Emotional landscape of politics

This paper offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the meaning of emotion in politics. Politics will be understood as a people’s ability to live together. The author is a ranging synthesis of social sciences, psychology, biology and neuroscience for better illustration of issues of populism and other forms of social engagement. The paper is in the form of bringing the topics of emotions as a compass of our common human behavioural political make-up. Using the landscape metaphor allows for exploring the complete divergence of human emotions, sunny peaks of empathy, altruism, trust and dark shadowed valleys of fear, anger and distrust. In this manner, some explanation for populist behaviour is given. Collecting various sources of data is offered to experiment with varied forms of narrative and finally to discuss the findings but also to articulate an “emotional” call to collective kindness. 