On the Side of Nice: Ben Peers's episode

By Sandy Glanfield

There was a moment in my conversation with Ben Peers when I wanted to stop everything and sit with what he had just said.

He was naming something I have been noticing that I think a lot of us carry around. "I do want to improve things," he said, "but apparently we can't."

Apparently. That one small word does a lot of work. It holds all the times someone has been told that the way things are is simply the way things are. That the machine runs how it runs, and our job is to keep it turning.

When I look at the world right now, I see people who are frustrated and frightened. People who feel a lack, in a world that keeps telling them they should have, and be, so much. I see political movements taking shape around those fears. And I notice that whenever someone offers an idea that is kinder to people, kinder to the planet, an idea that does not bow to a model of endless consumptive growth, they are so often shut down. Not with argument, but with labels. Naive. Idealistic. You don't understand how this works. You don't have the knowledge or the skills to change it. “Nice doesn’t change the world”.

This is how the machine works.

What I think people are really trying to say, underneath all of it, is something much simpler. We don't like the machine.

And here is the question I keep returning to. With all the creativity we have, all the experience, the connection, the sheer wonder of this world, is this really the best we can dream up? Is this it?

What I love about what Ben is doing is that he refuses to accept that it is. He is not throwing out pragmatism or experience. Of course those matter. But he wants idealism to have a seat at the table too. Let us imagine what better could look like. Then let us work out how to get there. People need to believe we can do better.

So I have been sitting with a few what ifs. What if pulling up the shutters and protecting our own was not the only answer to the problems we face? What if there were other ways of creating, running our world? What if we used the wisdom we already hold, and shared the resources we already have, rather than guarding them? The golden rule has been pointing at this for a long time. Treat others and the planet as you would want to be treated. It sounds simple. It asks a great deal. It asks whether we are encouraging others to create the more beautiful world we would want to live in ourselves. To meet other people's ideas the way we would want our own met, with encouragement rather than the shutters.

It also takes courage. Ben keeps showing up in rooms that tell him this is impossible, that this is not how things are done, and he gently insists otherwise. More than that, he brings people together to imagine alongside him. I have been to his Good Eye events, and here is the part that surprised me most. They are fun. The imagining happens through joy, through connection, through good food and a great deal of laughter. Which made me wonder: can we not dream up something better than this together, and allow joy to fuel it?

When someone told Ben that nice doesn't change the world, he didn't flinch.

"I'm on the side of nice."

So am I.