Identification

Identification is a funny program. It's a belief that says "I am this", "This is a part of me". People can identify with many different things. For example, people can identify with their gender, job, education, social status. People can become very emotionally attached to those ideas. But those are just ideas. People believe that they are those abstract concepts. That's an odd thing to do.

Of course, people can also identify with their belief systems. Because of that, because people believe themselves to be those belief systems when someone undermines their beliefs they see it as a personal attack. Even when it wasn't intentional. Even when someone just speaks his mind with no hostile intentions. When he says something that may suggest the other person's belief is wrong, this can be interpreted as an attack.
Then another odd thing can happen. When "attacked" this way, people can feel morally justified to counter-attack. Some people see nothing wrong about behaving this way, because "he attacked me first".
This is a very destructive behavior and unfortunately, it is very common. When I made an experiment, to see if I could teach working with mind programs it was a total disaster because of this mechanism. I gathered a group of volunteers. They knew some basics about mind programs from another source, so they weren't just random people. But still, when I started getting deeper into this subject, they started defending their beliefs, defending their authorities, their definitions of words and they started attacking me. I had to stop this experiment.

On the other hand, people love to be confirmed in their beliefs. They love to be right. Probably because they identify so much with their beliefs, they get a boost to their confidence and to their self-esteem, when their beliefs are confirmed. This confirmation doesn't necessarily mean verification with the reality. It can be just another person's opinion. For many people being right, doesn't mean the objective truth. It can just mean feeling right and winning the argument. This is clearly visible in politics, where the truth doesn't matter and what matters is what voters believe in.

Constant looking for confirmation and counterattacking anyone with a different opinion leads to the consolidation of belief systems. This process is now further reinforced by algorithms on social media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5qJjNM2Kx0

I didn't mean this post to be a rant. I'm not a very emotional person. I just try to analyze the main programs of this society. I don't know what personal comment I could add to this. I never attack anybody. But my behavior is often misinterpreted as an attack. Even if somebody feels being attacked, shouldn't he at least try to ease the conflict, not to escalate it?