6 December

Could you live in a world without others? By which I mean, not live without other people in your life, but live without the need to conform to the social frameworks they think, act and feel inside? It is tempting to think we’re doing that by simply adopting a social team that is in some ways opposed to or different to the dominant ones of the day. Like alternative lifestyles, or anti-vaxers, or transgenderism. The options are now prolific, because we’ve had so many years of social status games, where each group defines some new way to have identity and therefore status. But it’s all still a capture of you, by the social status games. All the same imitative rivalry. You imitate others in your own group, and fight other groups. It’s also tempting to think you can escape this by going ‘off-grid’ in some way, or ‘getting back to nature’. Alas, just more social groups, with a status axe to grind. Living in a world without others, as free as possible from social conformity as the guiding principle of a life, is not being a hermit. It’s a life focused on the material reality of existence itself. A life that refuses both popularity and unpopularity as measures of worth. Science tried to be that but if anything is even more infected by social status games. A life of a type of solitude that feels directly the violence of social conformity, which in every sphere of life (without exception) will come at you if you refuse to play social status games. Whenever you see social teams battling each other you’re as far from a world without others as it’s possible to be. Social media is that, endless imitative rivalry. Every tiny facet of existence transformed into a fight of some kind, between proliferating social groups. Somebody performing their social identity, in battle with others. Even and especially the harmless ‘here’s me on holiday’ posts, are that. Reframe every social media post, you can’t miss it once you see it. It’s high school, on steroids.