The macro lens shows everything going so well. We had an election where the winning party’s policies at least…

The macro lens shows everything going so well. We had an election where the winning party’s policies at least resemble the desperate physical, real needs of the community. But if you put the long lens on, we’re still fucked. /1 https://t.co/rsaiUVrLAz

Not because this or that party will fail. They all fail. Popularity - formalised here as elections, but now the dominant operating principle of our societies, via social media - cannot solve real problems. /2

Take the transition to renewable energy. Those with expertise in that area applaud the rejection of the LNP nuclear fantasy. But the renewables approach from the ALP is nowhere near enough to meet even its modest targets. /3

Keeping in mind the targets in turn derive from scientific work trying to rescue human civilisation from extinction. Easily, by orders of magnitude, the greatest threat humanity as a whole has ever faced. And what does popularity governance deliver? /4

A ministry focused on it, though only in the past 3 years. Contrast that with what nations did in WW1 and WW2. They stopped literally everything they were doing, to fight a threat that in comparison was pathetically feeble. /5

The plan the ALP has now had endorsed in the election again won’t even meet its own modest targets, themselves developed to cause the least offence (and therefore drop in popularity, votes and donations) to key ‘stakeholders’. Not because the ALP is spineless. /6

But because the magnitude of change needed in *every* ‘portfolio’ is so immense that there is no actual way to make it popular. We’re trapped by our own system of government. We keep voting new people in to try to fix that system. It won’t work. /7

Perhaps not enough people are on the frontline of what we euphemistically now call ‘essential services’. The bare basics of running civilised life - providing energy, water, education health care, food etc. You won’t find a single essential service that isn’t fucked. /8

That can’t get staff, because demographically there are no young workers, and certainly none trained in what needs doing. The people on the literal front lines of keeping civilisation afloat are being absolutely smashed. /9

Already completely overwhelmed by the health needs of rapidly ageing populations, health systems then had a permanent pandemic foisted upon them, by a politics of popularity that was appalled that its perpetual recreational jet travel and dining out had been interrupted. /10

Roads across Australia are in a dire state of collapse. There’s no money, skills or resources to fix them. The ‘environment’ is in collapse. Aged care is so broken that the elderly occupy desperately needed hospital beds because there’s nowhere else to park them. /11

Education outcomes are in free fall. There are no new teachers for any schools, and the ones that hang on are under assault from the permanent pandemic, and kidult parents. Parents shackled to astronomical mortgages, with no time to raise their own children. /12

Housing is an existential disaster. The ALP’s policy is more of the same idiot ‘supply is what is important’, because everybody says that. It doesn’t make it true. A supply of 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 housing, yes. but nobody has any intention to do that. /13

It would be deeply unpopular with the vast numbers of existing homeowners, who don’t want the market value of their homes affected. I could go on, enumerating the disastrous state of affairs in every single portfolio. But the point is, no amount of voting will fix this. /14

Voting CAUSED this. Trying to fix complex material problems, using a popularity contest. Once you surrender the resolution of your problems to popularity, you will be permanently stuck in the schoolyard (literally). The team sports of popularity and status. /15

Nothing truly fundamental will be done, because it will upset the status quo, the complex and rigid equilibrium of the aggregate of all status games. This is why all meaningful change in history is imposed on people. Via catastrophes. /16

In the same way some evolutionary biologists see evolution itself happening, in ‘punctuated equlibria’. Things don’t evolve in nice gradual steps. Catastrophes wipe out the dominant species, leaving room for others to emerge. Societies are exactly the same. /17

If you don’t believe this, take an honest look at the magnitude of the challenges now facing us. And on the other side of the ledger, look at what plans we have to fix those, the plans we voted for. Then have a Bex and a good lie down. /18

It’s not about being optimistic or pessimistic. Kidults of the world, reality doesn’t give a flying fuck about your precious 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔. Like outcomes will be determined by how ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ we are. It’s like being stuck at a New Age retreat. /19

It’s recognising the actual material problems of societies, identifying the fixes, and implementing them. It’s mostly engineering. Not ‘Left wing’ or ‘Right wing’ fixes. It’s like saying gravity is Left-wing or Right-wing. /20

With social media entrenching these same status games, I can promise you no amount of voting will rise to the challenge of fixing any of it, meaningfully. So, we’re fucked. Catastrophes incoming. Then things might change. /21

I say might. Civilisations never last forever, in historical terms most are fleeting at best. The odds are that even the catastrophes won’t fix things. The civilisation itself is more likely to simply collapse and disappear. /22

Kidults will despair at that message, life is supposed to be endless recreational fun. Most humans who ever lived never lived our Western ‘lifestyle’ lives. There’s calm joy and sanity in being rid of permanent cruise culture. To stop living in denial. /23

We are never more bored or listless than when we face no challenges. Give Lifeline a rest folks, embrace the messy clusterfuck. There’s real joy in at least seeing it. Spinoza said it, the only true joy is understanding. /24

The fun life you feel slipping away was itself the result of millions dead in global catastrophes in the first half of the twentieth century. We didn’t vote it into existence. We’re the survivors. /end