29 November

I think status is what drives all our lives. Starting at school, with kids negotiating their status there in different groups - peer pressure - and then right through adulthood. The overwhelming thing that drives humans is status, and often they’re not even aware they’re doing it. (Social media is absolutely saturated in it, humblebrags and other status behaviours. Even a basic selfie.) The flipside of this is that the most lethal thing you can do to a human is to humiliate them. Humiliation is the destruction of status. Even worse than physical violence, which often at least passes. This is true both individually and collectively. At the individual level, serial killers are nearly always people who have been deeply humiliated in their lives. Collectively, take Germany as an example. A wonderful, sophisticated country. And yet of course it had the catastrophe of Hitler and the Nazis. How did that happen? Quite simple, Germany was humiliated, after WW1. Deliberately, by opposing powers. The resentment this caused led directly to Nazism and WW2. Or take the modern day. Why did Trump originally decide to run for President? Those close to him say because Barack Obama publicly humiliated him. Every ounce of MAGA reeks of revenge. Tell me you don’t see it.