Where do your opinions come from?
Do we ‘think’ our world views, or ‘feel’ them? And what do our beliefs mean for politics and society?
In each episode of On Opinion, Turi Munthe asks thought leaders to share their perspectives on why we think what we think and what it means for the world today, discussing everything from the war on truth to how to argue with people you hate.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Where do your opinions come from?
Do we ‘think’ our world views, or ‘feel’ them? And what do our beliefs mean for politics and society?
In each episode of On Opinion, Turi Munthe asks thought leaders to share their perspectives on why we think what we think and what it means for the world today, discussing everything from the war on truth to how to argue with people you hate.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
“Our inner and outer crises are two sides of the same coin”
There are many lenses through which to explain polarisation - economic, political, demographic, evolutionary… Alex Evans wants us to consider it from a psychological perspective.
Alex has campaigned around inclusion and social justice for two decades, but researchers in Israel changed his mind about social fracture. Polarisation between Israelis and Palestinians is a mental health issue - driven by ongoing trauma, anxiety, hyper-vigilance and threat perception.
If democracy depends on citizens who can manage their mental and emotional states, feel empathy for each other, and share a sense of common identity and purpose, we need to address our inner worlds as much as the outer one.
“The state of the mind and the state of the world intersect”
Larger Us, his campaigning organisation, puts psychology at the very heart of its approach to curing our social divide.
Listen to Alex explain how society - both governments and individuals - can move from fight/flight to self-awareness and empathy, from powerlessness to agency, from disconnection and loneliness to belonging.
Along the way, he also discusses:
“We really have to come together to tackle these crises but our capacity to do so is being eroded by our emotional responses.”
Works cited include:
Alex founded the Collective Psychology Project in 2018, which then became Larger Us in 2021. He is the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough?, and is a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.