a future of abundant energy, they attacked the thing that had been a safe energy source in their eyes just 4-5 years ago.  Hence, cognitive dissonance.

Jack was an “old school” pilot.  He smoked too much and had the voice to prove it.  Raspy, deep and thick, layered overtop a quintessential Pittsburgh accent.  He also drank too much, but he lived a life that might just lead anyone to it.  He had flown B-52s in Viet Nam and I think he earned a DFC after executing the only successful B-52 split S while escaping a SAM.  After the war he ended up in FB-111s in Plattsburgh where he bailed out after his wingman ran into him during air refueling.  Although you don’t really bailout of an FB-111, you ride the capsule down!  Everyone loved Jack.  When we were based together, he was the Chief of Stan/Eval, which I thought odd since he really didn’t like paperwork and he was everyone’s buddy, two attributes that can be problematic in a Stan/Eval officer, and I was the Tactics officer.

The stage is now set.  We came up on an Oak rotation and after the squadron put together the crews I found myself paired up with Jack.  Now, that was back when we actually did something at Oak and we flew out of Howard AFB, Panama.  Being with Jack meant that we would probably get at least one interesting mission and it would definitely be fun.  Sure enough, we ended up spending an entire week in Guatemala City providing the platform for the Central American Military Parachuting Competition.  Every morning we flew our airplane from Guat City to a little airport down in the jungle by the coast and we would spend the day doing lift after lift of static line and freefall jumpers from 5 or 6 countries.  It was great fun and once we got into the flow we were cranking them out by the hundreds.

There was a U.S. team there as well, and on the first day, the team leader, an Army LtCol, commented that he was tandem jump qualified and would be happy to jump with anyone on the crew who was interested.  I think I heard a little squeal come from Jack and for the next 4 days all he could talk about was how he’d always wanted to jump.  And every day I would laugh and tell him that he should put that on his bucket list.  Well, the last day came and we were doing the last lift with the U.S. team and after we had dropped the static lines and were climbing up for the HALOs, Jack suddenly announced that he had to go back and take a leak.  We had already started the checklists and I suggested he just wait until we got these guys out and then we’d delay the landing so he could hit the head.  He didn’t like the idea and insisted that he really had to go.  At that moment, that little voice in the back of my head started whispering and I didn’t like what it was telling me.  “Jack”, I said. “Why did you insist I fly the left seat today?” And just then, the loadmaster chimed in, “Jack, the LtCol is waiting for you”.  The little voice stopped whispering and started yelling, but the voice sounded a lot like mine.  “You are not jumping out of this airplane!” “But”, he pleaded, “You have long arms, you can reach everything from over there!”  “That’s not the point, you can’t jump out of the airplane.  And if you do, after I land this thing, we’re not flying again until they send me another pilot”.  With a pout and a whimper he climbed back in the seat. We completed the drop, landed the airplane, and never spoke of it again.

How do we talk ourselves into obviously boneheaded decisions and why do we cling to ridiculous assertions in the face of all logic and facts.  Cognitive dissonance is a cruel mistress don’t succumb to her wanton ways.