My ‘Tribe’ Abandoned Me in Covid – But I Gained a New One That Loves Freedom
Human societies naturally divide into groups or tribes. Human tribes rely on a shared pride of belonging and a sense of otherness toward non-members. This provides their members with a cause or meaning, such as jointly building a better life, and a feeling of superiority or victimhood based on comparison with, denigration of and exclusion of outsiders. A sense of shared superiority or victimhood builds comradeship, which most humans naturally seek.
Superiority, victimhood, and the denigration of others seem intertwined in modern society, and probably always were. They rely on prejudice. Prejudice that ‘our’ side is morally superior to those others, who in turn are best described as stupid and prejudiced themselves against what we hold to be right. Their position in the hierarchy of power does not matter so much as their otherness – they can be our servants or our enslavers, but they are morally inferior.
We express their moral inferiority in terms like racist, something-phobic, something-denier, anti-something, far-something, or ’extremist’. The extremist is someone who disagrees with a rational, correct position held by our tribe. It is, of course, hard to see the splinter in your own eye when the logs in those of others seem so blindingly obvious.
Early in the Covid outbreak, it became increasingly apparent that my tribe, a moderate, compassionate grouping somewhat ‘Left-of-centre’ and always ready to proclaim support for human rights and equality, had a problem with fascism. It was not that it disliked fascism, though its members proclaimed loudly that they did; rather they seemed disconcertingly comfortable in encompassing it.
Being wealthy, college-educated and more progressive than others, they were very clear that marching up and down in jackboots was a bad look. This for them was fascism, and they had seen the black and white newsreels and the raised fists that proved it. But beyond that, it rapidly became clear that they could not actually distinguish fascism from a vase of roses. They saw something commendable in keeping in check those unable to embrace their superior point of view, considering the exclusion of dissenting views a virtue. Best that I explain.
When People Face a Trial
A bunch of wealthy corporate authoritarians and the politicians who had dinners with them decreed that emergency rule was the preferred form of governance. All my progressive friends fell in line. The ‘greater good’ was a cause worth fighting for, and progressivism meant siding with the corporate masters who were, obviously, working for the same. Freedom was a luxury in a ‘global pandemic’ and only deplorables and the ‘far-Right’ believed in ‘freedumb’ now. There was, after all, a global emergency to deal with, and wiser people could see this.
Becoming an outcast of a tribe is not fun, especially when you are then considered to be allied with an enemy, an enemy inferior in morality and intelligence. It was at first depressing watching fellow admirers of Nelson Mandela now admiring home detention on a governor’s orders.
But refuge can be found among fellow refuseniks; a strange collection of those who, mistakenly or not, put truth over compliance – unwilling to comply with stupidity for appearance’s sake. People who would not put on a mask to walk 10 feet from restaurant door to a table, because signalling conformity with authority as a virtue in itself (fascism) was not an acceptable life choice. People who asked questions when those sponsored by a drugmaker told them to be injected. These were people who simply believed that each person had a right to make his own decisions concerning his body and health; bodily autonomy that went beyond correcting a misfortune to include suffering for the principle.
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