Emotions have its place in politics

2023-02-18

Again a post about politics.

You might have noticed, and you might find it maybe odd that now the main campaign argument of all political parties is “we are rational”.

Don’t you find it strange? What does “we are rational” means? It means “we aren’t crazy” or “we aren’t irrational”. Welp, is this a political argument? I sure hope people presenting themselves to important positions aren’t crazy. Then if by itself it doesn’t mean anything, should we take it that this is an implicit accusation of saying that everyone else is crazy?

I feel like accusing other parties to be crazy may not lead to the most congruent and efficient politics and compromises… (really here I’m just parroting Piketty)

Can’t they promise more? If the best they’ve got is that they aren’t crazy, I might as well do the job myself. Anyway, what is rationality?

Rationality might here be “logical thinking” or be opposed to “emotion”. All those political opponents that see sea of migrants invading our pristine landscapes, the jealous left that has a grudge against rich people, the sentimental left that let themselves be blinded by the misery of the world, harff, all those spoilsports regulators that stops innovation! The state stealing almost all my earnings!

You see, even if everyone call themselves “rational” their fundamental drive is purely emotional.

It is purely logical.

What makes us do anything? Emotions! Literally nothing else drives a human being! If you want to go somewhere, it’s because you feel like it, there isn’t really a way to explain it beyond that, everything ends at the gut feeling, the fundamental quantum of sentiment. So why are all those politicians saying they are rational? Are they aimless? Really I think it’s more an accusation, they see the other parties driven by emotions they do not share, and just go “that’s irrational”, without even thinking half a second about their own motivations.

But humans are the rational animal, aren’t they? In any case, policy driven by pure gut feel seems like an awful idea. So surely politics are not (or at least should not be) purely driven by emotions.

Yeah, emotions should be the kickstarter of politics, the sparkle that lights the fire. A starting point. Or rather, an end point. Since the only way, as a human, to have a goal, is to feel like it, we should use emotions to learn what we want.

Then, we can use pure cold mathematics, experience-based deduction, inference, deduction, anything to reach what we want.

But we should always be informed (but not driven) by our emotions. A political system that suppresses emotions is terrifying. It forgets the value of humans, and as a result endangers humans.

Never forget why you are doing things.