If you read the history of Victorian England, the birth of the modern world, what stands out is how much the focus of their massive engineering innovation was one thing.

The health and well-being of the public. Engineers change the world, what happened to us? /1 Interestingly the engineering leviathan of the Victorians had its origins in the Industrial Revolution that preceded Victorian engineering.

That revolution was mostly about making industrialists rich. That’s much more like us today. But they didn’t win. /2

Soon after the farce of let it rip got underway in workplaces, for Covid, the EAPs were thrust in everybody’s faces daily. Outright abuse of people, mandatory infection, with the inevitable trauma to them re-framed as an issue with their mental health. /1 Similarly while public health measures were in place earlier in the pandemic, some workplaces (such as mine) ran ‘resilience’ workshops, to make sure all of our ‘mental health’ was OK. I actually said to the HR person who invited me to go, ‘are you kidding?’ /2

An important topic. David talks about how ‘we’ are playing with fire, with tipping points. This is where, as with Covid, we need insight into how and why humans think and behave. Which is a social question, not a physical science question. /1

https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1823071176765407482

You see this all through Covid. This space and others flooded daily with scientific data and concepts, to explain the pandemic.

But all pandemics are social phenomena. Because humans are the hosts, and how they behave determines how a pathogen spreads. /2

A couple of months ago I shared the experience of my elderly mother here, who was admitted to hosptal with serious heart and lung issues. She contarcted Covid while there.

What happened next. /1 I wrote to the Health Care Complaints Commission about the incident, because there were no infection control procedures in place in the hospital, for a very high risk patient.

They flick-passed it to NSW Health. But more specifically, to the LHD. /2

We’re still expected to believe that spending a few months at home a few years ago so damaged our acquired immunity that the whole population is now under continuous assault from a range of infectious diseases.

I feel the worm is turning. /1 I’m the only person masking at my work, and have been that only person for a couple of years now. This winter for the first time multiple people have said to me ‘you know I think that mask of yours might be a good idea.’

People are SO sick. And so *repeatedly* sick. /2

Like many I enjoy coming here to discover new things, including the science of infectious disease.

But if we want things to change, we have to move away from the idea that facts or information run societies. We have to understand how societies work. /1 Not going to re-hash the basic mechanisms again here (have done a lot of threads on that). But the most difficult point I think for people to grasp is that societies simply don’t gradually improve anything.

Only massive disruption brings significant change. /2

Public health action was shut down through a deliberate campaign of highly organised hysteria. ‘Grave concerns’.

By the same people who call hysteria every attempt to do the opposite.

A few notes about the use of hysteria. /1 The extremely fast and effective attempts to shut down all public health action for Covid should have led those rightly appalled by it to think about strategy.

Because those who do it talk out both sides of their mouths. Hysteria on their part, about public health measures. /2

True adult life is the gradual weaning of yourself away from the social ties of friends and even family, and towards pursuing where knowledge says we need to go.

The two cannot exist comfortably side-by-side. Knowledge will always betray social relations, eventually. /1 That doesn’t mean be a hermit. It does mean sociality is a stage that you’re supposed to try to move beyond. And that’s life’s toughest challenge.

It’s easy to see this challenge when it’s the ‘enemies’ on opposing teams. It’s much tougher when it’s those closest to you. /2

At both ends of the lifespan now humans are put into ‘care’. Child care and aged care. Societies are social, what does this mean?

This grandmother calls looking after children ‘abject drudgery’. There’s more to see here. /1

smh.com.au/lifestyle/life… Also in today’s Herald, a piece on the continuing free fall of birth rates. People ‘can’t afford’ to have children, the cost of living is too high.

I want to draw these themes together, as a window into what we are now, socially. /2

smh.com.au/national/nsw/s…

Because America is violent. America is violent because the default state of all societies is violence. Only collective regulation reduces violence.

America hates regulation. Thus it’s violent. And it’s exporting the business model, via social media. /1

smh.com.au/world/north-am…
Not as ‘content’, on social media. Not mis- or disinformation. But by exporting a technology to transact personal and social lives independently of collective regulation.

That’s what social media is. It’s built into the design, explicitly. It’s a libertarian attack weapon. /2

The mythology (the ‘bait’ in its bait-and-switch) of social media, is that it’s like the world’s conversation. Everybody talking to everybody else.

Except it isn’t. The same hierarchical structure shapes those conversations as exist off social media. /1

searchenginejournal.com/top-social-med…
All that social media does is replace existing social status hierarchies off the platforms, with new ones on the platforms.

Often the hierarchies off the platforms simply use the platforms to reproduce their dominance. But over time that fails. /2

I’m fascinated by us, as a culture. Nothing is more invisible to you, than your own culture. It just seems like the natural order of things.

Here’s why I think our culture doesn’t understand Covid. And throw in climate change too. /1 There are two critical things that we are, as a society. (Speaking as a rich Western country.)

1) Post colonialists (where we are the colonisers), and
2) post-war.

War being both WW1 and WW2. /2

If you believe the mythology of elections, entire populations swing from being free market fanatics, to Big State socialists, in only a handful of years. And then back again, ad infinitum.

Nonsense, of course. There’s a much simpler explanation. /1 Elections are performative theatre. A platform for existing social groups to pursue status. But even that’s misleading.

Because the existing social status quo at any time is never going to willingly give an opportunity for others to replace them. /2

The enormity of this decision for democracy everywhere. Not since 1215 have Western rulers been above the law.

These aren’t analogies. This is the literal Return of the King, and the end of democracy. The reversal of the Magna Carta. /1

It’s also the Supreme Court effectively rendering themselves void. The law is now nothing, it has no meaning. It came into being as a check on royal and executive power.

If that power is unlimited, the law is dead. And the courts with it. /2

You’re now most likely to catch Covid at home. From your kids, who catch it at school.

Most of the young can’t even afford a home, and never will.

‘Home’ as an idea is under assault. By ‘the economy’.

The economy is a verb, not a noun. /1 The economy is an activity of dispossession, and displacement. To allow the accumulation, of people and things.

It’s the deliberate destruction not just of actual homes, both for humans and other living things, but of the concept of home. /2

One of the great Covid minimising tropes was how ‘lonely’ people get if they’re not allowed to mix socially. Our culture is always in plain sight. Sociality is our default.

Being alone is the reality of all life. Even when being social. There is no group mind. /1 We love occasions like this, and why not. They are lovely, and fun. But they’re not our true default.

As Proust analysed in his great novel, social behaviour in situations like this is all about emitting ‘signs’. Imitating and negotiating. /2

That situation where you’re in a group, and somebody offers you a swig out of the same drink. And you don’t really like the idea of getting half a mouthful of their spit, but it would violate the group dynamic not to.

Sociality dissolves perception of risk. 1/4 The reason humans invented public health was because we recognised that our most fundamental behaviour, our social DNA, is a pathogen’s best friend.

Without public health, our sociality would drive us to an infectious-driven extinction. 2/4

You don’t ’speak truth to power’. Power doesn’t care or listen.

You speak truth INTO power.

We already won against Covid. It’s the minimisers who lost.

A message from Puss in Boots. /1 Pretty much all the narratives about doing more against Covid are reactive. They assume a loss, and plead for a win.

But anybody who’s avoiding Covid ALREADY WON. Catching it is no victory at all. /2

One of the weirdest manipulations in the energy debates is the idea of 'baseload power'. The public has been led to believe this means the minimum amount of supply the energy grid needs to be able to supply, 24 hours per day.

That's not what baseload means. 1/6 #auspol Load is demand, not supply. The 'load' on the grid. Baseload power is the minimum amount of *demand* the grid needs, to prevent generators having to shut down clunky coal-fired plants and restart them again.

Here it is, from AEMO. 2/6

We’re dominated by anti-State ‘small government’ politics. The idea that a ‘market’ of competing individuals will always be the efficient way to carry out social transactions.

An ‘economy’, replacing a society. Why this is bananas. /1

abc.net.au/news/2024-06-1…
Not for any ’Leftie’ reason about fairness and equity. Not for a ‘balanced’ reason of ‘harnessing the economy for social good.’

But because we’ve forgotten why WE invented States. Us, the people, as we like to say. And to boot, economies are not even real. /2

It will bewilder and alarm many that Peter Dutton is now the preferred PM, in polling. And that the LNP is neck-and-neck to win the next election.

Modern conservatives understand how people think and behave. And how to win elections. /1

smh.com.au/world/europe/e…
He may not win the next election. But the fact he has no policies and a track record of divisive attack politics should mean he’s not even in contention.

The fact the world is being incinerated by fossil fuels should make Greens a shoe-in at every election too. /2