Antidoters Podcast

Jess Butcher
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Antidoters Podcast

The opposite of a doomsayer; positive inspirers; curious thinkers-out-loud who don’t self-censor; those who trigger curiosity, surprise and challenge perceptions; ideas-catalysts for positive change. antidoters.substack.com

  1. NOV 1

    Cheating on my Readers

    A reading of my recent blog post on 'After Babel' - Jonathn Haidt's team's publication sharing resaerch and data around his book 'The Anxious Generation'. Entitled: A Mission for Businesses and Entrepreneurs: Help Bring Back Childhood When entrepreneurs hear about problems, they see opportunities. This is what I love about the entrepreneurial sectors I’ve spent my career in—the optimism, energy, problem-solving, and value-creation that abound. At the other end of the business spectrum, corporations are increasingly recognizing their societal responsibilities (CSR) and embracing sustainability and social purpose (albeit with ideological tripwires everywhere).  Given the huge challenges described in The Anxious Generation—the multi-national youth mental health crisis, a generation of kids deprived of real-world independence, and an oversaturation of screens and personal devices—we need both this creative optimism and corporate conscience channeled towards solutions.   My goal in this essay is to encourage entrepreneurs—both social and for-profit—to see this challenge as a meaningful market opportunity. Millions of parents around the world are mobilizing and clamoring for solutions as their concerns for their children grow. They’re increasingly recognizing the emptiness and negativity of their own digital habits, too. There is a nostalgic hunger in the air for less frenetic, polarized, and superficial times, which means that there's a market for in-real-life (‘IRL’) memory-making and businesses to be built around it.  The two biggest entrepreneurial gaps are in developing IRL solutions to tackle norm #4 from The Anxious Generation––more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world––and in creating safer technology tools for young people.  In other words, we need more places for young people to practice and enjoy independence, and we need better  technology that will let young people use their devices as tools (like a Swiss army knife), without getting exploited through those devices by companies that are trying to control and addict them.  Let’s zoom in on some of the opportunities:  Opportunity 1: IRL Solutions To remind kids that the physical world is more meaningful and thrilling than the virtual one, we need to create more compelling spaces and opportunities that encourage independence.  Only with greater access to these spaces will cultural norms shift, prompting parents to give their children more independence. Teens these days are sadly ‘non-grata’ in many public spaces. With downtown shopping areas and malls in decline across many Western nations, ‘teenism’ (my term) has emerged as a phenomenon. Teens are often unwelcome, barred from entering stores or shopping areas in groups, and left to mill around in dingy parks or communal street areas. Interestingly, McDonald’s has capitalized on this trend with a clever ad campaign in the UK that shows how it has become the teen meeting place of choice. But surely fast-food joints can’t be the only safe public spaces for teens? It certainly doesn’t bode well for their health if so. Video. McDonald’s ‘Make it Yours’ teenager ad campaign. There’s a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to create and expand spaces and organized opportunities for IRL hangouts, entertainment, skills-building, and memory-making.   There are ambitious commercial entrants to this market, such as ‘The Den’— a membership-based, phone-free youth club brand launching in the UK that aims to scale nationally and then internationally, given the right medium- to long-term investors. These beautifully designed venues for 13- to 18-year-olds feature event calendars, open spaces, DJ decks, cafe-areas, games, shuffleboards, and critically… limited supervision.  Video. Enjoy The Den’s fabulous vision. Fabrik, though targeted at adults, is another simple example in the U.S. of creating IRL community hangout spaces. Grassroots spo

    15 min

  2. SEP 13

    Shhhhhhh. In Defence of ‘Quiet’

    I’ve been chewing on the word ‘quiet’ recently… a simple, unassuming word. Somewhat onomatopoeic and almost apologetic.  It’s like a full stop.  Even when uttering it, it slips gently from the sides of the mouth and silence follows (a sullen one if used as a directive).  It’s certainly not a sexy word, indeed, it seems used more as a negative these days.  Is it shutting down dissension? Perhaps describing something unambitious or boring?  And yet quiet is one of the most powerful things in the world.  Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. It’s in the quiet that magic happens.  Deep thoughts, processing, creativity and invention. ‘Solitude is a catalyst of innovation’ (Susan Cain).  Quiet people are the ones to watch: the listeners and processors. Because ‘quiet is turning down the volume knob on life (Khaled Hosseini)’.  Less is more.  Silence is golden. Ignorance is bliss.  There’s a reason these idioms are so pervasive.   And a friend with whom you can enjoy quiet and silence is typically one of the best.   Words can dramatically shift their emphasis and meaning across time and culture. Take ‘awful’, a word that used to mean ‘full of awe’ (by which definition, ‘awesome’ must have meant just a bit good) ‘decimate’, which meant reduce by only 1 in 10; ‘naughty’, which once just meant you had naught or nothing or ‘egregious’ which used to be a good thing-  eminent or distinguished.  But of course words morph… because language and words are powerful and critical to our understanding of the world.  Indeed, their changing meanings can alter our perception of the world.  Words are weaponised to disparage and shut down debate (typically any word ending in ‘ist’); and there is much recent commentary about how the rapidly growing overuse of medicalised therapy language is, in itself exacerbating mental health     New words are appearing every year. Some recent Mirriam-Webster additions include ‘padawan’, ‘rewild’, ‘GOAT’, ‘tabata’ and ‘doomscroll’ (although my spell-check hasn’t caught up)...  all fascinating insights into a world of rapid cultural change  (and god knows what the kids are doing at the moment with words like ‘rizz’ and ‘skibidi’ but i know enough not to use them myself).   There are also some wonderful words that exist in other cultures that encapsulate everyday feelings beautifully, but aren’t available to us in English. A few now sit in a rotating box in our bathroom thanks to a brilliant gift:  ‘Qurencia’ (Spanish): Describes a place where we feel safe, a ‘home’ (which doesn’t literally have to be where we live) from where we draw our strength and inspiration.  In bullfighting, a bull may stake out a querencia in a part of the ring where he will gather his energies before another charge’ ‘L’Espirit de L’Escalier’ (French):  The witty or cutting retort that we should have delivered to a frenemy but that comes to mind only after we’ve left the gathering and are on our way down the stairs.  Captures our maddening inability to know how to answer humiliation in real time.   ‘Duende’ (Spanish):  A heightened state of emotion created by a moving piece of art.  ‘Dustsceawung’ (Old Engligh):  Contemplation of the fact that dust used to be other things - the walls of a city, the chief of the guards, a book, a great tree:  dust is always the ultimate destination.  Such contemplation may loosen the drip of our worldly desires.  ‘Huzun’ (Turkish):  The gloomy feeling that things are in decline and that the situation - often political in nature - will probably get gradually worse.  Despite the darkness, there’s a joy in having the word to hand, sparing us from a personal sense of persecution and reminding us that our misfortunes are largely collective in nature’   And it’s antidote:  ‘Yunen’ (Japanese

    7 min

  3. AUG 30

    What I can’t see, I can’t over-parent

    Kirstie Allsopp - apparently the worst mother in Britain right now (for allowing her 15 year old to go interrailing), has come out swinging.  And good for her. I’m team-Allsopp.  As readers will know, I’ve long been convinced that giving kids independence as early as possible is the key to building resilience, responsibility and creativity.  Yes, there are risks - but, in my opinion (and increasing numbers of others’), many more to over-parenting and childhoods spent more online than off.   Having said that, it’s all been a little academic to my own parenting of 3 under 5s, 6. 7, 8… until now, with the eldest just short of 11.  Yes, we’ve embraced chores as early as we can, but living in a small, commuter rat-run village with few neighbourhood playmates, it’s been hard to practise the ‘free range parenting’ that Jonathan Haidt and Lenore Skenazy (his partner on the ‘Let Grow’ movement) advocate for.  Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Recently, we’ve started letting the kids sleep out in a shed in the garden, to wander off on solo errands during trips to our small market town and take the puppy out by themselves but none of these allow for much mischief-making for three siblings whose boredom and/or irritation with each other I can hear from 100 yards away.  Outside these small tendrils of freedom from our family bounds, I’m struggling to find many other parents willing to loosen the reins to the big-wide-world with me.  Instead there are nervous texts in whatsapp checking whether a child will know anyone at an upcoming summer camp; fretful concerns over first sleepovers away from home; chaperones for hang-outs and packed-agenda playdates full of allergy-warnings and online waivers.   Holidays provide the perfect opportunity.  A change of scene and routine to create more colourful memories - sunny, wet, sandy, dirty, exhausting memories.  And the Netherlands, it turns out, is the perfect place to practise free-range parenting.  I write this (very briefly) from a holiday there with three other families and it’s the most perfect trip I could ever have imagined for one at our stage. We’re all camped separately within a huge site of static mobile-homes, safari tents and open-camping fields that wrap around a cheesy water park and a refreshingly relaxed theme park. It’s without a doubt, the last kind of holiday the well-travelled, young professional me would ever have thought I would enjoy.  Staffing is minimal and unobtrusive.  Gates and doors are left open.  Bikes piled up in corners, unlocked.  Queues are almost non-existent and there’s not a health and safety Nazi to be found (unlike in the UK). It’s all so refreshing and our eight cumulative kids, aged 6-12 are living their best free-range lives, disappearing for hours on end until their stomachs send them back to raid one of our various fridges.  There have been endless hours burying each other in sand, on table-tennis tables, noisy games of Uno, beach volleyball (to a blaring Top Gun soundtrack), an impromptu gymnastic display cheered on by strangers; bike races weaving through chilled-out pedestrians and a competition to see who can ride the biggest roller coaster the most times (my 9 year old victorious on 22). There’s also been a twisted ankle, some nasty scrapes and bruises, a lot of exposure to swear words and apparently the offer of a cigarette from a 14 year old loitering around the sandpit plus a few ramifications from slagging off Dutch football players (that we know about).  But when our paths cross (whilst the adults channel their inner-kid, running fully clothed through play fountains, beer in hand), the kids are filthy, dripping wet and hungry, but their shining eyes hold stories they’ll share excitedly, and secrets they won’t.   And… I’ve realised, I don’t want their secrets.  They’re their bonds of friendship. My new mantra

    5 min

  4. AUG 2

    The Case for Bringing Back Child Labour

    Ok, clickbait title aside, not *that* type of child labour…  (although outrage-fuelling journos do your worst, it’ll all help with readers, just as it did with my TedX views).  I recently came across the Harvard Grant Study findings, running since 1938, the longest longitudinal study in history.   Among such fun discoveries as the fact that ‘ageing liberals have more sex’ with ‘conservative men ceasing sexual activity around the age of 68’, the most interesting finding was that it identified two key things that enable adults to be happy and successful: 1) Love and 2) work ethic.   Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The main thing that correlated with self esteem was whether or not they worked as a child, with those who had some form of consistent responsibility demonstrating considerably higher self esteem than those who did not.  And yet - kids don’t seem to work much anymore. If at all under the age of 16 or 17. And as we know, most of their ‘spare time’ is spent on devices.   This Ted talk which references the research describes how there are two extremes within parenting:  underparenting (aka ‘neglect’) and over-parenting, but whereas the negative impact of the former is self-evident, much less attention is paid to the latter despite it being as potentially damaging.  Julie Lythcott-Haines talks about the ‘checklisted childhood’ as akin to dog-training with no time for free play or chores where everything has to be ‘enriching’ and ‘A’ grades are valued above all with the result that kids end up feeling brittle and burnt out.  She goes on:  But if you look at what we've done, if you have the courage to really look at it, you'll see that not only do our kids think their worth comes from grades and scores, but that when we live right up inside their precious developing minds all the time, like our very own version of the movie "Being John Malkovich," we send our children the message: "Hey kid, I don't think you can actually achieve any of this without me." And so with our overhelp, our over-protection and over-direction and hand-holding, we deprive our kids of the chance to build self-efficacy, which is a really fundamental tenet of the human psyche, far more important than that self-esteem they get every time we applaud. Self-efficacy is built when one sees that one's own actions lead to outcomes, not one's parents' actions on one's behalf, but when one's own actions lead to outcomes. So simply put, if our children are to develop self-efficacy, and they must, then they have to do a whole lot more of the thinking, planning, deciding, doing, hoping, coping, trial and error, dreaming and experiencing of life for themselves. The good news is that there are some easy fixes here…  CHORES..  Cooking, cleaning, tidying, gardening - many possible from even pre-school years..  Because, as Lythcott-Haims told Tech Insider: "By making them do chores -- taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry -- they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life. It's not just about me and what I need in this moment." Whilst far from model parents, my husband and I are embracing this.  My 10 year old has started mowing the lawns, the 7 year old empties the dishwasher, bins are taken out and laundry baskets are starting to be decanted down to the machines.  OK, so the lawn looks like it’s got alopecia, none of our wine glasses now match and I’m washing far too many clean clothes that were easier to sling in a basket than fold into a cupboard…  but… it’s a start.  And it also helps us as two busy working parents to stay on top of the household.  My eldest has got to the age where he tunes into my stress levels and volunteers to do something…  I nearly wept the first time.   And then, as they get old enough, encourage them to get out and earn their own money.  As a teenager, I stopped getting poc

    8 min

  5. JUL 19

    The Mystery of the Disappearing ‘English’

    It’s been a bad week to be English after we came so near, yet so bloody far… again… in yet another major football tournament.   Whilst a fair-weather fan, I felt the depths of disappointment around me amidst a 1000-strong sea of red and white at a family festival as faces dropped and the tears flowed amongst the under 10s.  Football apparently wasn’t, and isn’t anytime soon ‘coming home’.   England supporters get a bad press and often rightly so when seen barrelling out of pubs, chucking lager and starting fights on the continent...  but when faded popstrel-turned-podcaster Lily Allen waded in on them this week, sharing the image below, she was derided as classist, snobby… and ignorant (flag-wise).  One particularly biting repost ‘I guess working class accents are more useful than working class people’... Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Because yes, pride in English identity does seem to have become a working-class thing or at least restricted to the ‘somewheres’.   And football now seems to be the only time the St George’s flag is allowed to display anything akin to national pride (unless you’re a black cab driver - the Palestine flag is apparently fine, the St George not so much - although the one-sided press coverage of Sadiq Khan’s ‘woke’ ban also shows the class divide here).   Whilst the UK (London especially) turns green for St Patrick’s Day, April 23rd is merely another date in the calendar, one that many English wouldn’t even know is St George’s.   Want to celebrate being English?  Just shush.   You must be ‘far right’ or will at least be accused of it… gammon, Brexiteer, nationalist etc.  Where exactly is Englishness amidst Britishness now that all the other Brits have dropped it in preference for their Scottish, Welsh and Irish identities?  (Even the Cornish seem more inclined to their local identity than Englishness these days).  As a result, the two are now frequently conflated, with the English the only nation to wave the Union Jack - and pretty much only during royal occasions, Wimbledon or at the Last Night of the Proms.  It often gives me pause for thought as my husband is Scottish and proud - kilted and sporranned-up for every formal occassion - and now I have ‘dual-identity’ children.  This makes the occasional football or rugby match difficult, but really little else besides.  And for all the Scottish-English rivalry (which let’s be honest, only goes in one direction),  I love that my children have Scottish heritage.  Indeed, their Scottish family has much more interesting ancestry than my own, descended from Stevenson lighthouse builders and more recently, a successful female author.    All ‘minority’ nationalities are allowed to be celebrated in our multicultural age of inclusivity, but we now lack any coherent umbrella under which we can all identify.  In the US, immigrants (I believe!) are still required to pledge their allegiance to a flag that flies across the nation, with the national anthem played at every major event, but in the UK, we do neither and make little attempt to unify the various nationalities now on this island.   Harking on about Britain’s illustrious past is now frowned upon. Too much controversy with regards to power-plays and empire.  Modern Britain is no longer one evoked by Hovis adverts, ‘Last of the Summer Wine’, or John Major’s 1993 speech, where he said:   Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – “old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist” and if we get our way – Shakespeare still read even in school. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials. But is it, only 30 years on?  It is, at least in the main, still a ‘green and pleasant land’

    10 min

  6. JUN 21

    The Ick of Sharing Your ‘Life Lessons’

    It’s been a while since I’ve shared ‘my story’ (thank God). I used to do this a lot in my ‘Female Entrepreneur’ days to rooms of early-career women or invincible first-time founders. Years before ‘35 things I learnt by 35’ became popular clickbait, I had curated an entertaining monologue of anecdotes and life-lessons from across my career - something for everyone… (so thought my flattered ego).  Since retreating from London with a young family, I’ve gotten better at saying no, plus have had fewer reasons for self-promotion, but suddenly I find myself committed to an encore - the first in 5 years - and frankly, I feel a bit embarrassed. So I’m killing birds this week by using this post to try and think out loud on how to bring my story up to date and maybe draw out some different conclusions with more years under my belt.   The previous version, delivered to graduating girls at my old school in 2018 can be found here and as I commented in the blog-blurb at the time:  Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. My inner philosopher came out …slightly patronising and preachy in tone I realise on re-reading — but as an exercise, it was an invaluable one. I’d love to write one of these every 5 or 10 years and see how my rules and advice would change… as even re-reading this 2 years later, some of these ideas have moved on.   Hello, 6 years later.   And yet I hesitate. Because increasingly I find the presumptuousness of the whole ‘what I want to tell you about life’ trend gives me the ‘ick’ - at least from anyone under the age of 65 or who hasn’t been seriously confronted by their own mortality.  The older I get, the more aware I become of how much I have to learn, let alone impart…   Life lessons assault us.  As previously discussed I feel an almost physical aversion to the modern cult of ‘personal brand’ and the narcissism I fear it encourages but it now seems to be a prerequisite for authors, musicians or creators to bring a ‘following’ with them should they want to go ‘pro’.  Even start-ups now only seem newsworthy if their founders’ stories are newsworthy. Above all, it has struck me that my lessons - borne from my interests, my background, priorities, values, family-life and financial circumstances - are only really relevant to… er… me.   The value in stepping back to consider these lessons is always greater for the story-teller than the listener.   What is it they say?  That we should not compare ourselves with others, but with who we were yesterday.  We should be our own competition.  Strong sentiment but surely we can’t help but look for mirrors in the faces around us- whether close at hand, or in the spotlight.  Chat shows, biographies, Desert Island Discs and podcasting wouldn’t exist and be so popular if this wasn’t the case. Stories are the most powerful way of influencing people; shared fears, hopes and experiences are the glue that connects us.   We seek inspiration for ideas we can borrow and combine into mash-up role models:  prioritise like her, write like him, parent like her, financially-plan like him, command speaking fees like her etc.   The problem is that huge success in one field for any one of these people has usually come at the cost of something… breadth of knowledge, family, friends, mental health, balance...  How many of us are actually willing to make those sacrifices?  And yet how many of us still end up feeling like failures because we don’t?  Scott Galloway (NYU professor, author and entrepreneur) spoke brilliantly on this at a recent podcast recording I went to  - admirable (if a little unlikeable) for his single-minded focus on wealth and status-creation, which he was honest enough to admit came at the expense of knowing his children when they were young. He asked everyone in the room the question: what is ‘rich’?  It brought to mind a socia

    9 min

  7. JUN 14

    Too old to be young, too young to be old

    Been pondering age this week as I watched the stoic, moving interviews with D-day heroes and then observed Joe Biden, staggering, confused and slurring in recent public appearances.  Contrasting these with the coverage of young, ‘passionate’ activists disrupting campuses or destroying works of art or with all the young faces we see around us daily- eyes down in digital worlds and the generational differences today can seem starker than ever.  Yet another line of polarisation. With the exception of veterans and maybe presidents, respect for our elders now seems deeply unfashionable and it’s no wonder given how few of us mix outside of our age-demographics.  We inhabit entirely different cultural siloes: we listen to different music; get our news from different sources; binge different dramas; use different colloquialisms and admire celebs or ‘influencers’ that other generations will never encounter.  Many of these have always been the case but never before as mutually exclusive by generation.  Most of soceity would been vaguely aware of most major national/global celebrities when I was growing up, but ask my mother who Mr Beast is or a teenager who Jeremy Clarkson is and they’ll both just blink blankly.   Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. In the absence of actually knowing (m)any, it’s little surprise older people are frequently derided as out-of-touch: blamed for Brexit and Trump, high house prices, and much of our economic inequality (until that is, they age beyond being ‘dangerous’ and inexplicably, patronisingly become ‘cute’).  Simultaneously young people are branded lazy, angry, materialist or ‘snowflakes’ in outlook by many elders.  As ever, antidoters…  neither are fair or accurate generalisations.  Of course, the political polarisation of young and old has been well documented for generations.  Why is it people typically move right as they age and what does this mean for politics in a rapidly ageing world?   Is it, as often assumed, that people tend to gravitate towards more self-preservationist politics… for their assets, customs or the social conventions that they fear are in terminal decline in a world evolving so rapidly without them?  Or might it be that their more extensive life-experience provides them with more data points, experience and realistic insight into human nature?  Are conventions and traditions experiments proven to work over generations, discarded at our peril or is tradition “one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.” (Warren Ellis) or ‘the democracy of the dead’ (Chesterton)?   In a world that seems to prioritise ‘lived experience’ over data and evidence, it’s curious that the biggest proponents of this world view - the young -  can be so dismissive of the opinions fostered over decades-long lived experience.   It is assumed that the passionate activism of youth reflects greater concern and empathy for the world.  Yet In his defence of ‘respecting our elders’ at an Oxford Union debate, Rob Henderson quotes a myriad of research that consistently demonstrates that older adults are generally more ethical, more cooperative, and more trusting than younger adults with the latter displaying “a greater propensity for deceit, manipulation, and selfishness compared with older people”.  On the question of ‘wisdom’  he comments:   The very fact that we can even ponder this question suggests that we live in a society of relative comfort—a luxury secured through the efforts and decisions of previous generations… Not all old people are wise, but almost all wise people are old….  True wisdom is not just about making good choices; it also encompasses the ability to retain sound judgement across a diverse array of situations, especially unfamiliar and challenging ones. … Only by respecting elders enough to listen to how they made their

    9 min

  8. JUN 7

    Hitler or Taylor Swift for your inspirational pick-up?

    This week I saw someone edit a Linkedin post because of feedback that the person they were quoting was a ‘troll’ (irrespective of the evidence within the quote);  I observed three people sharing a Piers Morgan soundbite with the careful caveat ‘it’s rare I agree with this guy but…’ ;  I saw someone else I respect get chastised for liking an X/ tweet from a persona-non-grata; … and I had a long, (depressing) conversation with my 10 year old about why it’s wrong for children to chant ‘Furry!’ as a slur at another on the playground (!?).   Whilst I didn’t immediately connect the last to the others, it occurred to me that many adults now also need this reminder.   Thanks for reading Antidoters! Please share and subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When did ad-hominem and who’s saying something become more important than what is being said?  It’s particularly tiresome in an election period.  Discredit the player (or throw a milkshake at them) and the substance goes unevaluated.   Undeniably, it’s effective as the more x-ist, nutty or ‘extreme’ someone is branded, the fewer platforms they get. The problem is that it typically forces them further to their extreme, often taking many fans with them, so counteracting the efforts of the ad hominem detractor. A test for you.  What’s your gut response to the following quotes?  “Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” “Words build bridges to unexplored regions”  "It takes less courage to criticise the decisions of others than to stand by your own." “The really strong have no need to prove it to the phonies’  ‘I believe in one thing only, the power of human will’  ‘Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep’  ‘The great thing about letting people be true to themselves is they often do very good things indeed. What do you think about them if I tell you that they’re from Goebbels, Hitler, Attila the Hun, Charles Manson, Stalin, Mussolini and Katie Hopkins respectively?    And yes, the image above is another.  It’s from a 10-year old Pinterest page that strung inspirational Hitler quotes over Taylor Swift images and received 10s of 1000s of Swifty likes and shares (and you can still play this who-said-it-game here).   ‘Misinformation’, or an excellent mind-game to challenge our instincts? Sadly it proved far too dangerous for the young inventor to continue. She was hounded into closing her accounts (more).  Wild times. Even I now have to be careful about who I ‘follow’ these days with my equalities role…  which seems madness.  Surely understanding better those with whom you might disagree is a critical part of forming a fuller world view? When did we get so comfortable playing the player, not the ball despite the oft-used Solzhenitsyn quote that reminds us that ‘the line separating good and evil passes…  right through every human heart”.  It’s this type of thinking that leads to package beliefs:  the knowledge that if someone thinks ‘this’, they’re also highly likely to believe ‘that’, ‘that’ and ‘that’.  It’s profoundly unhealthy and lazy tribalism, albeit reassuring.   It’s good for us to remember in the current climate that party politics doesn’t have to mean signing up to everything in one side’s manifesto, but simply making our own evaluations as to which package is, on balance, better and likely to do more good than harm.  We’re allowed to (and should)  prioritise different things within the packages or interpret our hopes or fears about the long term ramifications according to our experiences, world-view or knowledge (with the rapidly declining field of ‘History’, often providing the most unfashionable steer).    One way of reframing this that I have enjoyed is Angel Eduardo’s concept of ‘star manning’, which I’ve mentioned previously, but is worth a remi

    9 min
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About

The opposite of a doomsayer; positive inspirers; curious thinkers-out-loud who don’t self-censor; those who trigger curiosity, surprise and challenge perceptions; ideas-catalysts for positive change. antidoters.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Jess Butcher
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Antidoters
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    Antidoters Podcast

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