Society is social, not political. What we call politics is hierarchical social status games, with different…

Society is social, not political. What we call politics is hierarchical social status games, with different names for the different players. Just as Grease has its T-Birds, Scorpions and Pink Ladies, we have an ALP, LNP and Greens. /1 https://t.co/67EDOwruNx

All of the different -isms (capitalism, socialism, communism, liberalism, neoliberalism) are just gang names, in the same social turf wars that start in school and don’t end throughout life. They’re grown-up names we give to the same process, pretending that grown-ups move…/2 https://t.co/4Ft9Mq3rDG

…beyond social status games and pursue disinterested political beliefs instead. It’s not true, and we also shouldn’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s the beliefs that are simplified nonsense, completely ignorant of basic social psychology. You can call society a market, or a…/3

…State, or some ‘fasicist’ worship of a Great Leader. All will be exactly the same thing, social status games, the constant creation and maintenance of social hierarchies. If we recognised this, that society is social and not political, we might be less stupidly disappointed…/4

…when ‘politics’ fails us and each elected party degenerates into battles for social status. Which is all any of them ever are, or can be. We need to embrace being social creatures, because it’s what we most fundamentally are. The only economic thinker who ever understood…/5

…this was Gabriel Tarde, who laughed at all of the different political -isms and their economic theories. Instead stating simply that society is social, and what drives all social activity is one thing. Desires. Desires we hide behind our pretend ‘objective’ economic…/6 https://t.co/uo8TFtSVGo

…and political theories. Tarde said economic activity was only the pursuit of desires. How could that not be true? A fundamentally social and human act, to desire and to pursue that desire. What did Tarde see as the driver of all ‘economic growth’? Conversation. /7

It’s conversation between people that circulates and magnifies desires, as life in our social media age is shouting out at us every day. Desires ‘go viral’, which in turn drives what we stupidly call ‘economic activity’. It’s human social activity, the pursuit of desires,…/8

…through the same social mechanisms we learn in school. Building hierarchies of social status. Because what we desire above all else is to be recognised, to have status in the groups we live in, and in the wider society. To have the most ‘likes’. /end