I have no interest in most debates in public life. Most are adolescent identity politics, conservatives and…

I have no interest in most debates in public life. Most are adolescent identity politics, conservatives and progressives all the same. They reflect cultures who no longer build things, with the calm adult effort and persistence that requires. /1 https://t.co/8I6g6wPsqk

The Victorians are famous for their engineering. The Romans were a role model for that, as were the Egyptians. As the BBC points out here, there are myths surrounding Victorian engineering too, but they’re very instructive myths for today. /2 https://t.co/8I6g6wPsqk

Cultures that build, last. The reason is very simple. Despite our prejudice, born from decades of prosperous and easy living, that engineering is a functional thing, a ‘tool’, it’s actually THE most powerfully social thing humans do. /3

To build and maintain things takes massive social organisation. To train the engineers and workers, and organise their work. To build and maintain supply chains for the work. All of this is intrinsically social work, not ‘technical’. The distinction is meaningless. /4

Most of the unrest and ‘division’ I see in Western societies is traceable back to the fact that we’re just not building anything, any more. We’re bored and frustrated, and like old aristocrats, working on defining ever more refined forms of identity to pass the time. /5

Building things brings calm and discipline to social life. People are focused on an outcome, and finding ways to overcome the challenges to meet that outcome. Not on interpersonal squabbles, on the team sports of the schoolyard. /6 https://t.co/3BSGl6BPPG

Once built ongoing maintenance brings a level of social organisation that no amount of opinion-based politics can ever muster. You either maintain your infrastructure, or your society stops functioning. No opinion has currency in that conversation. /7

As @EdConwaySky’s marvellous new book talks about, we’ve forgotten the essential materiality of our lives. Spoiled rich societies that for too long outsourced this work to others, including slaves. But we’ve also been doing this work ourselves, and ignoring it. /8 https://t.co/Oo2zjhuD5p

The BBC article touches on why, and people who follow my threads will see overlap. A lot of Victorian engineering also failed, which we hear less about, and it failed mostly when it was driven by populist pollies and entrepreneurs looking for votes and a quick buck. /9

Here’s Mike Casson, who’s studied that time. The culprit? Popularity politics. The stuff Utopia satirises brilliantly again today, with modern infrastructure builds. It’s still going on. See that ‘rational calm’ of ‘civil servants’? /10 https://t.co/g5ftQymW95

That’s what populists take away from us, installing permanent high school popularity contests as adult life. Who remembers Bert? The old guy from the old Public Works department, who was breathtakingly competent and rational and calm. And therefore immediately sidelined. /11 https://t.co/eeaIFXBw9p

That’s our battle still today. Popularity as the foundation of authority in public life. Societies can’t and won’t survive, unless that changes. We’ll just have childish, adolescent eternal debates about this or that bit of our treasured identities, while building nothing. /12

We need a new industrial revolution right now, to fix our climate and Covid woes. The problem is the solution. Enough hot air team sports, who the fuck cares about our opinions. Reality doesn’t. There’s deep satisfaction in returning to building a better society. /end