Further thoughts on previous posts

Well, we fumbled the ball yet again.

I'm going to reiterate something I said a little while back, only with a little more emphasis:

IF WE WANT TO WIN ANY FIGHT IN A DEMOCRACY, WE CAN ABSOLUTELY NOT AFFORD TO GO ON ACTING AND TALKING AS IF WE THINK WE'RE THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE ROOM AND EVERYBODY ELSE IS STUPID.

Democracy is about numbers of people. In order to win, you must persuade people to agree with you. And as my friend Shiv pointed out on FB, "If you want to change people's minds, patronising is not the way to go about it."

I'm as guilty as anyone else. It's easy to think "oh well, we're right, it's so obvious, everyone will see that." I posted a Bonzoes video on FB last night to show how silly I thought Brexit was. This serves me right. It serves all of us right.

If liberals want ever to win anything again, we HAVE TO STOP THIS. We have to burn the arrogance and complacency out of ourselves. We have to stop swanking about our brains, which have really not helped, this time or ever.

In fact, we have to do two things:

1. Stop underestimating the other side. They are as intelligent as we are and they know what they are doing. We cannot afford jokes and derision at their expense. That attitude has cost us too much already.

2. Stop relying on reason and facts to sway people, because they don't. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT PEOPLE ARE STUPID. STOP THINKING THAT RIGHT NOW. It means that people (including us) make decisions based on emotion, not reason, and that is the approach we MUST take. We must be Antony, not Brutus, if we want to change people's minds.

We have seen the power of emotion over reason, again and again, and we have yet to learn from it. This does not make us the smartest people in the room. It makes us the dummies.

We must change that, if we are ever to change anything.

I get a bit fed up sometimes

Let's formulate a brand-new paradigm, one that's cutting-edge, inclusive, proactive--in the broadest possible sense--and informed by the endless possibilities of Third Stage thinking. We need to transcend all the old linear, hierarchical, Old Head structures that have held sway for so long and evolve a totally different vision to navigate the multi-dimensional landscape of the future...

Uh-huh. And while you're all doing that, I'll be making the tea, feeding the cats, mucking out the litter trays and hanging up the laundry. And then I'll go and talk to some people about stopping them closing the post office (or stopping them fracking under our homes, or whatever actually needs doing to make a difference).

Being a student is wonderful in so many ways. But sooner or later, it ends.