Values shape meaning and legitimacy, but history is driven by organised power. Moral language only delivers change when it is backed by institutions, leverage and accountability.

We keep making the same political wager: that if we lean harder into values – morals, civilisation, trust, cooperation – we can drag the world toward the good.

Sometimes we can. But not because moral persuasion is the main engine of history. The world is organised by the power of capital and the power of the state, and increasingly by the tight coupling between them. Capital shapes investment, jobs, prices, and much of the media-made “common sense” about what is possible. The state shapes law, budgets, borders, policing and, crucially, the terms on which legitimacy is granted or withdrawn. Values matter because legitimacy matters. But legitimacy is not the same as power, and it is not nothing either: legitimacy is often the gateway through which power becomes usable and sustainable.

The long-run perspective highlighted by the recent Human TV series sharpens the point. Humans survived because we learned to cooperate beyond kin and small bands, and shared meaning amplified that cooperation – stories, norms, identities, and rules. We are the meaning-making species. That is our superpower, and it is also our danger. The same capacity that produces solidarity and care also produces propaganda, scapegoating, and........

© Pearls and Irritations