Here’s a killer quote, if ever there was one:
when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins”. The right was much more skilled on this terrain, weaving compelling human stories while its opponents tended to take refuge “in reciting their best facts and figures, as if they were trying to prevail in a high school debate tournament”.
It’s from an article by John Harris for the Guardian, [1] quoting the work of Drew Westen, a sagacious political philosopher whose work The Political Brain explains more than most about why progressives keep losing. ( Declaration of interest: Harris is on our list of all time top journalists because he actually goes out and talks to real people)
From which we deduced that the answer to all the world’s problems must be to create a Political party to obtain representation for The Intelligent and Educated. You know, the way working people in the UK set up the Labour Party in the nineteenth century, because they felt that the Liberals and Conservatives did not represent their interests? Spotted the flaw yet? We went on to point out to ourselves that we did all the science and doctoring and lawyering and wrote all the movies and……still not spotted the the flaw? And no, we had not been drinking, we’re on a diet at the moment; but we do not need to drink heavily to make huge blunders. We’re amazingly good at it, even when when sober . Last chance: have you spotted our fault?
OK here’s the answer. This morning we had coffee with a wonderful elderly neighbour who spent most of his life as a fisherman on the Sussex coast. In the course of a long, pleasant conversation we learned much of the Perils of the Sea. Storms, wrecks, unpleasant colleagues, conger eels, that sort of thing. For example, what do you do when you haul up a 1000 lb German torpedo and get it tangled in your nets in a strong wind and a heavy sea in the shipping lanes, and it is threatening to explode/capsize your boat/ slow you into the path of a 200 000 tonne supertanker? The answer is to think. Very quickly, very profoundly and very thoroughly, in a way that landlubber University Professors and keyboard wannabees never, ever have to.
And suddenly it crossed our minds. Who’s intelligent now? What price all your books and theories when you have to face existential crises like that one? And still have to calculate the economics of the fishing business-pay for fuel, pay the crew, keep alive, sell the fish, etc? And another lesson became even clearer. Until we in the Centre, on the Left, Liberals, Whigs, Progressives, Greens or whatever we want to call ourselves take very seriously-very seriously indeed- the feelings, emotions and opinions of those who actually do the work, we will be lost at sea indeed.
[1]tps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/01/labour-relaunch-government-nigel-farage-donald-trump?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
[2] Drew Westen The Political Brain Business News Publishing 2007
#john harris #inshore fishing #politics #government #progressive #conservatives
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