Voting in Times of Uncertainty and Fear

When “the times” are uncertain (“a-changin’”, as Bob Dylan termed it) or fearful (and the climate crisis, risk of nuclear war arising from Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and still ongoing pandemic would make our times qualify), there is a tendency for many people to hanker back to times that they - often falsely - perceived as safer or at least simpler.

Thus, some conservative males hanker back to “the picket fence era of the 1950s and 1960s” - when things like domestic violence were so well hidden that those naïve little souls think it didn’t exist . . . others hanker back to times when human rights issues were less obvious, perhaps also falsely thinking those issues didn't exist then (they did exist, but weren't being addressed in any good way) . . . and many (not all) conservative and well-off elites want things to stay the same because that suits their sense of comfort (which, sadly, is a bias too many non-elite people also favour - albeit the latter are possibly inclined to do so out of exhaustion).

It is a backwards emotional reaction - it isn’t thinking (let alone one of the many GOOD emotional reactions), and it isn’t healthy or constructive. 

Those who suffered at the time are less likely to hanker back to those times (although that isn’t impossible . . . I wonder if that is a weird political perversion of Stockholm Syndrome?), but in any case, I consider the better approach is to seek to be a mature adult - someone who is prepared to do what they can, including finding out what the facts are and improving themselves as much as possible so they can be better informed and think more effectively on issues, and someone who is prepared to make their own informed and thoughtful choice based on the real complexity of this ever-changing world. 

Just as we would no longer take a child’s approach to solving a daily life problem, no matter that we may give ourselves mental holidays in happier times, we need to be mature adults about voting.

Nostalgia can be a nice mental health tonic (for many - not all), but it is neither an appropriate nor an adequate basis for approaching the complexities and challenges we now face - least of all in an election.