24 June

DIY is a passion of our age. And another window into the underlying culture. The greatest threat to all of our lives is the collapse of trust in society. The loss of humility towards the expertise of others. The ‘debating’ of things we know nothing about. In every single sphere of human life now, people who actually know what they’re doing are drowning in a swamp of DIY social media know-alls, getting in the way, often with a good serve of abuse and even violence. We hate expertise because it’s hierarchical. We hate to admit somebody else is better at something than we are. We all think we can do renovations or cooking or public health as well as the experts. We can’t. One of the great joys in life for me is to sit back and watch an expert do something, for me, with great skill and minimal effort. We need to worship expertise again, not DIY.