"At different times in the past both the Left and the Right have stood for group-transcending values. Neither does today." #QotD

"Today what seems to matter first and above all else is loyalty to one’s political tribe and its leaders, not the facts about an issue, not the truth on any given controversy, not the right policy to adopt — all of these are pushed to the background...
    "In her book 'Political Tribes,' the legal scholar Amy Chua summarises our current state this way: 'At different times in the past both the ... Left and the ... Right have stood for group-transcending values. Neither does today.'...
    "Take a look at societies where tribalism is deeply enmeshed in the culture. Look at the unending tribal conflicts of the Balkans; the hundreds of thousands of corpses that piled up during the eruption of tribal conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda; the sectarian wars that pervade the Middle East. Our tribal future promises to be dark, brutal, violent.
    "How can we counteract the trend of intensifying tribalism? We need first to understand its nature and source... We need an analysis that pinpoints its essential nature. To that end, I will show that we have much to gain from Ayn Rand’s philosophic analysis of tribalism... Rand points us toward the essentially anti-intellectual nature of tribalism. She observed:

"'Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live? Obviously, they will seek to join a group — any group — which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group — they will be pulled obediently to join a group...
    "'There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred — brute, blind, virulent hatred — than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes ... no communication, no understanding, no persuasion is possible among them, only mutual fear, suspicion and hatred.' ...

    “'Ethnic' tribalism was, and remains, a common form of a wider phenomenon. For Rand, the term “tribalism” encompasses a range of manifestations that share a common root. These included racism, “ethnic identity,” xenophobia, caste systems, guild socialism, gang culture. (To that list we might add today’s assorted gender-based tribes.) What’s in common to such tribes is a distinctive, anti-intellectual mindset...
    "The spread of tribalism, Rand observed, 'is an enormously anti-intellectual evil.' There’s no bargaining with tribalism, no accommodation, no compromise to be found with it. Tribalism can, and must, be marginalised and eliminated.
    "The antidote for tribalism — the positive to aim at — is the ideal of individualism ... For Rand, that path is open to every single one of us, if we choose it. We can seize the reins of our minds and look at the world ourselves, drawing our own conclusions and making our own evaluations... [O]n Rand’s account, it is this fundamental orientation to reality, rather than some collective, that inoculates the individual from the virulent pull of tribalism."
          ~ Elan Journo, from his article 'The Virulent Pull of Tribalism'
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