Douglas Adams’ observations about technology are another way to see how the world we live in is 100% social,…

Douglas Adams’ observations about technology are another way to see how the world we live in is 100% social, and 0% economic, capitalist, socialist or anything else. Nearly everything we don’t understand we attribute to some abstract -ism, or to personal psychology. But…/1 https://t.co/sxDZSQW45z

…it’s nearly always neither of those things. It’s social. That includes demographics, which has always explained vastly more politics then economics ever has. Right now for example richer nations are trying to deal with a hugely oversized older generation that adopted highly…/2

…individualistic, anti-establishment ideas in their youth, and then wonder why the establishment (society) they’re now retiring into is falling apart. To this day you can bash the establishment (ATAGI, the RBA, ‘bureaucrats’) and nearly everybody will cheer you on. /3 https://t.co/LLRuT2aqiW

But this isn’t boomer-bashing, it’s explaining socially what we normally explain economically. A huge demographic group will tend to create a society favouring that demographic group, it’s not complex. And today we have millions mobilising behind loon theories of all kinds. /4

That’s social too. It’s pointless making it about facts, people rally around a fact because it’s a totem for a community they’re a part of or want to be a part of. When N=1 politics stripped away much of our community (social) lives, people went looking for something to fill…/5

…the void. Social media gives them a smorgasbord to choose from. The reason millions now believe crazy things isn’t that they’re dumb, it’s that without a collective society to plant their identity into, they have to go shopping for something else. /6

I Tweeted yesterday that populism doesn’t so much spread stupid ideas amongst millions of people, it encourages millions of people to have ideas about things they never even knew existed before. Unfortunately much of it the underlying operating system of our societies. /7

We’re human, all too human, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche. Always look to social things to explain what’s going on. Nearly always a jostling for status, for identity. Society is a high school (not an analogy). It’s the only cultural model that survived the great…/8

…iconoclasm of anti-establishment politics. Only an eternally adolescent society would ever think letting a pandemic rip was a good idea, so it could get back to socialising and travelling. /end