Tribalism Rising: a return to Barbarism?
At the heart of Western Culture is the Logos;
A burning desire to understand the Chaotic world we inhabit;
To articulate the truth and in doing so, become the Ordering force of the world.
More than any other culture the West has pursued forthrightly the task of uncovering the Truth of the world of being, we came to understand that without Truth, Chaos reigns supreme.
However, anyone paying attention to current affairs can see the West no-longer lives up to this Tradition, so what’s changed?
A lot! We have become divided along a core presupposition of Western Civilization, this is the beating heart of the Culture Wars themselves: Individualism or Collectivism, which truth do we adhere to?
Collectivism organically leads to segregation, alienation, and the with us or against us mentality. Take Identity politics for example, where political positions are based on the interests and perspectives of social groups with which people identify. Sounds good right? However, this concept isn’t new, and it isn’t without cost, it lead to an estimated 100 million deaths over the 20th century, for the Communists employed identity politics as justification. What crime did the dead commit according to the Identitarian Communists?
Being born the wrong class, race, faith, anything that deviated from the collective, painting a target on your chest, the dreaded ‘other’. If your not one of us, what does that make you? An enemy of the people. What do we do our enemies? defeat them, make them pay. That’s the flaw, that’s Collectivism, no matter how righteous the Collective appears, no matter how great its achievements seem, it still sees everyone else as Barbarians. Not to be trusted, not to be associated with, only feared and done away with given the chance.
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
As an individual, I believe Western Culture to be the pinnacle of Civilization and I’m unwilling to let it go quietly into the night. The Culture War is a war over the fate of the West and I play to win. That’s the difference between the individual and collective. Because I am not beholden to Tribal polarization and can think what I will, I will rise and fall off the merit of my own character, my own opinions and the fruits of my own labours. That’s the beauty my actions my consequence, not my family, not my community, just me I bear the burden of my own actions and no one else.
I can’t sell you individualism, for its roots go down deep to the core of what is to be Western, and frankly, I’m currently not that smart. Instead, I will leave it to a professional — Dr. Jordan Peterson to articulate what being on the side of the individual means…
Will you become the Hero our civilization needs?
Do you believe the West has had its day?
Let me know in the comments below, and tell me what you think.
