"When nervousness and insecurity become the dominant mood of a society, anger is given licence to spread and grow"
What might happen if we didn’t default to automatic rage at the point we felt personally or politically provoked, if our debate relied less on a repertory of predictable stimulus responses? Some may argue that it would make way for the restoration of a political culture impelled by fact-based reason and the best interests of its citizens.
But after Brexit and Trump, it has become clear that the appeal to facts and best interests is an inadequate basis on which to resist far-right populism. Perhaps it is not so much the rational appeal to facts we need to be making so much as contact with the depth and complexity of our feelings. The politics of “Stop the boats!” and “Build the wall!” feeds off a reactive, defensive rage. Lurking under that coiled anger is a rich and complex seam of emotional experience. Perhaps it is time we started listening to this teeming life of feeling, instead of to the noisy slogans drowning it out.
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