Sublime

All three share an improvisational, collaborative, creative process that is in profound ways anti-ideological, if ideology means ironclad preconceptions about who’s an ally and how to make a better future.

articulate, in the most positive terms, the reasons your opponent holds these views.

The empathy of a mutual win: We can avoid oppositional entanglements when we choose to work with people and systems that want to win something we don’t care so much about, especially when they offer us something we do care about.

il y a une dernière partie, celle qui est à l’origine – si je puis dire – de mon attitude dans la vie politique. Elle traite des conditions de l’action politique. Je n’y utilise pas souvent le mot « sartrien » d’engagement, mais deux mots qui sont à peu près l’équivalent. Le premier est le mot « choix », le deuxième est le mot « décision ».

Such a politics is what the English political theorist Bernard Crick calls the conciliation of rival interests in a polity using compromise rather than force. Crick’s conception of politics shifts the focus away from abstractions and ideologies towards the praxis of ‘preserving a community’ that has ‘grown too complicated for either tradition alone