Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds

256 pages

Published by Bloomsbury.

ISBN:: 978-1-3994-1392-3

Democracy is dying because we are clinging to a dangerous and outdated myth: talking about politics can change people's minds. It doesn't.

This provocative debut from a bold new voice combines a fascinating range of research to show us the psychological and sociological factors that really shape our politics. Drawing from ancient philosophy to modern neuroscience and social science, Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano reveals the surprising truth about how people think and behave politically. From friendship to community organizing and social infrastructure, she explores the actions that actually do change minds. In a world where politics keeps getting more irrational, dishonest, violent and chaotic, it's getting much harder to reach people with words alone. So people who really care about democracy must ask: how can we stop arguing and do the deep work to build stronger foundations for political life, and a better world for us all?

Democracy is dying because we are clinging to a dangerous and outdated myth: talking about politics can change people's minds. It doesn't.

This provocative debut from a bold new voice combines a fascinating range of research to show us the psychological and sociological factors that really shape our politics. Drawing from ancient philosophy to modern neuroscience and social science, Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano reveals the surprising truth about how people think and behave politically. From friendship to community organizing and social infrastructure, she explores the actions that actually do change minds. In a world where politics keeps getting more irrational, dishonest, violent and chaotic, it's getting much harder to reach people with words alone. So people who really care about democracy must ask: how can we stop arguing and do the deep work to build stronger foundations for political life, and a better world for us all?

1 edition

loppear reviewed Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds by Sarah Stein Lubrano

rejecting a marketplace of ideas and a politics of debate

4 stars

The author may be right that I think highly of this book because it matches my existing beliefs. Thinking about the world politically is not what we are told are its highest forms: commerce (a marketplace of ideas) nor war (debate). People do not change their minds or develop politically through either, we resolve cognitive dissonance by believing in things that match how we live. Instead, thinking is doing, politics is action, and we can mostly only alter our own thinking, by doing something different in our lives, political action is doing (and therefore thinking) with friends, and we change minds by changing lives.