Robert Hughes’ Culture of Complaint summarises something important, even in its title. Who doesn’t feel that…

Robert Hughes’ Culture of Complaint summarises something important, even in its title. Who doesn’t feel that culture, every day? Public life is now eternal complaint. Every issue pulverised into a granularity of grievance. But you need to look past that. /1

Those grievances are really fights for identity. For status, in society. The ‘there is no such thing as society’ political movements of our time led to this directly. That collective sense of identity is now mostly destroyed. /2

‘The public’. Gone. Which is why we’re left with an endless proliferation of complaining groups, trying to forge a replacement identity in the ruins. I will continue to try to reframe this chaos for what it is. Not politics, and certainly not economics. Not ‘capitalism’. /3

Just the absence of a stabilised status hierarchy in societies. Without that, everyday life becomes nothing but a fight for status. For identity. For recognition, as something rather than nothing. /end