I’ve been called too ‘dark’ or cynical, in saying that very little humans deliberatively do changes our…

I’ve been called too ‘dark’ or cynical, in saying that very little humans deliberatively do changes our overall fate. That only catastrophes really change societies. But I live a very happy life, believing that. Because it grounds me, I think, in reality. /1

We in Western nations constantly mistake the lived experience of the past 70-odd years, with life itself. Those 70 years are absolutely historically anomalous. Like no other time in history. The lives many now feel spiralling out of control is not the apocalypse. /2

It’s that anomaly being removed. Sadly, yes. It was glorious to live in a time when there was an actual ‘we’ driving our lives. A public. When collective life was the focus of our everyday work. When we laboured collectively to make life better for more people. /3

When we recognised that ‘many hands make light work’, literally. When we implemented the basics of economies of scale, socially as well as economically. The modern State is just that. Economies of scale applied to all human life. Rather than just to business. /4

But as I’ve Tweeted about so often in recent years, all of that glorious public work, in health, education, transportation, housing, water supply, etc., came from one place only. The apocalyptic catastrophes of the first half of the 20th century. /5

WW1, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression and WW2. An astronomical hammering of our established social status hierarchies. Societies were nearly destroyed. Rebuilding them required a collective focus, because we were building the lot. That’s where ‘public life’ came from. /6

Not the hard work of noble reformers, or some modern sudden enlightenment, or society finally responding to protestors or activists. That’s human vanity, that humans determine reality. Reality determines reality. /7

Centuries of accumulated human status games focused only on humans always leads to the neglect of the basic material realities of existence. That neglect reaches a tipping point, and then BAM. Reality bitch slaps us. With catastrophes. /8

I live a happy life because I recognise it’s a life that most humans who have ever lived, have lived. Of course living in the West today, it’s much more materially lavish than most lives ever lived. But in 2025, that sense of no ‘we’ or public driving things? /9

Most humans who have ever lived never had that. The calm, institutionally-driven relative peace and prosperity and health of collectively-focused lives. Those institutions mostly flourished only in the repair of that cataclysm between 1900 and 1945. /10

Then in the 1970s, status returned as the driver of all human life. Through the Trojan Horse of ‘the economy’, a ludicrous idea that individuals live individually in ‘markets’. Really just a way to smash institutions, and return life to endless status games. /11

In teams, team sports as I call them, because that’s our most fundamental social model. (And also why we adore watching team sports themselves, not by analogy.) People are honestly blind to status as the driver of everything we do. They don’t see it. /12

Take any modern cause, be it Covid, climate change, Gaza, housing - whatever - and look for the teams. They’ll always be there. Even those who enter these debates honestly trying to stick to the facts end up in teams, fighting other teams. It sneaks up on them. /13

I’m not a very good friend, because friendship itself is team-based, and the second I think a friendship is diverging from the material truth of life in some way, I ditch it. I’m supposed to be fighting Tesla right now, for example. /14

Because the people who are, broadly of the mega-team ‘the Left’, see it as necessary to oppose the rise of mega-team ‘the Right’. Sorry, that’s bullshit for me. Team sports is just team sports. I’ll focus on the *material* contribution of Tesla to society, to decide. /15

And right now that contribution is unique, and still immense. 130,000 brilliant people work there. So no, I won’t be cheering on idiots out there vandalising, burning and abusing. Fighting for their team. Fuck team sports. Reality politics is the only politics. /end