25 August

If people are asked what is wrong with the world, 99% of the time the answer will involve a rivalry between some kind of goodies and baddies. Left v Right. Capitalists v socialists. Patriarchy v everybody else. Oligarchs v the people. Etc. etc. etc. The root of evil though is simple copying. Without restriction and control. Imitation. All those goodies and baddies are just imitation, group members imitating each other to form teams, against other groups doing the same thing. If you trace every evil in the world, you’ll arrive at uncontrolled copying at its origin. Or put another way, civilisation is the control of imitation. All of our democratic institutions are really controls on imitation.