The Excitement Complex : How We Think about the Issues and Why We Get Involved in Them

One of the most unexplored mysteries in politics is why ordinary people suddenly get drawn into caring deeply about issues that don't affect them. In The Excitement Complex, Henry Reichman aims to analyze why individuals get excited about politics, and the social structures that have made feelings of enthusiasm and excessive political involvement commonplace in the minds of so many Americans, particularly young people. This is not a book about the issues, it is not discussing policy or the best way to solve problems. This is about how we approach the issues, why they grasp our emotions, how we psychologically react to others with different opinions, how we get drawn to individual personalities inside politics, and how all of that manifests inside the complicated and changing world of activism. At its base, this takes on two great questions that have been excluded from the public discourse for so long. Why do we get excited about issues? How can we improve the effectiveness of our excitement and activism to reach our goals? This book will not have all the answers, but it's the first step to understanding those finer points in detail.