13 February

Spinning tops should be impossible. They move, and don’t move. They’re stable, and unstable. All at the same time. For me, they’re telling us something super important. Whenever we come up against a binary argument, between two ‘sides’, the way through isn’t the ‘middle’ or ‘moderation’. The middle for a top would be what - moving a bit, and not moving a bit? Standing up a bit, and falling over a bit? Doesn’t work. Both sides of an argument work together to create a dynamic stability. The ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ in politics for example always exist together, and when they’re allowed to fight each other society becomes stable. You need both ‘sides’ to get that stability. Politics partly looks crazy at the moment I think because one of the sides - the progressives - is bloody hopeless. They believe argument and persuasion are unnecessary, that the right thing is obvious. The 'sensible middle'.