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Alex Spencer's avatar

Thanks for this fascinating piece. I've read it after a day of covering council elections for a local newspaper. I interviewed candidates from the different parties afterwards and was struck by how much the groups hated each other. And yet their views all overlap quite significantly. This is a council dominated by a Labour group with significant numbers of Greens and Lib Dems and one Tory. It seems that in politics you're almost obliged to dehumanise the other parties to shore up your belief in your own group. They only saw each other in terms of bad intentions and lacking in humanity when clearly everyone had come into this work to get things done. Before I started this job five years ago I felt this way too, being a strong supporter of one party, but having met sincere people on all sides I don't believe any of them have bad intentions. Maybe becoming politically homeless over gender stuff a while ago has influenced my thinking on this. I was really interested to read your thoughts on seeing people as machines - it makes a lot of sense.

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David Booth's avatar

I have experienced almost exactly this, at several levels. From benign social interactions through to EDI sessions with first year undergraduates (the Tory example is almost verbatim). If one was in a relationship with a person like this, you would regard it as emotionally abusive and run for the hills (or the next). Ta for referencing btw, have just pulled down a few of Leyen recent articles on the mind and dehumanisation! As a humble biology/stats type, one rarely gets to dip the toe outside of the field.

Hope you and the family had a most excellent Christmas, and I look forward to more of your writing in 2023!

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