The art of politics is to realise that survival is the bottom line. As such, security and wellbeing are predicated on access to our ecological means of survival.

Mainstream politicians often take survival for granted because in their own lives they have sustained access to beneficial financial renumeration. In other words they are emotionally secure regarding their own survival. Rational drift occurs when mainstream politicians become emotionally obsessed with their own importance and in the process project their survival security on to others with the false rationalisation that ecologically destructive growth is good for general prosperity and wellbeing when the truth is that they are emotionally attached to their own incumbency.

As rational drift progresses, usually with a concomitant (m/p)aternalist overview of the population from their position of self importance, as does empathetic drift. In other words, mainstream politicians become increasingly detached both rationally and emotionally from the people they are meant to represent along the lines of power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Such is the case with EU officials despite the fact that the EU economic system is fundamentally unsustainable and unable to deliver long term economic, social and ecological prosperity and wellbeing without the continued and sustained appropriation of foreign resources and future reserves of renewable resources.

In their closeted castles, they feel secure that their ecological means of survival is assured, because they see money as the main driver of security and wellbeing not energy. This similarly applies to the closeted castle of Parliament where mainstream politicians increasingly see money as the main driver of prosperity instead of energy. Thus, even when low security poor people feel that their ecological means of survival is being destroyed in order to make money, mainstream politicians rationalise this destruction as trickle down economics or a rising tide lifts all boats.

When the rational and empathetic drift has extended to a point that ordinary folk feel that their ecological means of survival, the energetic basis of their existence, is under threat, the emotional insecurity and survival anxiety is registered by empathetic populists who, despite their own affluence, see and realise that energy, not money, is the proper basis of the good life. That rather than growth for growth sake, which adds competition and stress to the daily life of existence, sustainability, sufficiency and resilience are the true energetic concerns of most ordinary folk who simply want to enjoy life with adequate survival security.

This divergence of world views, pits the empathetic populists against the unempathetic elites who prioritise money over and above mental and emotional wellbeing. The challenge for unempathetic mainstream politicians is to not only understand that energy is the most important basis of a good life, not money, but to deconstruct the reasons why they have been prone to rational and empathetic drift.