This is also important for those who, like me, are involved in providing information about political and social issues. Because how do you bring policy close enough to allow voters to exercise their democratic rights properly? That is no easy task. My own tangible micro-world is woven from a completely different fabric than the world that emerges from websites, statistics and research reports. Sometimes the worlds seem to exist completely separately from each other. Take the bio-industry as an example. It is a piece of cake to find facts and figures on the internet about what is needed to get kilo-knallers on the shelves. At the same time, the way in which animals in the Netherlands are transformed into consumer meat is completely hidden from view.
A possible strategy for policymakers and politicians is to focus entirely on the micro-world. That is in fact the strategy of malaysia phone number list PVV. A mission to Afghanistan? Better to solve the problems in Gouda. Promote animal welfare? Not by reducing the excesses of the bio-industry, but by sending an animal cop to the neglected horse of the neighbours. Global warming? Have you felt how cold it was in December? Another extreme is to always put humanity above the individual person. That is a reproach that the progressive elite of the past decades in particular can take to heart. Those who only have eyes for the macro figures and for enlightened values, to name but a few, simply no longer notice the real-life excesses of immigration in the opportunity neighbourhoods.
There seems to be no ready-made answer. But I feel that stories and imagination are indispensable elements, both in old and new media. The dilemmas and contradictions surrounding meat production in our society could not be expressed more strikingly than in the experiments of the artist Tinkerbell. Anyone who feels uncomfortable about the innocent hamsters that run around in balls for hours cannot avoid asking other questions about animal welfare. Another example is still Obama's election speeches. One of the surprising elements in them was the content. In a time when everything revolved around soudbites, Obama managed to delve deeply into a policy problem for half an hour, and yet his quotes were repeated in all the evening news programs. He constantly spoke about the people who were affected by the policy, and at the same time managed to formulate a comprehensive vision.