Many with expertise came to Twitter to network, when public health mechanisms were sidelined. I’m noticing…

Many with expertise came to Twitter to network, when public health mechanisms were sidelined. I’m noticing more of them becoming silent and even disappearing from here now. Some no longer even take the precautions they advocated for, for so long. /1

Social media as a place to build community is spin. That’s what it sees itself as, and it even believes it. Communities never build themselves from their component people. They’re led into existence by a very small number, within a group. About 5%. /2

Experts meant well. But have been naive about how change happens. Societies don’t run on data or information, the currency of expertise. If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. We’ve had 30+ years of all of the data on climate change, ignored. /3

I’ve said before, it’s extraordinary to me that so many thought Covid would be any different. We’ve had nearly 5 years of brilliant data and information. It’s done little to change any of the outcomes. Why would be surprised? Again, climate change showed us how this would end. /4

My contribution to many of these debates has been to try to show how the really quite tiny number of people who do determine our collective fates, the ultra-conservatives of our time, manage to do it. And to encourage the use of their methods against them. /5

Ironically, they’ve been winning for so long because despite the veneer they project, of being focused on economic things, that was always only a means to an end. Their genius is that they understand people, and how they act, SOCIALLY. /6

Much of this they learned from fellow conservative travellers in churches, who have millennia of experience in mobilising populations. Billy Graham for example, mingling with a range of Presidents here. All part of a massive strategic effort, since the 1950s. /7 https://t.co/PxfndFlL8c

Church v State IS Western history. It’s maybe a sign of how bad our education is that this dominant trope is rarely even mentioned now, replaced with pointless team sport debating fantasies like Left vs Right. None of this battle ever went away. We changed the names of things. /8

The ultra conservatives keep winning because the churches taught them how to mobilise people. By offering them social status hierarchies driven by imitative rivalry. Decades of shock jocks and think tanks turning every issue into end of the world hysteria. /9

Calmed only by electing a saviour, a Great Leader. Whose continuing power is always to set up more and more fake battles against evil foes. Good vs evil. The think tanks churn out this engineered anxiety every minute of every day. /10

We’re deluded in thinking democracy has bypassed any of this. Using popular elections, the same conservatives have completely transformed democracies into apocalyptic culture wars of good and evil, with followers flocking to leaders who offer regal or even messianic relief. /11 https://t.co/fnmIcCVKnK

This stuff is as old as history. It IS history. We desperately need to give up the idea that democracy is just letting everybody do, think and say whatever they like. What they like is to line up behind Kings, emperors and messiahs. To be part of a status hierarchy. /12

I Tweeted recently that ancient Rome discovered this. Its centuries of being a republic ‘for the people’ were marked by continuous bloodshed and war. Then when they shifted to a model led by emperors, they had centuries of peace and prosperity. The Pax Romana. /13

You can see this anywhere you look. Take Australia’s favourite 10 car models in 2023. Why these 10, in this order? It’s all status. Big utes and other wankpanzers are the status vehicles of our time. People live in groups defined by status. Even the EVs in there - the same. /14 https://t.co/I60UMAAceK

Other groups, jostling for status. Much better cars objectively too, I think, but that’s not what’s shifting the market. It’s always status, humans are social creatures, almost exclusively. Even experts are driven by expert status hierarchies. /15

And that’s why I think many have given up here, recognising none of it is getting us anywhere much, just posting new data every day and screaming ‘why?!’ into a void. You don’t build alternative communities in that way. It’s not a conference. So what can you do? /16

The conservatives have a head start of over 70 years. So…not a lot, fast. They already bought or built all the big communication networks that irrigate populations with the required messaging, every day. They built these platforms, which pulverise anything collective. /17

Into thousands or even millions of teams or gangs, endlessly fighting with each other to absorb all off that anger and deflect it to no purpose at all, except more likes and more revenue, for the platforms. The first thing Trump did when losing the Presidency was build a new…/18

…social media platform. These people are showing us exactly what the true battle is. A social media platform won’t reconstitute a public, but it’s heroin for constituting new emperors and messiahs. My advice for what it’s worth is always to just do what Spinoza did. /19

Understand. Only understanding sets humans free. Not just data about Covid, understand why that data won’t work, to stop Covid. REAL understanding. If things are not going well, understand why not. Don’t just protest, the conservatives couldn’t give a shit. /20

It’s a bitter pill for instant gratification, but understanding is all that ultimately changes the world, because it’s our only access to reality. And reality always wins. Even against emperors. If you have true understanding it can go viral, fast. It will energise. /end