[Robin McAlpine Blog] We need our principles to control our emotions again

[ALBA-Bot]

We need our principles to control our emotions again

Can I make a plea; could you all allow your principles to control your emotions a bit more? Actually, a lot more. We’ve spent a decade allowing our unchecked emotions to dictate everything including politics and it has been an absolute disaster.

To explain this I want to focus on Neil Mackay’s column from last week about Maggie Chapman. Mackay is a good writer who is often worth reading and I’d put money on it that he doesn’t really believe his own words. And yet he clicked send and filed the copy anyway…

I am almost certain the gap between his own rational capacity to understand that he just wrote rubbish and his ability to file the copy anyway was bridged by unchecked emotion. There is a simple way to avoid this and it’s not all that hard to get right. It would benefit our politics a lot just now.

Emotions are a neurological reaction to our experience of our environment (particularly our social environment). I don’t have space here to go into all the science of it but emotions are signals that are sent fast and strong by the brain interpreting the external world to stimulate our rational minds into checking if some sort of action is necessary or not.

For example, we feel sudden fear and this triggers a range of neurotransmitters and hormones that both alert us to the apparent problem and better equip us to respond to the problem. When we get a fright we get a load of chemicals discharged into our bloodstream and brain which make our responses faster, prioritise muscle groups we use for fighting or running and which exclude focus on other things our brains currently don’t think are a threat.

What matters is what comes next. Our entire bodies are now primed either to run or to attack. But our bodies will be primed this way whether it’s an intruder who means to do us harm or a member of our family hiding behind a door to jump out and shout ‘boo’ because scaring the guy who always jumps is amusing. (This happens to you all, right? It’s not just me?)

And this is why we’ve got a entire other system in our brain that is slower but cleverer which then kicks in to decide on the course of action. That is the part of my brain that prevents me punching my children in the face when they shout boo. Sadly, this is also the part of the brain which tells you ‘you don’t really need to spend that money’ or ‘you kind of know you’ve been doomscrolling too long now’.

That rational defence against emotional instincts is therefore a problem for someone who is trying to part you with your money. Think about the guy down the Barras trying to hawk you something, you asking for some time to think about it and him telling you to hurry because he only has two left. The anxiety is generated to try and bypass the rational bit that is telling you ‘this is a knock-off’.

Would something your uncle Bob said at the golf club which is a bit offensive but reasonable under a freedom of speech defence be appropriate for everyone to say in every context?

Now take that approach and industrialise it with the most advanced technology known to humans. That’s social media. The whole purpose of social media is to bypass your rational mind by flooding you with emotions that drag you round by the nose. Every fight, ever fright, every feeling of low self esteem, every laugh, every moment of hope – these operate like opiates, flooding our brains in ways that stop us thinking clearly.

When this is controlled by advanced computer algorithms that move faster than your brain can, you’re screwed. All they want to do is to get past your rational brain and sell you that product, make you click that link, trick you into sticking around on the app just a little longer. It’s effectively a process of very greatly lowering your IQ.

And this is now how we do our politics. Or at least, its how people who do politics do their politics. The mind-fuck system designed to sell you plastic crap from China or drag one more data node out of your interactions, or get you to train their AI with your mental labour – we use the same system to debate, make and cover public policy.

The means to deal with this is to have a consistent set of rules by which to check your emotional response. We have all sorts of words for these – the left calls them principles, the liberals call them values, the right used to refer to honour, elsewhere we call them procedures, rules or laws, pilots have checklists, in rugby everyone goes on about ‘trust the process’.

In each case we create a set of rules of a pretty basic if-then nature which are deliberately abstract and not tied to any individual case so that when any individual case comes up (bringing with it a risk of ’emotional contamination’) we have some system to rely on which is not being driven mainly by the emotion.

Mr Mackay’s column was suggesting that Maggie Chapman should, on free speech grounds, be defended over her comments about the Supreme Course being driven by hatred. This is of course a strawman argument. Unless I’ve missed it, no-one is calling for her to be prosecuted. Her freedom to do so isn’t at issue here. We’re debating the behaviour of an MSP.

So do we expect the rules of free speech and appropriate language to apply equally to everyone? Would something your uncle Bob said at the golf club which is a bit offensive but reasonable under a freedom of speech defence be appropriate for everyone to say in every context? A High Court Judge for example? Or a BBC newsreader? Or even your GP?

No, obviously not. If Bob said there are too many immigrants that would be acceptable as free speech, but a High Court Judge will have to try cases involving immigrants and so needs to avoid any hint of inherent bias. A newsreader isn’t there to offer opinion at all. A GP will need to provide professional healthcare for an immigrant.

OK, there’s principle number one; thresholds of legitimate speech are different for people who have different categories of roles in society. So is an MSP such a role? They are explicitly elected to represent a broad cross section of society. They are required to uphold various codes of conduct. So yes, clearly an MSP is in the category of ‘held to a higher level of account than uncle Bob’.

You are not cleverer than the algorithm because the algorithm isn’t targeting your clever part but your stupid part

Then you’d want a set of criteria for what might constitute ‘too far’. Generally we expect elected politicians to lead in providing respect for our institutions and an expectation of good faith on the part of people who run them. It really is part of the job. Is this non-negotiable? No. People that run institutions can be corrupt. So what would change the arithmetic here? Opinion?

Nope, evidence. An MSP would be expected to support the rule of law unless they had reasonable evidence that would lead a reasonable person to believe corruption had taken place. That evidence must be presented.

Next step; is every role held by an MSP the same? Is a backbencher and the First Minister on an equal footing here? Is it possible to have a category of comment that is OK for a rank-and-file MSP but would be unacceptable for a First Minister? This is a routine question with an easy answer – yes, a First Minister is promoted among MSPs to represent something bigger.

OK, now we know there are categories and levels of acceptable conduct according to role. Is a Convener of a Committee a role with a higher level of accountability than just a backbench MSP? And is the criteria of ‘acceptable’ the same for all of them? For example, is the convener of a committee about transport and a committee about the legal system representing the same role? No, both are contextual. One might say something the other wouldn’t.

None of this was that hard. Free speech applies to everyone – but not in every context, not all the time. When people take promoted roles (selected and paid for by the wider public) they have new duties placed upon them. Thresholds are higher. If they are then selected from among themselves to take an even more promoted role, that threshold rises again – but is shaped according to context.

Simple rules. You could have intuited the above without my text. Neil Mackay is a political commentator. This is bread and butter stuff for him. He has aggressively attacked people for what he considers to be unacceptable speech over lots of issues including vaccines, Ukraine and criticising Nicola Sturgeon. He has no track record as a free speech absolutist.

Maggie Chapman the citizen can spout crap about Supreme Court judges all she wants and each of us would be wise to defend her freedom of speech. Maggie Chapman MSP, though, should not be making wild claims of corruption in public institutions without providing evidence. That might not be a resignation offence though. But being a Deputy Convener of an Equalities committee with the remit of women’s rights? In the aftermath of these comments? I can’t see how that is acceptable.

Mr Mackay knows this. But Mr Mackay is very online and has had long, long fights with people he identifies are being gender critical (or so I’m told). He has been attacked by them and feels hurt and under fire. I sympathise. It’s horrible. But that emotion is then leading him to lash out not rationally but emotionally – by penning this rubbish, because it made him feel better.

This isn’t his fault. None of you bear responsibility for this. You’re (almost) all victims of an emotional addiction industry which is making you all crazy. You are in the casino every night rolling the dice and you all think you can beat the house. But you can’t beat the house. You are not cleverer than the algorithm because the algorithm isn’t targeting your clever part but your stupid part.

Personally I looked at what was then-emerging social media from my own perspective and realised this immediately. I am an emotional creature. In fact I’m a hopelessly erratic emotional creature who can swing from hope to rage to joy in an instant. I always have been, so I have worked really hard to tame those emotions by having careful, consistent, personal rules which are unchanging irrespective of the context. Social media would be a disaster for me.

It’s not children who need protected from social media, it’s humans. You can’t win. It’s a lose-lose game. The best bet would be to kick this stupid, toxic habit and go into sanity detox. But, failing that, could you at least find yourself a way to tame the beast and be a bit consistent and just a little less angry. It would be good for everyone if you could.

Source: We need our principles to control our emotions again