4.3 Trans-tribal politics
Over the past three millennia of recorded history, human politics in mass society has been a tale of rulers exploiting the people they ruled. We have many names for this—dictatorship, despotism, demagoguery, oligarchy, tyranny—but the result is always the same…
Mass suffering accompanied by mass despair.
Back in prehistory, within our small bands, during the heyday of human cooperation…
Our politics was about mutual benefit.
It nurtured us and sustained us.
In those days, politics wasn’t an occasional pastime. We didn’t just engage during an election—there were no elections. We didn’t have just a few representatives managing society on our behalf—everyone contributed to the welfare of the group all day every day…
We took care of our community so it could take care of us.
We live in a different time now, but still politics matters, because still it’s…
How we do our collective moral decision-making.
It’s…
How we decide to take care of each other. Or not.
It’s how we decide to work together. Or not.
It’s how we decide to save ourselves. Or not.
Human politics spans the range from nurturing to exploitive to brutal. But we need our politics to work for us, because…
If we fail at our collective decision-making, our species will fail.
And we are failing, and how could we not be failing, given that…
Most people hate politics, hold it in contempt, and don’t want anything to do with it.
What we need of course is exactly the opposite. We need a…
Politics we can love.
But look at how very far we are from that.
So what guidance does the upgrade mission have for us? If we want to be Second Revolutionaries, what exactly do we do? Specifically what do we do politically?
First…
We need our politics to be genomic.
Which means doing our political work…
At the level of the human operating system.
We need to understand the human psyche and human motivation at the very deepest levels. And take our treacherous OS into account every time we design a political strategy or campaign or action.
Second…
We need our politics to be trans-tribal.
Because divisive, tribal–based politics can’t cure the tribal fundamentalism that’s killing us.
Third…
We need to base our politics on the morality of mutual nurturance and mutual advocacy.
Where mutual means trans–tribal. Where it means reaching across the tribal and social divisions that keep our species fractured into adversaries.
Fourth…
We need to call on our ability to make alliances.
Even though we’re a fundamentally tribal species, throughout our history tribes have made alliances with each other whenever there was mutual benefit. And maybe these alliances were mostly temporary, but we did develop the ability to create workable alliances.
And sometimes, when the benefit was long–lasting, the allied tribes merged into a single and permanent larger tribe.
When we look inside a tribe what we see is super–cooperation, which we could describe as…
A sustainable web of alliance.
Weaving all the members of the tribe together.
Sadly, we do not have enough time left to us to be able to succeed at replacing our tribal past with a trans–tribal future. We can’t do more than take the first step into trans–tribal politics…
But we can take that first step.
Which is absolutely part of the project to upgrade human love.
And when you do take that first step and give it your all, there are benefits that come to you. For example…
1. You and your adversaries get to claim a common enemy.
We know that tribal politics sets tribe against tribe. We know it supports tribal fundamentalism, which is killing us.
But the trans–tribal perspective says…
The human genome is our enemy.
And every person on the planet has this enemy in common. When adversaries are able to grasp this truth, they can suddenly…
Find themselves standing on common ground.
And then they have a chance to join together in a common mission…
Working for our species by working against our tribal operating system.
Finding common ground with former adversaries through the genomic perspective, doesn’t mean you have to like those adversaries on a personal level. Maybe you will in fact over time become friends. And maybe you won’t. What matters, though, is that you join together in a common purpose for the good of humankind.
And maybe this sounds like blueberry pie in a fantasy sky. Maybe it sounds like it’s beyond us. And, as I’ve said, as a species it is. But not as individuals.
Whatever results you might or might not get when you invite others to join you in the common ground perspective, at the very least, it seems to me…
It’s good for our souls to make the invitation.
And personally…
I’d much rather hate my operating system than my fellow humans.
2. You get to defend yourself without demonizing others.
Inviting others to common ground does not mean being a nice–guy or compromising or putting yourself in jeopardy. None of that…
You always get to defend yourself.
But you get to dispense with demonizing. Which is a fundamental part of tribal politics.
And…
The minute you demonize others, you become demonic.
Because now it’s okay to do anything to them. There are no limits. You’ve opened the floodgates to righteous violence.
The genomic perspective tells us we’re all just human. And when we take this perspective, and take it seriously, and live by it, we’re taking a stand…
To come together to protect ourselves from the innate evils of humanness.
Engaging in trans–tribal politics is such a good thing for us to do, even though as a species we’re not going to be able to get very far with it. But…
Why not go as far as we can go?
Why not do everything we can…
To take the best possible care of ourselves and each other on our way out?
And thus bring a touch of dignity and honor to our finale?
