Tribal Antics and Sappy Humanist Scolding

Who’s more realistic, those who are immersed in social games or the marginalized who adopt a radical perspective?

Cropped photo by Juliana Stein, on Pexels

To a polarized, tribal society like the United States or some other hotbed of social-media experimentation, humanism must sound like airy-fairy, kumbaya blather.

What we polarized folks care about most is purifying our egoism, discovering our most authentic niche, and demonizing all outsiders. Once you’ve found your echo chamber that flatters your prejudices and swaddles you in mental projections, all foreign perspectives must be alarming challenges to your identity. They must be sinister and wrongheaded for departing from this cultural extension of your personal longings and biases.

And here comes along a self-declared “humanist” who says we should think much more broadly and dismiss nakedly tribal conceptions of propriety. Instead of using social-media customizations to impress our meager stamps on things, we should think of humanity’s plight in the impersonal cosmos. We should contemplate the plight of Everyman and develop a utilitarian sensibility to maximize happiness.

There is no humanity to a tribalist. “Humanity” is an academic abstraction that’s irrelevant to the tribalist’s daily narrow-mindedness and…