4.2 We get to be Second Revolutionaries
Our First Great Moral Revolution brought with it so many benefits for our ancestors that it makes sense for us to sing its praises. Egalitarianism was so much better than our might–makes–right way of life. It was so much more nurturing and loving.
But these newly developed survival groups of ours had…
A fatal flaw.
Which was…
Tribal fundamentalism.
This feature of our operating system is both the hero of the human story and the villain. It’s proven to be….
Our blessing and our curse.
Our First Revolution, despite its successes, did not solve our boundary issue because egalitarianism and cooperation, these two major advances…
Stopped at the tribal boundary.
And now here we are in our current era, and we’re desperately in need of another radical transformation in human togetherness, which we could call…
Our Second Great Moral Revolution.
Which means…
Transforming our tribal past into a trans-tribal future.
As a species, we need to transition from tribal allegiance to a global network of deeply nurturing, vigorously inclusive personal love…
Love that would not turn to hate at the tribal borders.
Love that would be so powerful it would remain love when it crossed a border.
Our best chance to save ourselves is to come together and launch this Second Great Moral Revolution, giving it everything we’ve got. All of us. Or at least a serious majority of us.
So it turns out that…
Upgrading love is the prerequisite for saving ourselves.
It’s not just something nice to do along the way. It’s the one thing above all others that could give us a future.
But the hope of salvation is too good to be true because…
This Second Revolution is so much harder than the First.
The challenge it entails is a different order of magnitude.
Why?
In the First Revolution, the great majority of people had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Alphas of course likely were in opposition at first. But I think even they were better off with the change.
Under the old system, alphas lived under constant stress, not the stress of their underlings, but their own particular alpha–stress.
They had to stay vigilant. They had to respond to probing tests from those wanting to take their place. So while they got benefits from being on top, eventually they would get taken down. Aging alphas especially would do much better in a community where everybody took care of each other.
So opposition to the change would be much less than the opposition we now have to a Second Revolution. The top people in our modern hierarchical society see no benefit at all in a transformation of society.
In fact, they see any signs of a Second Revolution as a threat. And these top people have tremendous wealth and power that they use aggressively to defend the status quo of profound inequality which they believe serves them so well.
In the First Revolution, people were learning how to do super–cooperation with…
Members of their own tribe.
But in the Second Revolution…
We’re asking people to cooperate with outsiders.
And this is so much harder, because historically we’ve automatically seen outsiders as an existential threat. We’ve seen them as the enemy.
Another way to say this is to say that we’re asking people…
To include not exclude.
And what could be scarier than to attempt to make survival partnerships with our “enemies”?
Then there’s this problem. Those of us who want to bring about the Second Revolution, are working to turn our species into one coherent global community. One big tribe. Where tribal boundaries had disappeared because there are no other tribes to battle with.
But the problem is that even if we are successful at bringing lots of people together, there will still be a tribal boundary, because there will still be at least two tribes….
The tribe of inclusion and the tribe of exclusion.
And the excluders, the people holding on to tribal fundamentalism for dear life, will likely be the much larger tribe, no matter how hard we includers work to win people over.
And finally, another problem. Under tribal fundamentalism we get to externalize anything we don’t like about humanness. Thus…
We in our tribe see ourselves as exceptional.
We’re the best, others are the worst. Anything we don’t like about ourselves, we simply disown and project it on other tribes. This is basic human psychology.
But now, with a deep understanding of the human operating system, we are able, if we want to, to see that inside each of us is the total human genome which carries both human good and human evil. And once we see this, the tribal projection no longer works.
And then we have to admit we’re all human. And what matters then is what we do with the good in us and how we deal with the evil in us. Which will take serious personal work by each one of us.
Add up these hard things and you can see that asking humanity to join in the Second Revolution is a big ask. Very, very big. In fact, I think it’s…
Too big an ask.
Individuals can go for it, but we as a species won’t. Our genome will be too great a drag.
But maybe we can set this as our goal…
To at least take the first step into the Second Great Moral Revolution.
And when we do, we get to identify ourselves as …
Second revolutionaries.
We humans do not have to be tribal robots. The twist of grace allows us to make moral decisions in opposition to the OS that evolution gave us.
Throughout history tribes have made alliances with other tribes, which shows us that even people who were dedicated tribal fundamentalists could still make strategic decisions about shaping togetherness.
Living a trans–tribal life is daunting. I notice that I’m clumsy at it and limited in my efforts even when I’m giving it my best effort. And even though I’m getting better, I’m improving so much more slowly than I would like.
But here’s what I think matters most…
The love I have in my heart for the Second Revolution is anything but clumsy and limited.
