Compassionless politics?
The intensity of strikes and unrest is testament to the fact that we have created a frightening society, frightened to get ill, frightened to get old; frightened of the cold, and frightened of the future.
30 January 2023
In light of the Kings Fund report about the serious underfunding of services over the last 10 years and the damage done to the NHS, a key question is how far psychologists should be involved in political debate and campaigning.
We need to highlight that economic policies should not be pursued that have clear scientific evidence for causing damage, harm, fear and suffering. There is overwhelming evidence that the politics of austerity was and still is very harmful to those least able to defend themselves, and there is considerable evidence that living in poverty and fear has major impacts on a whole range of developmental processes including epigenetics (Raffington et al., 2022). We have to find a way to liaise better with the media to constantly highlight the fact that humans are social, and the way they are embedded in social supportive contexts is hugely important for physical and mental health and prosociality (Abel & Clarke, 2020).
The intensity of strikes and unrest is testament to the fact that we have created a frightening society, frightened to get ill, frightened to get old; frightened of the cold, frightened of the future. Economic and political decisions that are callous to the consequences on human psychology need to be significantly challenged on all fronts. At the moment there seems to be no mechanism to feed into public debate the psychosocial consequences of harmful 'compassionless' politics. If we are to build a compassionate future, we have to see major changes in the way we govern ourselves, share resources and allocate resources to the supportive infrastructures of our societies.
Professor Paul Gilbert PhD, FBPsS, OBE
Centre for Compassion Research and Training
University of Derby
References
Abel, J. & Clarke, L. (2020). The Compassion Project: A case for hope and human kindness from the town that beat loneliness. Aster.
Raffington, L. A. S., Tanksley, P., Sabhlok, A., et al. (2021). Socially stratified epigenetic profiles are associated with cognitive functioning in children and adolescents. Psychological Science, 1-12.
