Caleb Anderson: Why are we disengaging?

In an earlier article, I commented that research tends to indicate that the thing voters most dislike about politicians (and media) is when they think they have been lied to.  

I have no research in defence of my second assertion, but it seems to me, that if there was a second "dislike", it could well be a dislike for arrogance  ...  most especially manifested in a predisposition to tell us what we should think.

By and large, I think these "dislikes" are largely intuitive, we sense, rather than reason them.  They annoy us in ways that are especially difficult for us to rationalise and articulate, but they annoy us nevertheless.

In recent interviews, many of our politicians have come across as arrogant, and I think this is turning some people off their messages.

If lying and arrogance are the things that annoy voters most (and the second of these is my assertion only), then why do these annoy people so much?   What do these "trigger points" tell us?  

Because I have a background in counselling psychology, I automatically ask myself what might be going on beneath the surface.  

If we were being entirely honest, we would all admit that we can be pretty practised in the dark arts of lying and arrogance (or intolerance) when that serves our interests.  And perhaps not so surprisingly, we can become excessively interested when scandals expose politicians' faults ... proof positive that we could never stoop that low.  

There are good guys and bad guys, we (or those championing our cause) are usually the good guys, and someone else (or someone championing their cause) by default, are nearly always the bad guys.  

It is interesting that we oftentimes expect our politicians (and celebrities more generally) to be more than we are capable of being ourselves, except in our more delusional moments.  In psychology, you would call this denial.  To make sense of things, we write stories in our heads. In an endeavour at sense-making, mini-narratives (about the here and now) are mapped onto each other, and these are, in turn, mapped onto the macro narrative of what we believe at large (our worldview).  

To some degree, we are puppets, and our unconscious drives are the puppeteers. This is why some things animate us so much.

With respect to politics, you cannot but wonder how many of the crises of human history might have been mitigated, or avoided altogether, if people had been willing to see things a little less definitively, in less certain (and narrow) terms.  

Both the left and the right of the political spectrum, and the media, have always contained people who are far too certain for their, or our, good, disinclined to listen, and seemingly incapable of self-reflection.

Our parliament (and media) have become a refuge to too many people who are wedded to ideologies that are far divorced from the real world, from the lives of those they purport to represent, and from common sense.  

It is hardly surprising that this sort of arrogance now pervades many of our institutions of state which have come to mirror the attitudes of their political masters.

Emerging new ideas around the left-right brain interface are fascinating (google Dr Iain McGilchrist), and the case is being compellingly put that our characteristic Western left-brain dominance may have been, in part, our undoing.  If we are over-reliant on our left brain's obsession for detail, for focusing in, perhaps we are possibly more susceptible to dogma, to worshipping the state, to missing the bigger picture that we see when we focus outward, rather than inward.  

Perhaps we are shutting out new and creative ways of listening, learning and resolving. Perhaps the right brain might be a partial antidote to the narrow and insensible dogma that is currently enveloping the West and eroding our institutions and values at such rapid speed.

Paradoxically, an electoral system purportedly designed to better represent a diversity of views has become very good at shutting these down when they do not suit, and at relentlessly attacking those whose views they find distasteful.  One of the downsides of a more  differentiated parliament is that the filters, and accountabilities, that once applied to our elected representatives seem no longer to apply.

In short, there are an increasing number of people in parliament who, by dint of their proclivity to speak on behalf of custom-made constituencies, become ultimately accountable to themselves alone, and to the dogmatic ideals they worship. These people come across to the man and woman in the street as arrogant, as divorced from the real world, as dismissive of the views of others, and as incapable of common sense.  

Parliamentary privilege has allowed our representatives to condescend and berate the very people whose ceaseless toil funds the institutions from which their privilege is derived, as well as the pulpits from which they preach.  The very people whose common sense and grit are critical to a much-needed re-set, and whose daily grind, and consistency of character, are the only anchors that have steadied us during some of the most difficult of times.

And the take-home ... those who purport to represent us would be wise to be a little less certain of some ideas, no matter how cherished, and a little more open to other ideas, even if this makes them uncomfortable.  

Postmodernism has detached us from our moorings, from our foundational ethics, from institutions like family, from the values that have been forged in hardship, from the wisdom and social capital bequeathed by our forebears, and from the ethic of duty.

It is about who serves whom, about what a fair, open and respectful contest of real ideas might look like, and about what might happen if this deepest of yearnings is ignored.

Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.