If we continue to airbrush our past and ignore human psychology in favour of glib sloganeering,how will we ever devise policies that succeed?There appears to be a deep attraction to the naive conception that we can re-create ourselves and our societies at will, with no regard to who we are and where we’ve reach from. A veritable Everest of blogs and posts and articles and books and speeches reinforce our desire to believe that “today is the first day of the rest of your life” – that the goal of never-ending happiness requires only a few days study of mindfulness to effect a seismic shift in our wellbeing.
This fantasy permeates politics as well. Even a cursory look at the language and images embedded in politics and public policy shows that asking serious questions approximately what the past can advise us approximately the likely effectiveness of proposed policies is rare. Even more uncommon is any deep exploration of what we know approximately human behaviour and how social structures are likely to influence it. This deficiency is nowhere more obvious than in the political course, or who seem to be rendered tongue-tied – or resort to soothing,infantilising babble – whenever uncomfortable truths are broached.
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Source: theguardian.com