This was a fun one to write, with more than a sprinkling of wordplay.
The title arises from reading about Leon Festinger's 'Theory of Cognitive Dissonance' (1957). He proposed a mental model whereby we strive for internal psychological consistency to allow us to function properly in the real world. Otherwise it's stressful and requires effort dealing with opposing viewpoints that might both appear to be true. So we avoid such circumstances and any contradictory information which are likely to increase such stress. Festinger also argued that some people might also resolve such dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe...
So I thought it might be interesting to get creative with these mental mechanisms, overlaying them with a cynical smattering of contemporary social media commentary.
Perhaps it’s best I let my ~1000 word allegorical tale speak for itself. I hope you enjoy the result and I look forward to your comments and critique.
Jack was the only person in the village of Mientome who liked to engage with large cogs. He loved them. But, as he grew, he realised others thought him strange, and he had difficulty meshing with their daily routines. But he persisted with his passion, undaunted by their occasional taunts. He continued to collect, categorise and conjoin his growing collection, his parents willing to accommodate this, no doubt temporary, phase in their son’s development. But his fervent foraging became increasingly unrewarded, the earlier abundance of finds dwindling from his depletive efforts. He knew his growing frustrations and limited knowledge - both mechanistic and opportunistic - were compounding his shrinking rewards. Yet there must be others like him in the world, a collection of figurative one-in-a-thousanders, whom might lie like a fragile skein over Cognition.
It was an average day when the mysterious Peddaler passed again through Mientome, his journey’s circle bisecting the village by chance. His wheels weren’t true and there was rust. But he knew things. He had things.
Jack was scouring the back of the junk store for recently donated offerings when he heard the hubbub of childish interest. Spying him through the brown-tinged window – the Peddaler never stayed long – Jack rushed down a side-alley into the main street. Being taller than most of its parts, he easily waded through the dust-caked, clanking crowd that surrounded the now stationary visitor.
A glint of recognition from old teeth accompanied a proffered hand from the Peddaler. Brown flakes fell as Jack grabbed it, to be hauled up and away from the crowd’s outstretched clutches. He quickly pushed aside the flaps of leather masking the Peddaler’s mobile trove of metal, entering before those being similarly plucked could join him. His eyes adjusted to the gloom as he sought his beloved cogged circles. But something else caught his eye, something unfamiliar: neither a laplet nor a tabtop. It couldn’t be, not here.
It was an Opinoscope. Two flattened, joined tubes; their rims encasing discs of orange glass. Jack held it up to a sun-filled rip in the roof, careful to keep its bezels away from his eyes. Its workings were vaguely visible inside each tube. Finally, here was a way into the world he longed to engage.
The others were entering now. Jack held onto his find and emerged blinking back into the light to barter his prize. The Peddaler seemed surprised. He ground out, “too old, like me” and promised to wait whilst Jack fetched some bargaining trinkets. They would be nothing special, volume now beating down quality in the Peddaler’s growing world of want.
When Jack returned home after his successful trade, he kept his latest, very different, acquisition hidden from his family. Once it was working, using a whip aerial and a compass from his trove, he’d found them: a scattering of cog-lovers like himself, swept into a dark corner by an ignorant world. They’d coalesced not by chance or prayer, or even rank and index, but by shared, obsessive desire.
After just a few eager days with his new friends, his Bubble was fully formed. It had grown a thicker skin, unpricked by contempt or ignorance, and would brook no tolerance of uncogged dissonance as it sought to merge with self-similar others. Jack had also discovered the Chambers. They pushed themselves onto him, begging for his entrance, all filled with tempting echoes of self-affirmation.
Jack was content. His Opinoscope whirred faster. It knew. But he couldn’t keep his prize hidden from his few friends. They’d noticed the changes in him: his growing confidence, even an unwarranted assertiveness. His opinions backed by uncheckable facts. They didn’t have a ‘Scope to contend against his pronouncements.
His influence grew. He showed them how to collect and cosset their own collections, to covet them like his own. “Look, don’t touch,” they warned those who didn’t share or understand their fervour of a metallic aesthetic. Their newfound Cogmunity learned to be quick to rouse, directing its anger at challengers, ejecting wayward dissenters. Soon his acoglytes became as content as their founder.
Jack learned to use the new telewires and taught others to do the same. Now there were hundreds of thousands with a common voice. Who knew their opinions were valid and counted for something. His companions within the Bubbles and Chambers all said so. He could ignore the teachers, priests and mothers, and their constant, complaining refrain: that Mientome’s children were obsessed by spinning cogs. He was now beyond such dull mental metal. The immaterial riches offered by the wondrous ‘Scopes were both his life and a reason to live.
When the Peddaler returned to Mientome, he proudly held aloft the latest shining silver, crystal-flecked Opinoscope. One which enhanced his credibility and its self-validity. An eager crowd of every age welcomed him and his singular cargo. He arrayed his other wares before them: ‘Scopes of every style and colour, tuned to every whim and taste. They overwhelmed him with gratitude and he returned again and again, until his rusting flakes turned to burnished chrome. The unlucky few, too poor to be possessed by a ‘Scope, were loaned one for free – on one condition: that the Peddaler could see what they saw. What was the harm in that? Soon telewires and voicepoles festooned the village and its streets grew quieter, absent of shoppers and playing children. The nudging of the mental and the want of the material had replaced the self-discovery of the physical.
Today, when standing on Mientome’s streets, you can hear the faint whir of the Opinoscopes coming from every house. Their flickering, orange light illuminates the pale faces of their satiated consumpters. Darting eyes and swiping fingers create an undrummed beat. The beat of a world full of cogless ‘pinions; one rightly void of Factoscopes. A world made without thoughts of prejudice; yet which now thrives on it and its consequences. What was open and whole is now riven and closed.
Jack and all his followers – both old and new, family or friends – know they are content. Yet they seem not.
But the Peddaler is. High on the hill above Mientome, his cog-forged grin is as golden as the sun, as he looks to his accumulated clouds.
