14 January

When you look at adult life, socially little changes from your days at school. Take the fake debates over EVs, as an example. Grease put to music that cars have always been a key rallying point for particular social groups, often the kids at school who weren’t that good at the more academic stuff. That doesn’t change as they leave school, the adults who oppose EVs for example are often still defending that old social territory, which vehicles carved out for them. Pulling cars apart in the shed was part of the culture, for those groups, EVs take that away from them. The dominance of cars in our culture had given these groups a social place right at the centre of society, something school never did. So they will resist the collapse of this social artefact, because it literally threatens their whole social world. Reality doesn’t care, and they will lose that place, unless they adapt. It’s hugely interesting though to take every topic humans debate, and identify the social groupings or teams behind the debates. That’s what’s really going on, it’s not about facts or the content of the debates much at all. It’s team sports. That’s the model for all of society. Bands and other musical acts exactly the same. The same mechanism, repeated over and over.