The genius of Australia is invisible to all of the political categories developed mostly in Europe and…

The genius of Australia is invisible to all of the political categories developed mostly in Europe and applied globally. All of the -isms: capitalism, socialism, liberalism, communism etc. Australia is none of those things. And that’s why it works. So what is it? /1 https://t.co/Dp8Xt15r2X

Probably more by accident than by design, but also intriguingly possibly via osmosis with its Indigenous population, Australian life is centred around none of the social groupings that make up traditional ‘politics’, like class. Australian life is created around community. /2 https://t.co/ZZqLAOlAXm

Australia is communitarian. That sounds a lovely warm hugs thing to be, but it deserves a more rigorous understanding. The atomic unit of Australian society is the community. The interactions of a wide diversity of people, in their communities. /3

Not some abstract nothingness like ‘the people’, a voting artefact beloved of promoters of democracy. No meat on the bones; a counting entity, nothing more. A practical, empirical, continuously constructed interaction between the diversity of people who live here. /4

Via the most mundane activities. Australians love sport, for example, and that’s often seen as a lack of a more sophisticated culture. But it’s a very particular type of sport that isn’t as common elsewhere in the world. /5

It’s community sport. Throwing entire communities together, children and adults, every weekend. Forcing people to learn how to interact and get along, with people they otherwise would have nothing to do with. These are the genius practical skills of social cohesion. /6 https://t.co/DjiMGXYalH

Not bloated political ideologies. Just practical community-making. Damien Cave when moving here with his family to work for the local office of the New York Times noticed the same process through surf lifesaving. /7 https://t.co/X5ajxSLt61

In each case a basic social need was identified, and a community grouping mobilised to fill it. This in time created ongoing institutions, like lifesaving, and the rural fire service. All intensely practical and focused on actual need. Free of team sports ideologies. /8 https://t.co/iB8YxVadCG

Australia has historically been resistant to the tribal warfares of European-based collective life, including US life. They find the team sports status battles of those abstract things tedious. Politicians who run with those are generally trounced. /9

Peter Dutton tried to run a Trumpian populist campaign in the recent Australian election. His party was not only decimated, he lost his own seat. Australians find most global politics tedious abstract bullshit. /10 https://t.co/1TXxdj2TYr

There’s a ruthless pragmatism to Australian politics and its entire way of life. A penal colony banished to the ends of civilisation, it had to find ways to survive. That pragmatism remains. But it’s under threat now. /11

Mostly from platforms like this. American Trojan Horses for an entirely different form of community. A thin veneer of community, of ‘interests’, shorn of the linkages to the physical everyday community lives people live. /12

Social media is a wrecking ball through every community, and it doesn’t stop there, it drives wedges between members of families too. It connects people in the most weakly imitative way, stripped of any real world connections to everyday lives. Sociality is violence. /13

Humans don’t naturally agree on anything, societies run on always shifting desire. When humans interact and connect, violence is nearly always a consequence. You need to channel that interaction through simple collective need. Not through abstract warring ideologies. /14

We saw the danger of social media with Covid. When the pandemic began, community-focused public health measures swung into action. Covid was smashed. But those social media tendrils to loon groups online had now entered the Australian community. Cooker culture emerged. /15

Which in the space of only a couple of years, took Australia from leading the world on public health measures, to now being almost dead last. The sense of communities mobilising to respond to a practical need gone. Replaced by the idiot ideology team sports of culture wars. /16

Or in my town, local politics, usually about rates, roads and rubbish, is now beholden to the same cookers. Prosecuting causes it imitates from far Right groups mostly in the US. There’s still resistance from communitarian Australia. But social media is winning. /17

Like most countries now, Australia is shifting its entire personal, social, professional and political life onto social media platforms. We’re not seeing that almost complete substitution. The owners of these platforms are not community-minded. /18

The entire civilisation now captured by a handful of billionaires, weaponising and monetising every personal and social and professional and political transaction. How, as social animals, were we stupid enough to allow sociality itself to be captured like this? /19

Because as social animals, it’s an addiction. To ‘connect’, to do the imitative comparison with others. The platform owners know this. We can’t look away or stop scrolling. /end