The Greek word that is transliterated in the subtitle of her book as "thumos" (also transliterated as "thymos") refers to the part of the human psyche that is rendered in English translation as the spirited part. The spirited part of the human psyche is the part that involves our fight/flight/freeze reaction.
In Aristotle's view, the spirited part of our psyches is engaged in political emotion. This much is straightforward. In terms of voter turnout, this means that voter turnout is motivated when our political emotion is engaged so that we are ready to fight for or against something. So far, so good.
But the spirited part of the human psyche ("thumos") also includes the flight and the freeze reactions. So let's consider these possible reactions in terms of motivating voter turnout.
For the sake of discussion, let's say that certain politicians and political commentators specialize in trying to arouse the fighting spirit on the assumption that the fighting spirit will probably motivate voter turnout. This appears to be the case with conservative political commentators.
Next, for the sake of discussion, let's say that certain voters have been culturally conditioned to avoid the fighting spirit -- perhaps in the name of "tolerance." How many self-styled independents and liberals and progressives prefer to imagine themselves as "tolerant" -- compared to the more vociferous conservatives?
Moreover, let's say that they have also been culturally conditioned to label the fighting spirit in the political arena in negative terms -- for example, hate speech. In short, because their cultural conditioning has taught them to avoid the fighting spirit, certain voters do not understand how they can label the fighting spirit in a positive way.
However, when we deliberately strongly oppose the fighting spirit advanced by certain politicians, we have no choice but to engage out own fighting spirit in fighting against them. Thus we must retrieve our views of political emotion from the culturally conditioned view that labels the fighting spirit negatively.
But let us consider what can happen to us when we allow our fighting spirit to be viewed negatively. When we do this, we will tend towards a flight reaction or a freeze reaction, neither of which is likely to motivate very many of us to vote.
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