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The Truth We Run From: Why People Avoid Reality When It’s Clearly Presented

 

 

John Neff
 
By: John Neff
 
Oct 4, 2024
 
5 min read
 
 

In an era where information is at our fingertips, one might think that the truth would be embraced and celebrated. After all, with the vast resources available to us, uncovering facts and arriving at informed conclusions should be easier than ever. Yet, paradoxically, people often run from the truth, especially when it’s presented to them in a clear, unvarnished manner. This avoidance isn’t just a fleeting tendency; it’s a deeply ingrained behavior that has profound implications for individuals and society as a whole.

The Comfort of Denial

One of the primary reasons people run from the truth is the comfort that denial provides. The truth, especially when it’s harsh or challenges long-held beliefs, can be unsettling. It forces people to confront realities that may demand significant changes in their lives, behaviors, or perspectives. For many, the idea of altering their worldview or admitting that they’ve been wrong is too daunting. Denial, on the other hand, offers a refuge. It allows people to maintain their existing beliefs and avoid the discomfort that comes with facing reality.

Denial isn’t just about avoiding discomfort; it’s also about preserving a sense of control. When the truth threatens to upend someone’s understanding of the world, it can feel like the ground beneath them is shifting. Denial allows them to keep their feet firmly planted, even if it means standing on shaky ground.

Cognitive Dissonance: The Mental Struggle

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person holds two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes simultaneously. This internal conflict creates mental discomfort, leading people to avoid information that contradicts their current beliefs. When presented with the truth that challenges their worldview, the discomfort of cognitive dissonance can be so intense that people would rather reject the truth than reconcile the conflicting ideas.

This rejection often manifests in various ways — discrediting the source of the information, questioning the motives behind the truth-teller, or simply dismissing the facts as unimportant or irrelevant. The mind’s instinct to protect itself from discomfort is powerful, and cognitive dissonance is one of its primary tools.

The Fear of Change

Change is inherently frightening for many people. The truth often demands change — whether it’s a change in behavior, attitude, or understanding. Embracing the truth can mean acknowledging that certain aspects of one’s life need to be altered, which can lead to feelings of uncertainty and fear. The status quo, no matter how flawed, provides a sense of familiarity and security. The unknown, which often accompanies change, is a source of anxiety.

People run from the truth because it threatens to disrupt their lives. It’s easier to continue living with comforting lies than to face the possibility of upheaval. The fear of change is a powerful motivator, leading people to resist the truth even when it’s in their best interest to accept it.

Social Pressure and the Need for Belonging

Humans are social creatures, and the need for belonging is deeply embedded in our psyche. Social pressure can play a significant role in why people run from the truth. When the truth goes against the beliefs or norms of a particular group, individuals may reject it to avoid being ostracized. The fear of social alienation is a strong force, leading people to conform to the prevailing beliefs of their community, even if those beliefs are demonstrably false.

This phenomenon is particularly evident in the age of social media, where echo chambers and groupthink can reinforce falsehoods. People are more likely to accept information that aligns with their social circles and reject truths that could isolate them from the group. The desire to fit in can override the pursuit of truth, leading to the perpetuation of lies and misinformation.

The Illusion of Knowledge

Another reason people run from the truth is the illusion of knowledge. In today’s information-saturated world, it’s easy for people to believe they’re well-informed when, in reality, they’re only consuming information that reinforces their existing beliefs. This illusion of knowledge creates a false sense of confidence, making it difficult for people to accept new information that contradicts what they think they know.

The Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability, plays a role here. Those who are most confident in their knowledge are often the least likely to seek out or accept the truth when it challenges their beliefs. They run from the truth because they believe they already possess it, even when they don’t.

The Role of Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs. It’s a powerful force that drives people to embrace information that aligns with their views while dismissing anything that contradicts them. When the truth doesn’t fit into someone’s established belief system, confirmation bias kicks in, leading them to reject it in favor of more palatable lies.

This bias is reinforced by the way modern media is consumed. Algorithms on social media platforms and search engines are designed to show users content that aligns with their interests and beliefs, creating a feedback loop that reinforces their existing views. As a result, people become increasingly insulated from the truth, only encountering information that supports their preconceptions.

The Power of Emotion Over Reason

Emotions often trump reason when it comes to accepting the truth. The truth can evoke strong emotional responses — anger, fear, sadness, or guilt — that people would rather avoid. These emotions can cloud judgment, making it difficult for people to think rationally about the information they’re presented with. Instead of considering the facts, they react emotionally, rejecting the truth to protect themselves from the negative feelings it might provoke.

Emotional reasoning, where people interpret facts based on how they feel rather than on objective reality, is a common defense mechanism. It allows people to avoid the truth by convincing themselves that their feelings are more accurate than the evidence before them. This is why appeals to emotion are often more effective than appeals to logic when trying to persuade someone of a particular viewpoint.

Conclusion: The Cost of Avoiding the Truth

Running from the truth has significant consequences. It leads to the perpetuation of falsehoods, the erosion of trust in institutions, and the spread of misinformation. On a personal level, it prevents growth, understanding, and the ability to make informed decisions. The truth, no matter how uncomfortable, is essential for progress — both individually and collectively.

For those who seek the truth, it’s important to understand why others may avoid it. This understanding can help in finding more effective ways to communicate and present the truth, breaking down the barriers of denial, cognitive dissonance, and fear. The truth may be difficult to accept, but it’s the foundation upon which a better future can be built.

In the end, the truth isn’t something to be feared or avoided. It’s a light that illuminates the path forward, guiding us toward a more honest, informed, and just world. But for that light to shine, we must first stop running and face it head-on.

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Written By: John Neff
Parent Category: Reading Materials
Category: Unruly States of Affairs in the United States of America
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    THE ABUNDANCE PARADIGM: WHY AI FORCES A RETHINKING OF MONEY ITSELF — PART 1

    By Ellen Brown on May 11, 2026

    A Universal Basic Income (UBI) has long been proposed as a way to cushion the blow of jobs lost to automation. Under that model, everyone receives a modest monthly payment – enough to cover basic needs and prevent extreme poverty. 

    But Elon Musk has gone further. On April 16, he posted on X:

    Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

    Rather than a subsistence stipend, Universal High Income (UHI) would be a level of income allowing ordinary people to live well in a world where machines do most of the work. Musk has also said that AI and robotics are the only things that can solve the massive U.S. debt crisis. 

    That sounds promising, but where will the government get the money to pay the UHI? Critics say any government that tried it would go bankrupt. There are also other concerns, which will be addressed in Part 2 of this article. Here we will look at the financial underpinnings: why UHI is even thinkable, why AI forces a reexamination of how money enters the economy, why the current system cannot scale to meet what is coming, and the implicit transition needed to meet that challenge.

    Why the Current Money System Cannot Scale

    The national debt of the U.S. government just topped $39 trillion. China’s is $18.7 trillion. Japan’s is $8.6 trillion. Those of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are each in the multi-trillion-dollar range. Collective global debt now stands at $353 trillion, 305% of the world’s annual economic output. So even if, hypothetically, everything produced in the world in a year were applied toward liquidating the debt, it still would not be enough to pay it all off. 

    In fact the debt can never be repaid, because of the way money currently enters the system. Nearly all of the money supply today is created by banks when they make loans. Banks do not lend their existing capital. The loan itself creates the money. The bank adds the loan amount to the asset side of its balance sheet and balances that sum with the same amount on the liability side. When the borrower withdraws or transfers the funds, either the bank takes them from its reserves in “vault cash” or the Federal Reserve debits the bank’s digital reserve account at the central bank. But the lending bank typically has funds coming into its reserve account at about the same rate as they are going out, so its reserves are continually replenished. Thus a very small reserve account can support a much larger money creation engine. For decades before the Fed discontinued the reserve requirement in 2020, it hovered at around 10%.

    The chief problem with this debt-based system is the interest, which the bank does not create in its original loan. For a typical long-term loan, interest can double the total tab or more. Where is the money to come from to pay this added liability? Across the system as a whole, it must either come from more borrowing or from existing funds. In the case of governments, that means issuing interest-bearing bonds or tapping taxes and other revenues. The interest on the debt compounds, meaning the government is paying interest on interest. This makes the debt increase exponentially, until it is mathematically unsustainable. Then bankruptcies occur, of banks or even whole governments. Booms turn into busts, and the cycle begins again.

    Today, interest on the federal debt is the second largest budget line item after Social Security, exceeding $1 trillion. Meanwhile, workers are losing jobs to AI/robotics, shrinking the income tax base. The system is clearly unsustainable.

    How to Raise Demand to Scale to the Upcoming Supply

    A Universal High Income would replenish the shrinking tax base by replacing the lost wages of unemployed workers. But where will the money come from to pay the UHI? The only sustainable solution is for the government to issue it interest-free. That does not mean through the Federal Reserve, which creates money in the same way banks do: it buys federal interest-bearing securities with accounting entries. The Fed collects the interest, which it is supposed to return to the Treasury after deducting its costs. But since 2008, its costs include paying interest on the reserves of its participating banks, which consumes its profits. (See my earlier article here.) 

    The only interest-free, debt-free solution that will actually increase the money supply sufficiently to match the projected productivity of AI/robotics is for the money to be issued directly by the Treasury.

    This is not a radical new idea. It is authorized in the U.S. Constitution, which provides in Article 1, Sec. 8, that “The Congress shall have Power To … coin Money [and] regulate the Value thereof .…” Abraham Lincoln used government-issued “Greenbacks” to avoid a crippling debt to British-backed bankers. Debt-free government-issued money was also the funding mechanism by which the American colonists succeeded in creating a thriving economy and liberating themselves from the oppressive yoke of the British Empire.

    In his 1729 pamphlet “A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency,” Benjamin Franklin argued that a lack of currency was a tax on industrious farmers and producers, and that a reliable, locally issued paper currency was the “oil” for the gears of trade. The “Nature and Necessity” of this currency was to facilitate the movement of goods between neighbors. Franklin observed that the British strategy of keeping the colonies short of cash was a method of economic suppression. By forcing the colonies to use gold and silver, which were constantly drained back to London to pay for imports, the Crown kept the colonies in a state of permanent debt and low productivity. When the money supply matched the productive capacity of the people, universal prosperity resulted without inflation. 

    This logic evolved into the “American System of Political Economy” championed by Henry Carey, economic advisor to Abraham Lincoln. He wrote:

    Two systems are before the world… One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. … One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.

    In the context of the 21st century, the “oil” that best lowers the friction of trade is debt-free government-issued money similar to Lincoln’s Greenbacks and colonial scrip. Rather than implementing a radical financial innovation, we would be returning to our roots.

    Inflation or Deflation?

    The chief objection to the colonies’ paper “scrip” was that they tended to over-print, so that “demand” (money) outstripped supply. Too much money chasing too few goods produced price inflation. But in the 21st century, we will soon have the opposite problem: too little money chasing too many goods. Machines don’t need food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical treatment or other services. So who will buy those goods and services? 

    Money needs to be issued to human consumers, and not just to a few wealthy human consumers serving as debt brokers thriving on interest. To create sufficient demand for the voluminous output of AI/robotics, it needs to go to the whole national population, evenly distributed. Not only can UHI work in that sort of abundant supply without producing price inflation; it is actually essential to prevent deflation.

    In a conversation on X, Musk wrote:

    In a normal economy, issuing more money simply increases the dollar price of the existing output of goods & services, meaning people do NOT get more stuff. If AI/robotics massively increase goods & services output, then you actually MUST issue dollars to people or there will be massive disinflation. 

    As paraphrased on Yahoo Finance (reposted from Benzinga), Musk wrote that handing out more dollars becomes a problem only when the economy’s supply of goods and services fails to surge alongside the money supply. His claim is that AI and robotics could lift production so sharply that the bigger risk would be falling prices, not rising ones.

    But aren’t falling prices a good thing? In this case, no. Prices would be falling due to a lack of demand, meaning producers can’t find customers for their products. They wind up laying off workers and eventually going bankrupt. When spread across the whole economy, the result is a deflationary spiral: prices fall, businesses lose revenue, and the economy contracts, not because production is inadequate but because purchasing power is insufficient. The result is recession or depression. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, food was rotting in the fields while people were starving, because they were out of work and had no money to spend. 

    Job cuts from AI are already happening. According to the same Benzinga article:

    Evidence of near-term strain is showing up in corporate announcements: employers disclosed more than 27,000 job cuts linked to AI in the first quarter of 2026, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm said that figure was up 40% from the same period a year earlier. 

    Robert Reich reports that wages are around two-thirds of the typical corporation’s total cost, and that in the first four months of 2026, big U.S. corporations cut over 128,000 jobs. 

    How Soon Will All This Happen?

    Another Benzinga article, reposted on Yahoo Finance on March 16, detailed Musk’s projected time frame:

    Speaking remotely to the Abundance Summit last week, Musk told XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis that the global economy is on the verge of an explosion so massive it defies historical precedent.

    “I’d say the economy is 10 times its current size in 10 years,” Musk said, before quickly clarifying that the growth could be even more explosive. “Greater than,” he added, framing the projected shift in economic output as a “fairly comfortable prediction.” …

    Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, sees AI reaching Artificial General Intelligence (human-level intelligence across virtually all domains) by 2029, and full transformative abundance by 2045.

    Other experts question these time projections, but a radical transformation of traditional manufacturing and trade is likely to happen sometime in the reasonably near future. The question is, will the money system transition soon enough to rescue all the laid-off workers from homelessness and famine?

    The Sovereign Wealth Fund Alternative

    There is another model for distributing the gains of automation, one that can be phased in gradually as the AI workforce expands. It comes from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. In an ironic twist, Altman and Musk, who jointly founded OpenAI in 2015, are now locked in a high-profile legal battle over whether Altman diverted Musk’s $44 million investment to transform what was conceived as a nonprofit “for the benefit of humanity” into a highly lucrative for-profit enterprise.

    That dispute aside, Altman’s alternative model for sharing AI-generated wealth is a national sovereign wealth fund seeded by the profits of AI and robotics. His proposed American Equity Fund would take public stakes in the companies and technologies driving automation, capture a portion of the resulting productivity gains, and distribute them as universal dividends. The Fund would not replace a Universal High Income but would complement it.

    This approach has several advantages. It ties payments directly to real output, scales automatically with productivity, and can be introduced gradually, avoiding the shock of issuing large payments before the supply side has fully expanded. It would resemble the Alaska Permanent Fund, which distributes oil revenues to residents, except that here the resource would be the most powerful general-purpose technology since electricity.

    Conclusion: A New Monetary Logic for a New Productive Era

    For centuries, money has been issued as a claim against the future productivity of human labor, repaid from the income that labor generates. The logic of this debt-based system collapses when machines become the primary producers of goods and services. Then the limiting factor becomes purchasing power — the ability of human beings to access the abundance their own technologies create. That requires a monetary architecture that expands with output rather than debt, and distributes income not through wages alone but through mechanisms tied to the productive capacity of the whole system.

    Universal High Income and a sovereign wealth fund are two ways of doing that. One ensures a stable floor of demand; the other ensures that the public shares in the gains of automation. Both would be grounded in real production. But for the public to have access to those gains, the money supply needs to expand in proportion to the expanding pool of goods and services. This can be done by restoring the innovation our forefathers baked into the Constitution: debt-free money issued by the government itself.

    How to fund a UHI without triggering inflation or driving the government into bankruptcy is the first objection critics raise, but there are others. They argue that people would stop working or stop learning, that society would collapse into idleness or chaos, that life would lose meaning without jobs, that the government would have the power to control how people spend their money.  Will a UHI ring in the promised utopia or lock us into a state-controlled digital prison? Part 2 of this article will address those concerns. 

    _______________

    This article was first posted as an original to ScheerPost.com. Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.tom of Form

     

     

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    WAY TO GO MR PUTIN - RUSSIA FINALIZES 'LBGTQ PROPAGANDA' BAN

    Posted By: The_Fox [Send E-Mail]
    Date: Thursday, 1-Dec-2022 05:31:08
    www.rumormill.news/212414

     

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