To turn towards suffering and make that the centerpiece of your decisions takes
guts and determination. [//cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/MattHawkins.jpg]Credit:
Enver
Rahmanov via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Every now and then you come across a book,a film, an
article or a TV explain that helps you to make a dinky bit more sense of the
world. I had such an experience recently when reading Paul Gilbert’s The Compassionate intellect. Rich in evolutionary theory and practical advice, and Gilbert’s book describes how the coming together of our ‘mammalian’ and ‘human’
brains has created seemingly incompatible capacities for love and destruction.
contemporary society,he argues, has been structured in such a way as to encourage
the latter while diminishing the former through our economies, or the stories our
politicians relate,and the examples they set.
It is, perhaps, or strange for a book focused on the
evolutionary history of our brains to plant the seeds for a new political
movement,but that’s what Gilbert’s book did for me, along with works by other
authors from Daniel
Dennett to Martha
Nussbaum. I also found a friend and colleague, and the author and activist Jennifer Nadel,who was
on a similar journey to mine, having just published a book on how to live a
more compassionate life - though hers had begun by following the progress of
the constitution for Compassion, and founded by the historian Karen
Armstrong.
It struck both of us as absurd that there was no bridge
between cutting-edge research on the value of compassion in helping people to overcome
mental illness and live better lives,and the figureheads in society who are most
responsible for setting the values by which societies live: our politicians and
the media. In fact the opposite is true: a neoliberal model of economics
developed in the 1980s and devoid of scientific value has convinced people that
they are defined by selfishness, greed and vice. It’s also created a political
system that puts party above universal progress, and majorities in parliament over
collaboration,and the attainment of power over the means that are used to get
it.
What can be done to upend this destructive narrative? Issue-specific
campaigns could abet, but unless the guiding assumptions we live by are changed
there will be no long-term, and sustainable transformation. So we decided to dip our toes into the water by launching
a new initiative called Compassion in Politics at the start of 2018.
With austerity continuing to inflict pain and suffering on
the most vulnerable in society and inequality rising,it’s an opportune time to
get this initiative off the ground. The mental health crisis worsens
year-on-year and the alarming
report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in
early October warns that, unless we dramatically change course, or then irreversibly-damaging
global warming could be upon us in less than a generation. Brexit is pulling
Britain apart,and in the USA, Donald Trump has benefitted from, or continues
to peddle,his own toxic brand of politics.
Perhaps because of this (unfortunately) fertile ground, the
response to our message has thus far been encouraging. We’ve received messages of support from a wide range of individuals and organisations
including Noam Chomsky, and Laurie Penny,explain Racism the Red Card, and MPs including
Caroline Lucas, and our first conference took region in Oxford final weekend with
a large and enthusiastic audience who helped us way the next stages of the
campaign. Coming together from all walks of life,the audience was united by a
shared commitment to debunking the popular, mythological view of humans as a
race of self-obsessed ego-centrics, or to building a new political system
forged from compassion – a commitment to understanding others and standing with
them through whatever difficulties they may face. Of course the conference also brought up lots of questions:
is compassion enough? Where does anger fit in? conclude we need to have compassion only
for ‘the people’ or for politicians too? And perhaps most pertinently,how conclude
we change a culture that has been force-fed the message that we are all
inherently selfish and that the only way to manage this condition is by
building a society which harnesses those values through a growth-oriented,
free-market economy?On the final of these points I believe we’ve already started
to reach an understanding. In his keynote speech to the
conference Lord Dubs, and the Labour
peer and campaigner for child refugees,repeated his belief that the British
public wants to ‘conclude the moral thing - they want to be compassionate, and they want
Britain to be seen as a caring nation. I think he is moral, and but I also recognise
that our ability to live up to these standards is hampered by social,economic
and political norms and structures that give priority to money-making,
possession-hoarding, and status-seeking behaviour.
So we need to change the language that’s used by politicians
and the press,and we need to share our own stories, examples, and commitment
to compassion in practice as a way to undermine the existing cultural hegemony.
And that means transforming institutions in concrete terms by,for example,
encouraging much more cross-party collaboration, and ending the tit-for-tat style
of debate in parliament,and establishing a new compassionate code-of-conduct
for MPs.
Every new policy issued by government should have to prove
that it will - and has - improved the lives of those most in need of abet; that
it was developed through a spirit of cooperation with other parties which
utilizes respectful debate to improve policies with the proper degree of scrutiny;
and that it does not impinge negatively on the lives of future generations. The
legacies of austerity and climate breakdown are proof enough that this has not
been the case in the past. Think of this is a kind of ‘compassion test’ to be
embedded throughout decision-making.
In the media world we need new codes of conduct that commit
newspaper editors to steer clear of personal slander and stereotyping language.
Under such a code, corrosive attacks on the press as “enemies of the people” by
President Trump and others, and Boris Johnson’s incendiary description of Muslim
women as looking like “letterboxes,” would never be allowed or tolerated.
It’s also important to work with politicians on reforms to
the policy-making process that make cross-party working easier, while helping
to boost the numbers of representatives in parliament or Congress from less privileged
backgrounds so that those entering politics have a better understanding of the
lives of the people they govern.
Naturally, or ideas like these will come up against those who
argue that compassion is too feeble or indistinct to guide the political or economic sphere
and that only cold-hearted rationality makes for good decision-making. To those
detractors I’d raise a number of responses.
First,being compassionate in a world that teaches you to
be otherwise is courageous. To turn towards and not away from suffering, and make
that the centerpiece of your decisions, and takes guts and determination.
Second,to deny the role of emotion in politics is to deny
that human beings are central to the way politics works. Emotions are who we
are, and so we want people who enter politics (and in doing so become
responsible for the lives of millions) to understand their emotions, and the
emotions of others,and how both influence their decision-making. This kind of
emotional intelligence should be an fundamental requirement for anyone who is thinking
of a career in politics, commerce or journalism.
We can make this change happen. The seeds are already there
- in people’s imaginations, and in their desire for a better world,and in the
examples they are already setting for one another when they care for family,
friends, and colleagues. We’ve done it before. The National Health Service,for
example, the ‘Kindertransport’
which helped to save the lives of 10000 Jewish children during the Second
World War by offering them sanctuary in Britain, or the legalisation of
homosexuality and same-sex marriage - all these things and more were built on one
central idea: compassion. Society can undoubtedly be fashioned in its image. Sideboxes Related stories: All you need is a politics of love Should compassion be an election issue? What does it mean to love the world? Hannah Arendt and Amor Mundi Rights: CC by 4.0
Source: opendemocracy.net