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Politics and Emotions

4:57pm Friday, 30th May 2008

Politics and Emotions

 

British political life is in the throes of a paradox. The public seem to be both anxious and bored: fearful about life as the ‘nice decade’ draws to an end, but bored with a government seemingly unable to address their fears. These are emotional times.


But are we at ease talking about emotions? They are seen as manipulative, worse, selfish and certainly not to be trusted as a guide to decision-making.


We need to reappraise emotion and its role in politics. In an increasingly complex and interdependent world we need the development of a genuine emotional resilience.

 

In September, Demos will be publishing a call to arms for just such a resilience. We want to spark the beginning of a debate, one that goes far beyond the Westminster bubble, one that you can contribute to...

• How do you feel about politics in this country?
• Do you sometimes hold contradictory political views?
• What was the last emotion a politician triggered in you?
• When did you last feel passionate about an issue?
• What is your first political memory?

Comments

1
It's the same all over the world - emotions trap us in meaningless discussions that do not well address the facts. Managing the process to improve the results from those interactions will require more than just more publication of more opinions in more blogs by more ill-informed people who need assistance getting to the real issue - and its root cause(s).

Those online 'threaded' discussion forums go nowhere in particular, at the speed of sound, leaving us more in the dark. We need to come together in one platFORUM where we can interact equitably in the glow of enLIGHTenment, transparency, honesty, and objectively.  One method could be ASK4™ :
http://unettednations.wordpress.com/about/
 
Then together, with it, we could create global 'SOCIALUTIONS':
http://www.relationship-economy.com/?p=1027#comment-5101

It's worth a try - if we take a sound approoach.  Dare to - ASK4™ it?
Posted by George Bigger  at 5:04am on Monday, 2nd June 2008
2
OK, it's spelled 'approach'...
 - (but 'approoach' does have a lil' more British ring, right?)
Posted by George Bigger  at 5:10am on Monday, 2nd June 2008
3

The ability to have a sensible and constructive discussion does depend on certain basic skills as far as emotional self-discipline is concerned! These arn't encouraged in the public forum; comparing discussions on news programmes now and even how they were 10 years ago is sobering.

On the Campusalam website there's a whole section on techniques for staying calm during diccussions of a potentially contentious nature. It's a website for university staff and Muslim students, but the section on 'Dealing with people' is pretty universal...

http://www.campusalam.org/cs/skills/dealing_with_people/engaging_the_brain/

 

http://www.campusalam.org/cs/skills/dealing_with_people/engaging_the_brain/

Posted by Gwen Griffith-Dickson  at 3:08pm on Saturday, 7th June 2008

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