Henry Madison

Robert Putnam’s ‘The Upswing’ traces the cycling between “I” and “We” in American life over the past century. You can see here how the 4 great catastrophic disruptions of the first half of the 20th century drove the emergence of a collective focus. Of a ‘we’. /1

A superlative and fundamentally important article from Ian, about what a pandemic now means. I’m going to chew on it for a while. My first instinct is to see this new ‘emergency’ definition as just more politics taking over public health.

At even the central estimate, this is more people than died during World War 1. And the deaths keep coming. If you want the champion genociders of our era, look to Covid-minimising politicians and the public health influencers who act as their human shields.

Not only is social media a way to take over politics, it’s the location for our culture’s personal, professional and political transactions. And it’s modelled on high school culture. Likes and followers. It’s the final victory of the transformation of adult life into teen life.

The barons are circling the King. History always repeats the same patterns. open.substack.com/pub/billkingpi…

I’ve noticed a subjective impact of continuing to mask is that it gives you an inscrutability with others, all they have is your eyes to go on. Which they don’t like, although it also gives you some power of attraction in more intimate contexts, with some. It empowers the eyes.

It feels good to have a baddie. Unfortunately capitalism isn’t real, nor are any of the other -isms. Socieities run on status alone, they’re never economies. They’re 100% social. And we all play the same status games. Because status = identity, for social animals.

Bureaucracy is the only democracy. Everything else is just status games.

Thinking about the dispersal of what was once a fairly large, committed anti-Covid community on social media. Some of it still going, but not what it was. Change doesn’t come from activism. The inertia of the status quo is far too enormous.

The countercultural movement of the 1960s took credit for a lot of changes that were actually the result of a pulverised status quo, from the catastrophes of the first half of the 20th century. library.gov.au/learn/digital-…

The counterculture we live in commemorates every passing rock star, as it is already with Ozzy today. Meanwhile it gives the ‘establishment’ a kicking here, every day. Same culture, 70 years and still going strong. Teen culture.