The neurobiology of Brexit

Predictable reactions to the latest plan to keep NI in a common market but not a customs union, with a 4 year review by Stormont. The EU won't wear it even though Parliament might, so another extension seems on the cards. 

The Times even reported that the EC might 'bypass Johnson' and announce an extension, whether asked for one or not:

“We don’t care who it is, whether it is the prime minister or another representative of the executive.”...an extension would be needed because Mr Johnson’s latest Brexit plans were “not serious and violate the law”, both in terms of the EU’s single market and the Benn act....“Not least to protect the sovereignty of the British parliament, EU should give long extension [sic] .” [said the chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee]

Meanwhile, one of the wackier pieces by G Monbiot in the Graun:

Today, politicians and commentators speak a language of violence that was unthinkable a few years ago. In the UK, Johnson mocks the memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox. Nigel Farage, talking of civil servants, promises that “once Brexit’s done, we will take the knife to them”. Brendan O’Neill, editor of the website Spiked, a publication that has received funding from the Koch brothers, told the BBC that there should be riots over Brexit’s delay.  [ All of these interpretations are dodgy, of course --eg Farage said he meant take an axe to them ie cut their jobs]

Surely voters must now wake from this nightmare, dismiss those who have manufactured our crises, and restore the peaceful, reasoned politics on which our security depends? Unfortunately, the solution may not be as simple as that.

And now -- the science:

Several fascinating branches of neuroscience and psychology suggest that threat and stress in public life are likely to be self-perpetuating....The strangest [indeed!] of these effects is described by the neuroscientists Stephen Porges and Gregory Lewis. They show that when we feel threatened, we cannot hear calm, conversational voices. When we feel safe, the muscles in the middle ear contract, with an effect like tightening the skin of a drum. This shuts out deep background sounds, and allows us to tune into the frequencies used in ordinary human speech...But when we feel threatened, it is the deep background noises we need to hear. In evolutionary time, it was these sounds (roars, bellows, the padding of paws or rumble of hooves, thunder, a flood pulse in a river) that presaged danger. So the muscles of the middle ear relax, shutting out conversational frequencies. In the political context, if people are shouting at us, moderating voices are, physically, tuned out. Everyone has to shout to be heard, ramping up the level of stress and threat.

And there's more, reminiscent of the brief fad for neuroscience in educational circles where experts learned the Greek names for bits of the brain:

When we feel particularly threatened or angry, a fight-or-flight response kicks in, overwhelming our capacity for reason – a phenomenon some psychologists call amygdala hijack...All this is exacerbated by the frantic and blinkered way in which we seek a place of safety when we feel insecure. Security is what psychologists call a classic “deficit value”: one whose importance to us escalates when we feel it is deficient, shutting out other values. This allows the very people who made us insecure to present themselves as the “strongmen” to whom we can turn for refuge from the chaos they created.

I suspect the demagogues – or their advisers – know what they’re doing [without bothering with the science then?] . Either instinctively or explicitly, they understand the irrational ways in which we react to threat, and know that, to win, they must stop us from thinking....So what can we do?...

It's pretty much the old middle-class insight into how to calm uppity proles, beloved of the Referendum campaign, as Monbiot  admits eventually -- 'All this might sound like common sense. It is.':

The first thing the science tells us [very authoritative that evolutionary neuropsychology] is this: treat everyone with respect. The stupidest thing you can possibly do, if you want to save democracy, is to call your opponent gammon. Never get drawn into a shouting match, however offensive the other person might be. Don’t be distracted by attempts to manufacture outrage: bring the conversation back to the topics you want to discuss....Extinction Rebellion has developed a protocol for activism that looks like a model of good political psychology. It uses humour to deflect aggression, distributes leaflets explaining the action and apologising for the disruption, trains activists to resist provocation, and runs de-escalation workshops, teaching people to translate potential confrontations into reasoned conversation. It urges “active respect” towards everyone, including the police....As another paper by Stephen Porges, the neuroscientist whose work has done so much to explain our reflexes, points out, our brains don’t allow us to experience compassion [wonder how he measures that] for others until we feel safe [or that]. Creating calm spaces in which to explore our differences is an essential step towards rebuilding democratic life.

It's the old reason versus emotion schtick again, with Remain as the only voice of reason. A bit late now,after all the bile spewed by the Guardian. At least it might halt those embarrassing appeals to suitable emotions that the rag sometimes urges Remainers to adopt.