This discussion distills a lot of very complex data and theory's into a simple overview. If you disagree with any of the assertions in this discussion I invite your challenge to the ideas or data.
We are born with basic inclinations - avoid pain, seek pleasure. As we learn how to do things as children we develop automatic responses that are tied to feeling good emotionally. After that we just go with the automatic responses. This system works great for deciding whats for dinner, what color shirt to buy - because it really doesn't matter most of the time what we chose.
As adults we end up with two distinct ways to make decisions. The first works best for for fast decision making. We turn to automatic responses we develop as children. Specific input triggers an automatic preprogrammed response. This decision making mode allows us to react quickly. It works well where reacting quickly is more important than taking the time to analyze data and react appropriately.
When a predetor came out of the bush after our ancestors it was more important that they do something - either fight or run, than that they take the time to figure out the perfect response. If they took the time to think they would be lunch.
The brain systems we use for this fast decision making are deep in our brain and linked directly to our emotions and are hard wired in the same way in humans, cats, rats - basically all animals. The canned responses are triggered by our emotions - perceptions create fear, or anger, and we can react instantly and decisively. For this discussion we will call this part of our brain the animal brain.
The second system for making decisions is collecting facts, analyzing the facts and figuring out the best thing to do. This is a slow process, sometimes we can take years to collect the facts and analyze them to reach a new conclusion. This capabiity is physically located in our cortex. The cortex is what we see when we look at the brain. It is the wrinkled walnut looking body that comes out of the top of our old animal brain and spills over and hides the animal brain. This part of our brain is largely what seperates us from animals. For this discussion we will call this system the deliberative brain.
When we are young the animal brain response will ordinarily trump the deliberative brain. It is efficient and fast and as long as its decisions don't cause a major problem the animal brain will make decisions largely ignoring the deliberative brain.
Generally the only way "thoughtful deliberation" gets kicked into gear is if one of our automatic responses produces a really unpleasant result. If a mate dumps us our emotional devastation may trigger thoughtful deliberation. If we get hit by a truck because we were to absorbed in our ipod thoughtful deliberation will kick in. So we get wiser as we proceed through life. Any moment where a automatic response has resulted in a really emotionally unpleasant experience is a moment where the opportunity to begin developing wisdom occurs.
But in many areas of life we never have that moment where the door is opened to rethink our automatic responses. And politics is one of those areas. Someone we respect tells us Republicans are good and Democrats are bad (or vice versa) when we are 13 and that becomes our default response. We adopt our chosen idelogy and it becomes part of our default responses. We don't get the kind of feedback that would cause us to rethink our default response. If our candidate doesn't win an election it is not a personal failing on our part, its because other voters are misguided. When something like the credit freeze in 2008 happens, it may hit us hard, but it will often not be immediatly clear whose fault it was so we may have no emotional sense that the way we were voting was part of the problem.
Compounding the difficulty politicians are masters at stirring up our emotions. If they can keep us emotionally in an uproar, blaming the other side and picking fights over policies, they keep the voters deliberative brain stifled under emotional responses and thereby protect their power and influence.
If we want better government we as voters need to be aware of the way our brains work. We need to learn to recognize our default responses and conciously gather facts and deliberate about whether our political beliefs actually result in effective polices. We also need to learn to reject politicians who attempt to manipulate our emotions to build their power and influence.
