It’s emotionally satisfying to imagine that action against things like climate change and Covid is being…

It’s emotionally satisfying to imagine that action against things like climate change and Covid is being blocked by a small cabal of evil [insert chosen baddies] people. The reality is more banal, and more difficult. /1

The ‘status quo’ is a beautiful concept, rarely used analytically. It’s a rendition of the actual reason societies hold, or don’t. They’re a semi-stable equilibrium of competing status hierarchies. /2

Always shifting, as human desires and their associated status hierarchies shift. It’s extremely difficult to establish a lasting, stable status hierarchy, because of fluctuating human desires. /3

But once it’s there, nothing is more difficult to break. It’s the encapsulation of every part of ‘how things are done’ in a society. It’s all connected. Custom, routine, tradition. Like society’s autonomic nervous system, the automatic habits that keep society running. /4

To suggest a shift to the status quo is to eventually call for a disruption to how *everything* is done. A shift to everybody’s ’comfort zone’. As Rousseau I think said, a society has all of its habits at once, they’re all connected. /5

The reason we’re not acting on climate change and Covid is definitely driven by a handful of bad faith actors. But the magic sauce that allows them to get away with it is that status quo. /6

They know how to manipulate it, how to make any action appear a disruption to all of those comfort zones. Why ‘living with’ disasters is now their chosen narrative. Because it makes people feel their underlying comfort zone isn’t under threat. /7

We’re all therefore implicated in the non-action. Even if we’re not driving it. The extent to which we won’t disrupt our own comfort zones is the extent to which bad faith actors win. /8

For example I’ve asked here before, who would give up recreational travel to fight climate change? I’m not asking people to do that, I’m asking them how important is that habit, to them? It’s hugely important to millions. They don’t even deny it. /9

This is the reason only catastrophes really change societies. A status quo will NEVER change on its own. Never gradually, never in a planned way. It would mean people voluntarily surrendering social statuses they’ve spent lifetimes nurturing. /10

Our status is our identity. To surrender it is in many ways to surrender our very identity. And that’s why change mostly doesn’t happen. /end