2 January

All the stuff about status and imitation and rivalry I post about is in this diagram. It shows that our lives exist in cycles, in time, and we get stuck in our thinking at one part of the cycle. For example right now our nations are on the left side of this diagram, with an overproduction of candidates for elite status, all trying to co-opt others to their cause, thus generating populism. This in turn destroys the institutions that actually run societies. Eventually the chaos becomes so great that a scapegoat is looked for to blame all the mess on (look at that happening right now with Bondi, the fight over who’s responsible). And/or a catastrophic external event smashes the lot, like a war or plague. Then the social order collapses (right side of diagram), new institutions are formed to repair the damage, and the cycle begins again.