I would advise listening to Muse: The Resistance during this discourse...
So, leading from Dr Will Davies' assessment of the pro-Brexit situation I offer my counterpoint to his unfounded musings:
First of all, I went through this quite thoroughly over a couple of hours: thinking over the arguments and viewpoints and how they intertwined as per the author's narrative.
Secondly, I'd like to say that I think that the author has started with a premise and run with it, consciously or subconsciously conflating all results with their initial idea(s) surrounding the reasons for the political movements of the general populace since their birth (circa early 1980s - or so it seems).
1&2) It's true people loathe hand-outs. However, it's one thing to get money for 'nothing' and another for providing a valued service. Yes, perhaps it's less satisfying knowing that you're a quota but as long as you have pride in your work then the human condition is more than able to fool themselves into happiness over it.
Any 'cultural contradiction' is unmeasurable over any period of long term observation because it is impossible to disentangle all the threads of social evolution belonging to multiple layers of local, national and international politicking. It is unscientific to draw any conclusions from this sort of data set.
More likely those areas that are given quotas of EU or national 'redistribution' are under other stressors that are more imperative to the consciousnesses of their inhabitants. i.e. Job losses and lack of social identity/structure... I've come from a place just like this and know the lack of focus that comes from being a 'nothing' with no major output.
One of the prime motivators coming from good bosses is the focus on the workplace accomplishments: units shipped, business done, etc. etc in order to motivate the workforce and for them to understand what comes out of their increasingly dissociated working lives.
This needs to move into local politics in order for people to understand what their role is in the wider scheme of things.
3) The lack of hope but the reason to wish for change does not equate to a subconscious desire for self-harm. The description from the video; those in the region, do not see how staying in the EU or leaving would appreciably affect their chances for improvement either way. However, there is a very distinct wish for life improvement and satisfaction compared to the status quo - the broader political and cultural malaise is due to the lack of agency and a perceived productivity and lack of reason to view any change as being different based on the movement of both primary political parties into the centre. i.e. People cannot associate themselves or their output with anything positive.
It's true that Thatcher and Reagan rose to power promising brighter futures, but then so did New Labour, the Clinton and Bush Jr. establishments and none of them delivered given the socioeconomic apocalypse of the late 2000s for the lower and middle classes. This is not a new 'thing'. This is a recurring cyclical event that predicates itself on people's ability to self-motivate and self-actuate. Without self-actuation people are found to be politically undefined...
It's strange reading the term 'risk' in this sense because there is no risk in voting either way in a system in which the voter views no risk dependant on any choice they make - assuming that all democratic authority is removed from themselves... These voters do not believe in the system they have access to and thus it is impossible to conflate the loss of faith in a system with their assessment of risk of any 'decisions' they are taking in said system when they view their decisions as potentially spoilt ballots.
i.e. Voters in the 1960s, 70s and 80s viewed spoilt ballots as a finger to the establishment. Modern voters do not view their democracies as representative because, once in power, their governments make decisions that are counter to their elected mandate (and worse). In the modern age, it may be more accurate to display dissatisfaction with the perceived pre-meditated narrative by attempting to counter it with the opposite desire. Far from being an action of self-harm, this is, in fact, a political action, no matter how misguided it is - based on a belief that the system the vote is applied to is rigged into a pre-determined narrative which cannot be altered by the common/average person.
i.e. If the perceived narrative is to belong within the EU, voters who are apathetic will vote to leave the EU in a perceived fruitless attempt to defy the 'inevitable' remain result.
4) I agree somewhat. This is an age of data and a paucity of persons who are able to parse that data into something understandable...
However, it is disingenuous to state that 'truth' and 'fact' are separate entities. Truth is the verified, undeniable reality. A fact reflects reality.
You can try and re-organise and define words to suit your argument as much as habitual liars must but, at the end of the day, your facts must suffer under the unrelenting truth of the light of day...
It is easy to check 'facts' against 'facts'. Yet it is increasingly difficult for the uneducated to check those 'facts' without any knowledge that may surround those 'facts'. What is interesting is that people have increasing access to promote their knowledge of the areas around any given 'fact' but, it seems that, increasingly, our education system is pumping out people who lack the ability to discriminate between any number of arbitrary data in favour of people who will unquestioningly accept a given answer.
This, more arguably than any other consideration, has led to what we call a 'dumbing down' of our civilisation. It is a perverse instance that individuals are more educated now and have more access to knowledge than at any point in the history of humankind but are less able to critically assess that information in order to draw logical conclusions from the preponderance of evidence...
Contrary to the author; we do not live in a world of data, we live in a world of certainties that do not condone questioning.
Contrary to the author; any potential action and reaction will be dependently interpreted to the exact time of its occurrence. The 1960s will never occur again in any of our lives or anyone else's because of all the interlocking and intangible issues... In the same way, you cannot say that experts could not predict this because facts could only provide an instantaneous reading of what reality was or is... and in that sense and understanding we can only give a sense or prediction of what people feel at any given time. We lack the ability to create real-time simulations of reality and somehow we are expected, us humans and our imperfect computer models, to predict the complex reality that unravels before us?
Fie! A fie on you I say!
5) The whole of point five is a misdirection, a misconception at best and another slot in the narrative against Britain and the EU at worst. In the same vein as how the pro-Brexit points have been shown to be lies in the first few hours after the vote (i.e. more guaranteed money to the NHS, less immigration, stronger economy and autonomy etc. etc.), we can see here that the success of Britain in the EU has nothing to do with Gordon Brown, David Cameron or anyone else in the modern era. The real architects of British sovereignty in Europe were those from its inception - those orginal (what we might label) eurosceptics who authored the documents, protocols and agreements that paved the way for the creation and structuralisation of the EU. Those unsung heroes (I do not believe that the term 'heroine' should be a separate noun or adjective) were the reason that Britain was a strong voice on the world stage... but no longer. We are now relegated to the backstage: the incumbent stagehands (not that I would like to denigrate this sacred profession) on the international stage...
It is true that we are, or were, more free than many other nations joining the EU framework... After this vote, we are no longer able to claim that distinction...
