I believe that anyone who wants to stand in a national election should receive a course of psychotherapy. Completing the course should be a qualification for office. This wouldn't change the behaviour of psychopaths, but it might prevent some people who exercise power from imposing their own deep wounds on others.
Interpretation
Psychotherapy could help leaders understand their own issues, preventing harm to others.
George Monbiot suggests that political leaders often impose their personal traumas and issues on society, negatively impacting their governance. He advocates for psychotherapy as a qualification for national office, believing it could help candidates become more self-aware and less likely to project their own problems onto the population, fostering more empathetic leadership.
In practice
This quote could be used in a political speech advocating for mental health awareness in leadership.
The notions that nature exists to serve us; that its value consists of the instrumental benefits we can extract; that this value can be measured in cash terms; and that what can't be measured does not matter, have proved lethal to the rest of life on Earth.
I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.
Places that have become agricultural deserts, trashed by giant corporations, could be reforested, drawing carbon dioxide from the air on a vast scale. The ecosystems of land and sea could recover, not just in pockets but across great tracts of the planet.
Never underestimate the power of intrinsic values. They inspire every struggle for a better world.
Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?
It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.
Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.
Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation.
When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
The future is uncertain but the end is always near.
The whole Turkish empire is nothing else but a crust cast by Heaven's great Housekeeper to His dogs.
The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention argues that no two countries that are both part of the same global supply chain will ever fight a war as long as they are each part of that supply chain.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.