A powerful expression I came across:
'It's easy to be nice in a rose garden'.
Election campaigns, and politics in general are certainly not a rose garden for most people.
It's easy to be value-driven, nice when the environment is gentle.
It's difficult to be value-driven, nice when the environment (politics!) is tough.
Yes, we do need to escape from tough environments to regenerate.
But we also need to prepare to be value-driven, nice, (insert any aspirational quality here) in tough environments, i.e. in the environment that we're going to find ourselves in most of the time.
Our environment matters. How we think, how we decide, what we want are powerfully shaped by who and what is around us.
When we think about who we want to be and what we want to do in politics, we cannot answer that question in a vacuum, we must consider the environment:
Given that my environment will likely be X, how can I show up as Y?
And as citizens, the questions become:
- Who do I trust to be and do what I want once they are elected, once they are e.g. in Brussels?
- How can I play my part in creating an environment that brings out the best, not the worst, in politicians?
Some food for thought that I am also still digesting.
p.s. the podcast is back from summer break, new episodes coming out soon
🖋️ My favourite quote
No one does evil willingly. - Socrates