Psychology for the Politically Concerned

As far as I have been taught until now, politics and psychology were barely related. Politics went the way they did because it was politics, and the human psyche was never introduce as a factor. Psychology only dealt with the person and close relations, with acquaintances mentioned and the relation to the world politics necessitates was never mentioned.  That is until while wandering through the library hoping to find a novel with action, romance, and a great evil to be overcome, I instead found a collection of articles in the interdisciplinary field of political psychology.

The concept seemed so obvious to me that I did not realize at first that the field was less refined and much newer than I expected.  For a scientific field it is very new, its official beginnings being slated to 1940. This means much of the information is not refined yet, but the field itself represents something I think anyone who is concerned with the nature of man and government, and could possibly lead to identifying the true causes of war, oppression, authoritarianism, prejudice of all kinds, which opens the door to eliminating them once and for all.

I am by no means an expert in the field after a week of study, but I write this in hopes it might convince someone to take a glance at it. We all have our ideas concerning politics and how people reason and think. Most of these ideas are based off personal experience that is limited in scope and warped by our own beliefs, no true monitoring of data, and subject to emotion. However, even with currently limited methodology and experimentation, political psychology could remedy the emotional side of politics that distorts even the explanations we give to ourselves out of fear or desire. Whether you are republican, democrat, independent, green, socialist, communist, or even an anarchist, you can agree understanding how and why people make the decisions they do politically is important for our world to take the next step in understanding the path to peace.

In short, google Political Psychology, check your library, and give it a look. Hopefully you’ll find it as intriguing as I do. But as always, think for yourself.

-Justin

Cowardice and Commitment, Part I

Keep in mind as you read this I am not attempting to profess that I adhere to this completely. I felt the urge to write this from looking at myself and realizing the tendencies I had when faced with situations that called me to stand for what I believe in, in the face of overwhelming peer pressure and closed-mindedness demanding I repress my views and succumbing to it. Hiding under the guise of not wishing to stir a conflict, I close my mouth and let others run over my ideals without defending myself, so this is as much a guide for me as it is for others.

Obviously while forming and creating opinions and shifting away from the views instilled in me by the great American public education system, insecurities about my position when confronted arise. In order to avert this, the first step must be education to a near obsessive point about the beliefs you wish to stand for. The number one enemy of a closed mind is information. Possessing it, and not manufacturing it for the moment, is key. Having a dear friend who, despite being quite convictional about his beliefs, frequently creates information to suit his argument at the time never convinced me of anything. An argument is a battle where your knowledge is the sword, and it must be sharpened to be effective. Since you should be arguing within yourself as well to validate, the better you can argue, the more the information sharpens your thoughts.

Now, you must seek out a fire to forge your thoughts in and refine them. It is easy enough to find an argument, but it is important to seek out the right type and for the right reasons. Arguments for the sake of being right are one of my worst habits, and I am sure every person has various reasons for doing so. It is best to find someone fairly who has ideals similar to yours, and search for differences to discuss and refine. Being able to stand up for your beliefs among your like-minded peers is the first step in truly acting as you believe, and even being the first step can be extremely difficult.

This is the stage I am at now personally, and while I have ideas and plans on how to continue, I wish to progress before I talk further. Until then, keep an open mind.

- Justin

The Long Lost

Crushed hopes for a better life while sitting on the black couch of ignorance. Images reflection in a box, of a pitiful existence passed waiting for the end. Alone, isolated and scared, she sits in her corner away from others. Her days spent in cage, located next to thousands of similar structures holding just as many per, makes her feel secure. In the streets she walks, afraid to look up in case she would come across someone actually trying to make eye contact. People are so insane, she might get attacked at any moment, she knows. Sitting in the bus, she hears a baby cry and while it reminds her about how having a family would be an interesting idea, that noise bugs her. Why can’t he just shut up? Why isn’t his mother doing something about it? She just raises the volume of her ipod and closes her eyes. The music takes the pain away, yet the lyrics of her favourite song drift her in deep thoughts… ”what is it I’m after, searching for desaster, watching my own life flash in front of my eyes…we’ve been given answers, through walking cancers, dressed up as life…”

A single tear falls down her cheek to crash into nothingness on her jacket, as she forces her eyes to remain closed, hiding away the pain. It can’t be the way it is supposed to be. Yet how could one wish for more. More while looking around to find people, acting exactly like the other yet so isolated from one another.

A single number among billiards of different, yet identical beings. Why would one, actually change something to the equation, she wonders. Holding on the thought that she does matter at work, that she is essential when she is not, unacknowledged agreement between her thoughts and reality…she keeps going. But where, where should she be heading now. Why should the path, or even the arrival point matter. It does not. Depressed, like all those clones, she can’t see, she doesn’t want to understand.

On the way home, an Illuminate screams for unity passed their differences. Injustices being listed as things that can actually change, she hurts. Why can’t he just shut up? Our lives aren’t complicated enough yet? Within the crowd, she hears her name. Looking to the ground, she wonders if she is not only hallucinating voices within the masses. A large hand sits on her shoulder as she steps back immediately. A friend, apparently. Startled, easy talk goes and quickly ends. Does he really care? He doesn’t. Nor does anyone. Does she even care? She highly doubts it.

The Illuminate’s voice suddenly catches her attention as the words “pain” “we all suffer” “This is not how it is supposed to be. This can’t be life.” “What if he was right?” “Why does he think what I think?”, she mumbles. Nothing more but a flash of light just as rapidly gone because obviously, he must be another of those charlatans trying to gain from those still having hope for changes. He states various possibilities and the group surrounding him applauds and rejoices as if there was no tomorrow. As the speech finally ends, the group suddenly return to random individuals, walking away their lonely path back to their own cage. A ray of sunlight in their life if nothing else, but at least she knows that she won’t be disappointed as she did not listen more than required.

Painful way to the cage as individuals unable to own one, beg for help. Why should they deserve any while she does not manage to obtain any? Her own existence falling to piece should earn others the right to ask for more than what she has? Be they called miserable; those who dare begging those who worked hard for what they have, as if they could have it any easier than the rest of them.

Knowledge taken away from birth by others, while kept away by her own will, as she grew up. Is there a solution to such lack of evolution in the human nature? Why does she want friends, feel this incomparable need to talk to someone, while she wouldn’t even care if someone decided to talk to her about his life. It is divided that they stand, looking for gains instead of their happiness, because no more is there any belief of true happiness within poverty. Values as she heard of as a child are long lost and will never come back. When you are born for less, you cannot earn more than what is ready to be distributed your way. Desperate, it is by the window that she watches her life walk away on its own, she knows.

- Sabbi

From Socialism to Dictatorship, the human nature

During an animated discussion between a friend and I, I reached the conclusion that socialism, on a sociological and psychological basis, leads automatically to a dictatorship even though the best intentions might be there. Even then, it’s only a perspective matter since in modern socialist and communist societies, like China or even Cuba, the nature of undertaken actions aren’t regularised or decided in order to establish a dictatorship but rather under an idea of collective consciousness of needs and resources available to said community.

It’s easy, while being a stranger to the situation, to expose facts leading to believe that this or that is bad, even more within our Western consciousness where the corruption of the capitalist system has sunk so deeply within our souls. While we’re fighting against that way of thinking which is nothing more but a reflex, the critical thinking resumes being harder and harder to reach. Those who have read the title of my article are probably feeling attacked and ask themselves: “But Sabrina…how can you think something so absurd! The people’s liberation can’t become true and lead to a dictatorship, because it’s together that we will choose our future.” And to that, I will answer…yes, it’s together that we will become conscious of our ways and we’ll use the necessary means in order to live in a society that we will build free of monetary rules, instead replaced by our humanitarian laws.

The human, by nature, can be just as good as it can be bad. In the deepness of my mind, I must, as in I can’t believe otherwise, that men are good as a species, that the situations lead them to be become evil but is it really? Isn’t it naive to believe in such utopia? Yes, yes!! I’m naive. Within this infinite circle between good and bad, where relativity is subjective, men learn and develop. The human, in endless evolution matches to the complexity of the system he grows within.

At birth, we are nothing more than a white sheet, where the words “I want to understand” are inscribed. The paper’s fibre is dense and represents our assets. The nervous system, the senses, driving force…all those things that we don’t learn but that are inherent. A pencil at hand, sometimes a little too sharp, we write the first lines: learn what hurts, what feels good, to walk, to talk, etc… If we shred a part of my sheet while there’s not much written, I will still be able to understand I will use the rest of the space more carefully, just like the child who has a defective part of his brain. An accident could happen while he’s only 3 years old, in a part of his brain where speech data is usually stocked, and as surprising as it can be: he will use another part of his brain in order to develop his speech capacities, without necessarily possessing any lack speech-wise. Amazing, is it not?

Is it normal, that we must tell people to take action when they see something unusual happen in their neighbourhood? Well yes, it is. By nature, men are individualistic and believe that someone else will take care of it. That seems unreal yet studies have proven it: situations have proven that we aren’t conscious of the needs of others, while when we find ourselves in such situation, we will yell for help hoping that someone…somewhere will hear our suffering call. Around, people will hear but they will rather think that someone else will take care of it. Are we unable to take responsibilities, unless we are taught to at a pretty young age, while the page isn’t blackened by a mess of writing?

Therefore, if we do manage to create this society that we all dream of, how would it be possible to break the individualism cast? How will we be able to teach men, that his brother is just as important as himself? I find myself pleased, thinking that it will be through the education that we will reach the next step but it goes much further than that….it will be at the household’s foundation that these values will have to take place, so the parents’ education is extremely urgent, for the survival of the next generations.

In society matters, be it socialist, communist or even capitalist. It is imperative that the whole population participate in its emancipation. However, the argument that we hear often is that there will always be “slackers” who will do nothing, who wants to do nothing. To that I answer: “Men, aren’t “slackers” by nature. They refuse to feel useless. It’s the sum up of actual and past circumstances which creates more and more of that kind of people. How, while being members of the lower part of the poorer class, who don’t earn much more than well-fair, who don’t manage to pay for bills, rent, food, leisure activities and so on, can we actually want to get involved in a society that represents nothing more than a slow but gradual destruction of our beings?

There isn’t only the worker who is an asset to society and that’s one of the problems that we refuse to understand as a group. We need to give people unable to find a job or to work, things to do so we do not lose them and see them fall progressively in an endless tunnel where depression and fear surrounds their prey like hungry wolves.

But, even if every single one of us would finally understand the importance of one another, of their implication toward building a better world, did you know that a single greedy person could destroy the work of a whole society? Yes, a single person could start a wave that would bring us back exactly to where we are today. Stupid creatures that we are, we have to live within a set of laws that keeps us from becoming greedy, that wouldn’t allow such actions in order to protect what will have taken decades to build up.

Hence, isn’t that a dictatorship? To tell a man, you will not act this particular way? You will live forever for one another? After all…everything is relative. If we take for example, Cuba, where it wasn’t allowed to possess a microwave, unnecessary energy-eating tool, while they were about to enter an unbelievable energy crisis? China, that doesn’t allow more than one child per family is in itself a dictatorship in the eye of one, but to the other, it seems evident that with the population density of that country, it wouldn’t be logical to promote reproduction. Shouldn’t a society live within the restrictions of its own capabilities? Therefore, is it a dictatorship to impose a structure within which everyone, as a community and not individually, is able to live without reaching the auto-destruction point of non-return?

- Sabbi