Have Tweeted a few times about how society is a high school. And that this is literally true, not an analogy.…

Have Tweeted a few times about how society is a high school. And that this is literally true, not an analogy. (See: https://t.co/1stDMhEXNh). You can understand everything going on with Covid using that lens. /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/K78HOfrv9L

School is obviously a popularity contest in many ways. There are always hierarchies of popularity. Culturally this is what elections and political parties are for adults, we export that high school popularity mechanism into our adult lives. /2 https://t.co/xWfYEHmih5

You can see this even on Twitter, where every day millions refract the issues of the day through a party-political lens, backing their team, or a more generalised ‘Left’ or ‘Right’. The actual events of the world are little more than fodder for these status hierarchy games. /3

And then also in high school, you have learning. Sometimes. A hierarchy of actual knowledge and achievement. A connection to the world of work, and to historical continuity, where humanity stores and accumulates wisdom over generations. /4 https://t.co/asfdLesw86

In the adult world, this becomes the many different hierarchies of expertise, embedded within a wide variety of cross-generational institutions. In healthy schools and societies, these two hierarchies - of social status and expertise - co-exist. /5

In our current populist, libertarian societies, that co-existence has been broken. The Prom King and Queen are now also driving the expertise hierarchies. Politicians are sidelining institutions and expertise, everything is re-routed into the social status hierarchy. /6

You can appeal all you like to the Prom Kings and Queens to fix climate change or Covid, they won’t do it. They don’t understand that geeky stuff, they wedgie people who do. The ‘cool’ kids have decided their reign needs to extend well past high school, into all facets…/7

…of adult life. This is what political populism ultimately is. It’s high school, with the ‘nerds’ permanently sidelined. Revenge of the Jocks. I appeal to everybody to bypass politicians entirely in this pandemic, they can’t help us. They will turn every fork in the Covid…/8

…road into some new opportunity to get votes for the next Prom. People who know little about democracy don’t realise leaders are only a sop to that school status hierarchy, in the wider expertise hierarchies that actually run our lives. It’s never been the role of political…/9

…representatives to ‘run’ anything. Watch Yes Minister, and watch it again, it knows. The cries of ‘unelected’ from the culture warriors directed at institutions and experts is the cool kids in school, trying to own the whole space. Civilisation depends on them not winning. /end