12 August

If you work at the front line of public service, the thing you will overwhelmingly notice is that what humans do above all else is complain. That complaint in turn is driven by the status games I often talk about. Humans fight for status, for themselves and for the groups they’re a part of. That’s the default state of human life. Less seen in the ‘fun’ conversion of life into lifestyles, where it looks like everybody is always having the jolliest good time, eating out, doing trips, going to gigs, socialising with friends. All of that stuff is status games on steroids. The craving for recognition, from peers. Only one thing ever really unites humans, brings them together. Total catastrophe. There’s even a name for it, it’s called ‘catastrophe compassion’. Democracy itself as we know it came from the apocalyptic disasters of the first half of the 20th century. Only those generated a sense of ‘we’. As those disasters recede from memory, all the ‘democratic’ gains are being unwound, at great speed.