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‘Take back control’: how the words of Brexit go much deeper than we think
Take back control. These three simple words are key to understanding why the majority support Brexit. They successfully tap into one of the most intrinsic human drivers: we all want to be in control.
The problem with politicians
It’s not just that we don’t trust politicians — people now actively despise the. Why?
Why don’t we trust anyone?
The primary way we understand someone to be trustworthy is not by what they say, but how they live. We’ve all met people who might claim to be whiter than white, but when you dig beneath the surface and see into the nooks and crannies of their life, they’re just as imperfect as the rest of us. So simply claiming to be trustworthy isn’t enough — we need to see it in someone’s behaviour.
The modern myth of open-mindedness
The very same attitude that makes us first to cry, ‘That’s neither fair nor true, because it’s just a social construct!’ is itself a social construction, a product of specific cultural conditioning. Relativism cancels itself out. Still, we often assume present norms are innately right because we’re entrenched; we haven’t known any other reality. It’s an easy trap to fall into, but the spell breaks when we realise the norm itself is always shifting.
The Trump inside all of us
If we are interested in the truth, especially where we already have strong opinions, we have to be more skeptical than our feelings prompt us to be. But the fact is that it’s very difficult to question the things we take for granted...It's here that we are in danger of becoming another Donald Trump.