The Ash Twins Blog

I read some articles this week about the Tea Party Movement. The first was in the New York Times by David Barstow (previously mentioned on the blog). The second was sent to me by my dad, from prisonplanet.com.

The excessive emotion in these debates is fascinating. Subjects as innocuous (to me)  as meteorology, clinical diagnosis, or income taxes gain an emotional charge that I would think would be reserved for coup d`etats or CEOs making billions of dollars a year.

There is a strong bias in the sort of person who becomes an actor in the public sphere, and I think the main selection factor is emotion. Subjects to which people can develop a strong (usually negative) emotional response gain dramatically disproportionate traction in the public sphere.

Why bland subjects like the average temperature of the Earth can become so emotionally charged is an important question. Is it due to the fact that we do not really have anything to complain about, so as a society we manufacture things to argue over? Are these debates instead manufactured by corporate interests to disrupt engagement of actual legitimate social problems (e.g. corporate greed)? Or are human beings cognitively unable on average to understand (and take a position on) genuine social problems, and thus debate simpler issues instead?

The scariest possibility – and most reasonable to me – is that the last two reasons are major contributors. The upside is that debates in the public sphere do not accurately represent public opinion. These issues that appear so important to those involved are paltry in the long run, so these raging debates probably don’t influence the course of history too drastically.