A few years ago I shifted most of my posting here to target one thing. Status. Status is the root cause of…

A few years ago I shifted most of my posting here to target one thing. Status. Status is the root cause of all human thought, feeling and behaviour. Without understanding status, you understand nothing about human life. It’s also the core message of Christmas. /1 https://t.co/fqUXedPj3k

A magnificent Fra Angelico here capturing that core message. Humans battle for status, in groups or teams. Via imitative rivalry. When that rivalry becomes too intense, a mechanism appears to short-circuit it. A scapegoat is found to assume guilt for the rivalry. /2 https://t.co/ZSWHUPY4S0

Look at any contentious news event, and you will see this same mechanism. The Bondi shooting for example, the fight to establish a scapegoat is intense. To find somebody or something to blame. Albo, or antisemitism, or whatever. The event is used to further status games. /3 https://t.co/28rSSuXVK1

Christmas celebrates Christ’s response to this status mechanism. To assume that scapegoat role, to remove it from mortal human life. Crucify me, stop scapegoating each other. End the status games. /4 https://t.co/dL0Lqoci0h

Much of the existence of Western civilisation is the success of that re-routing of status games. To make the transcendent mortal, to assume the blame game and vacuum it out of human existence. To provide an arbiter to human rivalries, that transcended those rivalries. /5 https://t.co/0hS0vtGpje

That institutionalised ‘turning the other cheek’. That immiserated vengeance. Not only can’t you win status battles when the tip of the status hierarchy is a transcendent but mortal God. You can’t even begin the game. /6 https://t.co/MUK8tUch5a

Kings achieve a similar thing, codify all status inside an aristocratic hierarchy, to suppress widespread violent status rivalries flooding all of human life. But they’re mortal, despite their attempts to be divine. They sort of work, but never permanently. /7

At Christmas I remember, without being a practising Christian, what Christianity’s innovation was. At a time when our lives are again uncontrolled status games. If you don’t control status, it will destroy you. The violence and blood will never cease. /8 https://t.co/yROnKJJpJL

Status infects every tiny aspect of being human. You have to learn to recognise it in all its forms. It will make you no friends to root it out. Friendship and all human life relies upon it. /end