“And yet it moves.” (Galileo) I sometimes advocate for something I call ‘reality politics’. Meaning politics…

“And yet it moves.” (Galileo) I sometimes advocate for something I call ‘reality politics’. Meaning politics that recognises that most of the things we argue about aren’t in our power to change. Our normal politics merely delays outcomes already pre-determined by reality. /1 https://t.co/2SPGOFtomf

I think Galileo’s “and yet it moves” can be the motto of reality politics. His response to sanctions for saying the Earth moves. Reframing what we call politics in this way gives it an entirely different appearance. /2

Once you accept that mostly the things we need to do are determined by reality itself, politics as we practice it just looks like what it is. The imitative rivalry of social life, using reality as a stage. Team sports, using reality as the stadium. /3

In a week where the cost of sporting stadiums is again in the news. Because team sports cost money. In REALITY. Our social games, of all kinds, sports or otherwise, attract a cost. In reality. /4 https://t.co/7Ro3pOaEUf

Right now the entire planet is the stadium for our team sports on Covid, and climate change. Where Team Left and Team Right battle for electoral supremacy, using reality as a football. /5

And yet, it moves. Reality DOESN’T CARE about Team Left or Team Right. They’re absolutely irrelevant to it. /6

Many think I’m crazy for suggesting we ditch electoral politics entirely. Like that makes me an ‘authoritarian’. That’s what teams in team sports think about referees. Or adolescents think about teachers and parents. Kidult culture wants infinite freedom to play team sports. /7

All day, every day. To play the games of imitative rivalry that Rene Girard identified as the foundation of all societies. Everything else will be seen as rain washing out play. But democracy was never elections. /8

It’s government for the people. Not by the people. Pilots still fly planes, not passengers. Elections were invented as one mechanism to connect the public to government. Not to *be* government. /9

The jocks of high school life have now gamed the process entirely. The Trumps of the world sweep to power on platforms of complete insanity. But they can, because we turned politics into team sports. Elections gave them their way in. /10

You don’t hire staff in a business based on how popular they are. You hire them for the competencies they have. And yet for the most complex ‘business’ of all, government, now we say the only metric to select leadership is popularity. /11

It’s destroying our societies. And much of the planet, as we play our team sports every day. Most of our critical, existential problems have known solutions. They’re mostly engineering-type things. /12

The facile ideologies of our political teams add *not one thing* to this process. They’re sterile remnants of debates that are 150-200 years old, at least. There’s no ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ solution to climate change. There’s just some engineering to be done. /13

Engineering we can’t get to because the team sports is always getting in the way. Turning the engineering into new footballs, every day. The same for Covid. Most pandemics are ended by engineers. They haven’t been allowed to say or do a thing, for Covid. /14

The teams saw the danger very early on with Covid, and shut down any chance at all reality politics would be used. Our modern societies are so materially complex that the old political ideology team sports fits them like using a plastic shopping bag as a condom. /15

It’s literally just hot air. Achieving nothing at all, except the promotion of the success of this or that team in the daily team sports. This is the high school culture I Tweet about. That replaced adult life, when we developed mass schooling isolated from adult life. /16

When the young grow up in that isolated world, the culture they experience and shape there becomes the culture they then re-make in the adult world, when they leave school. Social media pours petrol on this fire. It’s the shared infrastructure for social life for all ages. /17

And its operating principle is the same team sports. The economy of likes. Popularity. FB was developed in dorm rooms. It’s now where we transact most of our lives. Socially, economically, politically. A handful of platforms, owned by libertarian billionaires. /18

This should strike us as absolutely perverse. But it doesn’t. Team sports culture is all we know. It’s our deepest passion, as Girard saw. Just scroll through Twitter/X, and watch the teams. Every day. Without end. /19

Every time somebody tells you the pandemic is over, or that climate change isn’t real, you can use the reality politics slogan. “And yet it moves.” You will be excommunicated, like Galileo. And yet, it moves. Reality will out. /end