Election 2015: How Elections Break Our Brains

GOING INTO AN ELECTION, WE ALL KNOW what to expect from some of those running for office. And we end up getting it in spades – rancor, false claims, stereotyping, hyper-partisanship, and name-calling. But it’s not all about the candidates themselves, and not all following such practices.. But this week we saw evidence of what happens when good people go over the top with their political leanings and it was ugly, real ugly.Social media went crazy when, at a Stephen Harper election rally in Etobicoke, Ontario, Conservative supporters verbally jostled with reporters, especially when questions centered on the Mike Duffy trial presently consuming Ottawa. We’re used to temperatures rising at partisan events, but the sight of one Harper supporter going after reporters while using language better reserved for locker rooms or late-night shows came across as jarring. People were talking all about it in coffee shops the next morning and the views were universally unfavourable. We hope for better amongst the citizenry, especially when professional politics itself is moving increasingly into the theatre of the dark arts. It was like watching parents squabble at their kid’s hockey game, swearing at the referee, or hurling verbal abuse at one of the kids from the opposing team. We all shake our heads, embarrassed.Author Brian Resnick took on a study of how politics gets inside the brains of average people, in hopes of discovering some way to break free of the anger and the expletives. What he discovered wasn’t to his liking:“A month of speaking to scientists about the political brain produced no shortage of depressing conclusions. Their research reveals our brains to be frustratingly inept at rational, objective political discourse. And those revelations come at a time when elected officials have strong incentives to stay the partisan course, and when the people who elect those officials are increasingly getting their political news through sources pre-tailored to reinforce their opinions.”Resnick noted that even when people of differing opinions worked with the same set of facts and understood them perfectly, because of their own personal values differences would remain. Yet he feels that it’s not opinions that are the problem: “The trouble is when we’re so blinded by our partisanship that it overrides reason – and research suggests that is happening all the time.” Indeed it is, perhaps especially in a federal election, and especially in the modern era.Canadians are a naturally partisan people, always have been. They have opinions on everything, as they should and as is only natural. But what is changing is the level to which we now go to demonize those of other persuasions. As the outburst from Etobicoke revealed, it becomes dehumanizing when opinion descends into slander, as when the individual doing the ranting accused reporters of cheating on their taxes and calling them “lying pieces of s#*t.” It was a lot like watching Question Period without the expletives.It’s hard to imagine how politics can improve if citizens themselves follow their political leaders into the hyper-partisan swamps. Canadians will naturally disagree, but we have rarely been known to flirt with bigotry in such an open manner. We understand that many in the Conservative party are disillusioned and frustrated by the Duffy situation and the narrow control of the PM's office. We also know that hyper-partisans exist in every party. But when citizens lose control, democracy loses its sanity.History’s darkest moments occurred when one group of people was dehumanized by another. The examples are many and the outcomes sinister. The need to dehumanize “the other” doesn’t just materialize, but develops over time, when leaders no longer seek enlightenment and fairness, but power and exclusivity, and frustrated citizens shut their minds in order to open their prejudices.Politics in Canada has become feverishly polarized and partisan because our leaders just haven’t been able to find a way to find common ground even when in disagreement. If citizens follow that lead, then it all becomes about the blind leading the blind, the prejudiced leading the prejudiced, and the angry leading the angry. Average Canadians, even those supporting certain political parties, have to do better than this. Overall, citizens in Canada are still a respectful lot, but the stakes are now changing.  If elections are meant to bring out the best ideas and the brightest lights, then Election 2015 is presently heading in the wrong direction unless respectful leadership is practiced by citizens and politicians together.