My contention is that societies are created by a single mechanism - status - and not by economics or politics…

My contention is that societies are created by a single mechanism - status - and not by economics or politics or anything else. The content of public debates is almost completely irrelevant. You’re missing the wood, for the trees, by arguing the content. 1/8

Individuals and groups will co-opt any issue, any content, to further the status quo of themselves and their teams. You can see that right now in climate debates. The quite funny interest pro-pollution folk have discovered in the health and safety of birds, for example. 2/8

These are people with no historical interest in birds or wildlife of any kind. It reveals what’s really going on. Similarly the passionate fake interest Covid minimisers have shown in children’s education. Something they had exactly zero interest in, before the pandemic. 3/8

It’s also why climate deniers are often also Covid deniers, anti-EVs and renewables, pro-free speech etc. Not much connection between many of those things. Except status. Each reflects a threat to the status of themselves and their group, in some way. 4/8

I call it team sports rather than use the term groups, because ‘teams’ much more precisely captures the rivalry in play. Imitation is the heart of all societies, people imitate what they perceive to have status. Imitation and status are two sides of the one coin. 5/8

The single clearest explanation for why anybody thinks, acts or feels in any way is that everybody else thinks acts or feels the same thing. Or at least everybody else in the group(s) they’re a part of. It’s social conformity. Which protects their status. 6/8

There are no economies. There are no -isms. The Chinese are no more communist than we in the West are capitalist. We’re ALL just groups of people, acting in status hierarchies. We call those hierarchies different names, that’s all. 7/8

Societies don’t change through any of these status games. Status games are about maintaining a status quo. They change when underlying material realities get so far out of connection with status games that they destroy the hierarchies. Only catastrophes change us. /end