We’re probably 50 years too late to rescue the public from political libertarians. They have a big…

We’re probably 50 years too late to rescue the public from political libertarians. They have a big head-start, in destroying it. Every day I see people here desperately trying to come to terms with the loss of a public, that whole populations can be infected, with no recourse. /1 https://t.co/TMFZb94CGc

Predominantly as a response I see people trying to mobilise other people to fight it. All very admirable. But the world we’re trying to get back took 150 years to build, and 3 major catastrophes (plagues and wars) from 1850-1950 to give it opportunity to grow. /2

Protests and social media-driven action is not going to replace that any time soon. The libertarians used the lull in existential threat from 1950-onwards to launch their wrecking ball. Everybody now talks about ‘the economy’ (the front edge of that wrecking ball) like they…/3

…talk about trees, or grass. Like it’s an existent thing, rather than what it actually is, a strategically calculated propaganda concept to substitute for society. Even quite progressive people will argue black and blue with you that the economy is the lifeblood of society. /4

It seems a bit doomer, but the reality is we’re now living again in the times most of humanity has always lived, until 1850. That brief 150-year experiment in creating a ‘public’ is over. The old hierarchies have risen to snuff it out. When we Tweet questions here each day…/5 https://t.co/TMFZb94CGc

…along the lines of ‘how can this be happening?’, and posting statistics to show the magnitude of the disaster, who are we speaking to? That old public space that cared about those things, is gone. We’re speaking into a void, hollowed out by decades of deliberate destruction. /6 https://t.co/jsqHO7p2kY

Bruno Latour, speaking here about religion, one of our oldest institutions, but his message was about all institutions. The things that cross generations and maintain societies through millennia, not just individual lifetimes. To this day I marvel at how vicious people are…/7 https://t.co/PfQ9PETVsn

…about religion, for example. You don’t have to be a ‘religious’ person (Latour wasn’t) to recognise its critical role in maintaining societies for the past several thousand years, even with all of religion’s faults. As he says, once the institutional framework of society…/8 https://t.co/WiWYy9ijgs

…is destroyed, it doesn’t get back up. It’s not like building a bridge, it’s centuries of emergent customs and traditions. Societies’ autonomic nervous system. I think we have to consider that the great experiment of ‘the public’ may be over. We lost. But…/9

…two things about that. Firstly people found a way to live, even well, for 2000 years without it. It’s not good, but we’re just returning to the lived experience of most humans who have ever lived. And secondly, I think there is one enormously powerful counterbalancing…/10

…force to oppose this loss. Will tweet about that separately in the next day or so. As a hint, engineers may yet save our civilisation. /ends