For a few years now I’ve argued for what I call ‘reality-based politics’. Not really ever explaining what I…

For a few years now I’ve argued for what I call ‘reality-based politics’. Not really ever explaining what I mean by that. I’ll use Covid as an example. /1

In a nutshell, it’s the humility of knowing that how things turn out is rarely in our (humanity’s) control. Reality determines outcomes. This is pretty obvious really. Most of our political and even social life is hot air floating above underlying material realities. /2

Material realities that don’t care what we think or feel. We waste so much energy and emotion over what other *people* think and feel, every day. None of that really matters, over time. Reality isn’t determined by what we think or feel, mostly. /3

In the short-term it can be *shaped* by human belief and emotion. Choosing to do nothing against Covid, for example, seems to kind of work, for a while. Until it doesn’t. All our daily human team sports can do is either accelerate or delay an encounter with reality. /4

You can argue all day over whether there’s a leak in your roof. All that does is delay checking if there is. Extend that delay, and if there is a leak, your roof will collapse on you. That’s reality. Your argument made not the tiniest difference. /5

So here’s a challenge. Reframe how you see this pandemic. Right now I guarantee for most of us, it’s seen almost entirely as the battle of opposing teams. And a perception of which teams are winning. On masks, ventilation, vaccines etc. Try this instead. /6

SARS-Cov-2 is like that leak in the roof. It doesn’t ultimately matter what your opinion or feelings are about it. It isn’t even aware of what we think about it. It doesn’t care. Those who ignore its actual material effects will ‘lose’. /7

Their roof will cave in. As it has tragically already done, for millions. It will come for the rest of the deniers. Not always straight away, human-centred politics celebrates many short-term apparent victories over material realities. /8

But like the rivers and waterways of the UK piling up with human excrement show, following the team sports of privatisation there, the meeting with reality always arrives. It’s why I argue to ditch elections entirely. /9

This ludicrous charade of running popularity contests with material realities as the stage. Contests that do absolutely nothing to shape those realities in meaningful ways. Nearly everything we need doing is simple and independent of our team sports. /10

Practical, calm, some would say boring, ‘keeping the lights’ on stuff. Building and fixing schools, roads, sewers, hospitals, water supplies, removing garbage etc. THAT’s the material reality of any society. No ideology has any relevance, to any of it. /11

Give up thinking progress would be beating some other team, or even persuading them to switch teams. That’s hot air piled upon more hot air. Reality always wins. That’s the only team to join. It brings great calm to your life. /12

Of course human team sports will delay us reaching that point, always. It always has. But the more people tune out of those team sports, the more they empty the stadiums, the faster that idiot system might collapse. /end