Eleanor Sharman It’s hard to know what people’s motivations for change are.
I know that for you and I, moral arguments are powerful we need to be decent human beings
How do I know about our motives;
1) I have access to MY inner thoughts and feelings, I would hate to be an oppressor
2) I know YOU as a good and moral person through experience
Why do I think that the “leaders” are a different type of human than us?
I think
1) it’s the central attribution error, we tend to believe that others do bad things because they are bad people and in contrast, we do bad things because of “reasons”
There are lots of bad things in the world and the media with polititions names attached
2) because Conservatives know we vote for them if we are scared so they emphasise the bad and chaos of the world, watch the LNP at work?
3) because cynicism is a safe refuge in a scarey world and rather than deal with our problems it’s more comforting to blame “them”
and
4) because we have the world set on “high violence and competition” at the moment and the most ruthless people often float to positions of power
BUT
We can turn down the settings and that means reaching for peace NOT escalating the violence.
AND
If we are good (and we mostly are), there is no reason to believe we are unique, is there?