2.2 Why it's so much harder for us than for them
Why do we lose?
We work so hard to make a better, kinder world, one that’s nurturing and sustainable. These are such very good things, so why do we lose more often than we win?
Is it because our adversaries are smarter than we are? Or more worthy? That can’t be true. I mean, just look at them. They’re incompetent, immature, delusional people. They’re busy making the world harder and meaner. Their policies and practices are foreclosing the chance of us having a future. So why do they get to win?
The answer is simple. They have one big advantage. The biggest…
They’ve got the human operating system working for them.
They’ve got the full force of human evolution behind them. Even though lots of them don’t believe in evolution. How’s that for irony?
The core of our OS, what’s made us a grand success, what’s given us dominion over the Earth, is tribal fundamentalism.
For tens of millennia, our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in relatively small tribes. Inside the tribe, they practiced a discipline of sweet nurturance, but in dealing with outsiders they turned brutal anytime they felt threatened. This was an us-versus-them way of life…
We love us and we hate them.
It’s still anchored deep in our genome.
But this way of life is failing us now.
Why does it matter that we understand how our OS works? And that we know our evolutionary history. And that we see how the odds are stacked against us.
Because then…
When we’re having failures we won’t internalize them and start thinking of ourselves as being failures.
And because then we can stand proud that despite the losses we suffer, we persevere and keep fighting for what be believe in.
What does all this mean for our politics today? Sometimes I think of the human OS as a juke box. Our adversaries only have to push an ancient button and tens of millions of people respond.
Here are four examples:
1. The fear button.
Our OS is designed to set us against anyone we decide is “other.” This of course is the most familiar and most dangerous of the buttons.
Trump attacks immigrants: They’re taking the jobs of ordinary Americans. They’re sucking up benefits they haven’t earned. They’re foreigners. They’re a threat to our way of life. They’re the enemy, so we should fear them.
And just that easily the button is pushed and a response built into our genome gets triggered and now millions of people feel permission to turn against immigrants…
To hate them and hurt them.
This is not rocket science. Trump doesn’t have to be good at strategic thinking to pull this off. He just pushes that button and unleashes a visceral fear.
He does the same with people of color: They’re taking what should be yours, white people. They’re taking your privileges away from you. They’re an existential threat, so…
You get to hate them and hurt them.
And the same with poor people: They’re living easy lives funded by your tax money, while you work hard for every dollar. They’re not worthy. They’re not like us. So…
You get to hate them and hurt them.
Trump and his minions have become hate-bots. They hate the majority of Americans and how does that make the country great?
Meanwhile it takes effort to go find the information that tells you immigrants are essential to making our economy work, and they pay billions in taxes, and some of them are innovators, creating businesses and whole new fields of endeavor.
It takes effort to open yourself to that information and take it in and live by it.
And, similarly, it takes effort to understand that America would never have become an economic superpower without centuries of contributions by people of color, contributions for which they were not paid anything like what they deserved, or not paid at all.
And it takes serious personal work for white people to understand how badly white privilege is hurting our country, and how white supremacists are actually making things worse, even for themselves.
And it takes serious work to understand that poor people are poor because our economic and political systems are designed to keep them poor in order to benefit the middle class and the wealthy.
Our adversaries don’t have to ask anything of their followers, while…
We have to ask a lot.
So this is not a level playing field.
2. The obedience button.
In our hunter-gatherer era, there wasn’t an individual leader in each tribe who called the shots. The tribe itself was the authority. Authority was collective. And everyone had to obey the ways of the tribe. That was essential to survival.
In our modern era, there are people who decry conformity as a personal failing. But for our ancestors, conforming to the norms of the tribe was a matter of life and death. No one did deep dives into their personal psyches. That wouldn’t have worked. It would have broken the unity of the group. It would have put the survival of the tribe in jeopardy.
The rule was: If you’re not conforming, you’re not with us. And if you’re not with us, you’re against us. And if you’re against us we will turn against you. And we will punish you. And if you still don’t get with the program, we will expel you from the tribe. Which in those days was like a death sentence because you couldn’t survive on your own.
Now, in our time, we see Donald Trump using the obedience button. If you are disloyal even in the smallest way even for just a minute, Trump, in a flash, attacks you and makes you the enemy. And his MAGA followers are with him on this. They embrace mindless obedience. And if you are not a true-red MAGA, totally surrendered to its hate, scary death threats will be issued against you.
3. The conservative button.
In our hunter-gatherer days, if our culture was working, we stayed the course. The rule was…
You don’t change unless you need to change for the sake of survival.
If the environment shifted, maybe getting warmer or colder, then you would adjust. Or if a threatening tribe of strangers started crowding in, taking over territory or resources, you would adjust. But even then you didn’t change the core of your culture. You didn’t change the tribal fundamentalism part. Because that was the key to your survival.
So our ancestors were profoundly conservative. Look at how their way of life stayed so much the same over thousands of generations. Our modern world is filled with innovations like the web, medical technologies, millions of new products, and now AI. But the hard core at the center of our human world is still us-versus-them.
4. The savior button.
When we’re babies, we’re utterly dependent on the adults in our lives, mainly parents. They feed us, clothe us, wash us, wipe us, and keep us alive every day. They save us, literally, from death. They’re our first experience of saviors.
And we can say the same about the relationship of hunter-gatherers to their tribes. The tribe nurtured them and protected them. They were dependent on their tribe for everything they needed. The tribe saved them, literally, from death.
So it’s no wonder that as a species we’re vulnerable to people playing savior. Look at our most popular religion. The Judeo-Christian God proclaims himself to be the Savior of the World.
Look at dictators throughout history. They proclaim themselves to be the Saviors of their nations.
Our adversaries use this ancient dynamic. They proclaim that Trump is the Savior of America, and millions of people are so primed to believe in a savior and so desperate for one that they overlook his incompetence, immorality, and criminality.
But we activists can’t play the savior game. We understand that no single leader or even group of leaders can save us.
To transform our way of life from tribal fundamentalism into trans-tribalism requires tens of millions of people working together toward that goal.
Rewards
Our adversaries know how to push these OS buttons, not just one at a time, but in pairs and triplets and often all at once, making a terrible amplified synergy.
When I see our adversaries prancing around celebrating wins they did not earn and lathering themselves in self-congratulations as they “win” their way into compounding disasters for our country, all I can think is I would not want to trade places with them.
Sure I’d like to win a whole lot more. But I would not want to live their lives.
Because as progressives, when we’re at our best…
We get to be champions of nurturance, instead of servants of hate.
We get to spend our days bringing out the best in humankind, not the worst.
We get to take on the hardest challenges facing our species, and in the process grow and develop and deepen who we are, while our adversaries stagnate.
What I most want our adversaries to understand is that if they’d open to us, even though we hardly have all the answers, we could show them a much better way to live.
I want them to understand how they’d be so much happier…
If they had us for friends instead of enemies.
