Why Are People Like Sheep? Part Three

Continued from the previous post, Why Are People Like Sheep?, part two, the question is what happens when our self-identity conflicts with what others think of us, or when we realize we aren't the people we thought we were? One option is: we change ourselves. Another option is...

We Change Our Friends
Another choice we can make when our self-identity is in conflict or others' opinions of us are in conflict: devalue the opinions of those people who don't see us the way we want to be seen. In other words we begin to take those people out of our Quality World. This is commonly called "denial."

If we choose to devalue the opinions of those who are in our Quality Word, we are really choosing to take those people out of our Quality World. Those types of relationships are doomed to eventual failure.

The alcoholic from the previous example can realize that the effort required to make a real change is too great. He can instead choose to say to himself, "those people don't understand me; they don't understand my pressures and stress; if they did, they would understand that its OK for me to drink like I do."

Real Life Example
An example occurred during the presidential race of 2008 when former Hillary Clinton supporter, Paula Abeles, chose to "break ranks" and support the Republican nominee, John McCain, instead of the Democratic nominee, Barak Obama, when Clinton was not chosen as the Democratic nominee.



Paula's self-identity was in conflict because she had thought of herself as a Democrat. But when her chosen nominee was not the Democratic nominee for President, she chose to deal with the identity crisis by switching friends, and learning to accept her new identity (no longer a died in the wool Democrat, but rather a Democrat in some ideology but not everything).

Paula's old "friends" certainly helped her to feel good about that choice when they reacted with hatred and threats. I'm sure Paula took them out of her Quality World as fast as they took her out of theirs.