Hello again,
Blink and you’ll miss September. Gosh, we’re galloping along now aren’t we? Spring has fully sprung here in Sydney, and today it’s 30C (86F), which is truly wild considering the west coast of the US is still ablaze. I am not looking forward to a repeat of that here.
No huge news to report, except that I have now successfully driven across the city centre, over the Anzac Bridge, down Parramatta Road and through the Cross City Tunnel. I even managed to not overthink a reverse parallel park and nail it. The rest of my time has been taken up with exercise and uni work.
This week’s focus was on welfare and poverty and how NGOs and other international organisations appeal to governments in order to create sustainable anti-poverty policy. Essentially, there are four main arguments: the moral, economic, political, and social. The moral argument is the ‘soft opening’ — “No child should have to live in poverty” you say, and only the most wretched would disagree. The economic argument can be the strongest. You outline how reducing inequality by spending money will ultimately create more prosperity for everyone. The political argument is necessary to maintain support — that is, has the party chosen policy that’s good for now/votes, or have they incorporated it into their ethos? Finally, the social argument requires imagination. You ask, “Do you really want to live in a world with increasing poverty?”
These arguments got me thinking about persuasion, generally. How I use it in my own life, and how it seems like a lost cause to convince anyone of anything these days.
Online, political ideologies are seen as calcified parts of our character. The same people who scoff at the fixed destinies of personality types in astrology or HR tests turn around and label others as ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’, ‘lib’ or ‘commie’. If you think this is rather dehumanising, it is. However, I don’t necessarily mean in an oppressive sense. This week I saw these tweets by a strategic comms consultant talking about how framing and language, as well as context, play into a person’s political preoccupations:
She then references the following graph of how the EU became a hot topic concern only after David Cameron announced the Brexit referendum.
The human mind remains a malleable, fanciful machine. The logic it accepts at any given point depends largely on what information it was fed until then. For politicians and activists alike, finding the statement that resonates with the most people is crucial. Even more so in the ‘attention economy’ of today — though, one could argue people have always needed bite-sized maxims to understand the world, through religious scripture or home-spun proverbs.
Persuasion, then, operates as abstractly as the mind. Many factors have to coalesce before a collective change of perspective occurs. Un/fortunately, no one strategy is guaranteed to bring people to a side.
Perhaps this frustration is why our media is full of people shaking their fists at clouds, angry with nebulous positions they can’t quite pin down on any one person. Indeed, media thrives on presenting the narrative that we’ve always got some essential idea of a person to be angry at.
Is it just human nature? An uncooperative game of leap frog?
On a personal level, maybe the best persuasion is not trying to persuade at all? An honest life can hit home more powerfully than just the thesis statement.
But I dunno.
Bits and pieces:
Joel recommended this piece on a human trafficking conspiracy in Australia.
How the US Stole the Middle East
A climate change communicator’s breakdown over the current trends of wasting fossil fuel.
Trixie Mattel’s cover of Lana del Rey’s Video Games
To be honest, I completely lost my train of thought between starting this post and finishing it this morning, so apologies for the forced stab at poignancy.
Please like and share if you wish. Or even get in touch if you have thoughts you’d like to share! Or articles or videos or anything!
Until next week!