Rachel Lu: What Brexit Says About The New Tribalism
I think this is pretty good.
I have no sympathy for tribalism whatsoever...I've just become very concerned about the ways in which liberal (or "progressive") cosmopolitanism is manifesting itself.
Of course in the states we're seeing some extreme insanity from the left...and that's probably tinting my view of everything right now.
I have no sympathy for tribalism whatsoever...I've just become very concerned about the ways in which liberal (or "progressive") cosmopolitanism is manifesting itself.
Of course in the states we're seeing some extreme insanity from the left...and that's probably tinting my view of everything right now.
posted by Winston Smith at
3:11 PM
2 Comments:
I actually thought it was pretty bad.
I mean, she starts off talking about how those big totalitarian progressives with their oppressive ideals of world governance just aren't gonna be tolerated by plain folks anymore. People want to govern themselves, damn it!
And then she wanders along a loosely structured monologue about some kind of theory of the concept of "tribes"..
And then at the end she argues that we should all cherish our differences but live by the unifying commandment to tolerate one another.
...
See, this is stupid. Acting as though world governance must always oppose or somehow inappropriately constrain local governance is a severe problem, in my estimation. She demonstrates the problem very clearly by basically starting with a critique of cosmopolitanism, rambling about the virtues of tribes, and then remarking that we all need to be governed by some overarching precepts.
The problem is that our attempts at large-scale governance are continually infiltrated by micromanaging asshats. We can't let this dissuade us from the pursuit of what we will all fundamentally admit is an obvious need for unity on a large scale.
Reason binds us all, and there are liberal ideals which are good for mankind. Period. We need large scale governing forces which do nothing more than enforce these high level principles. Of course, determining and enumerating them is difficult, but the answer is not:
"I REJECT YOUR COSMOPOLITANISM FOR MY TRIBAL WAAAAYS!!!! YOU'LL NEVER IMPOSE YOUR BIG GLOBAL AGENDA ON MEEE!!!
Oh..also...everyone play nice."
Is this not fundamentally contradicting? We need a large scale governing body to ensure everyone plays nice. It's hard, but that doesn't mean the answer is not to do it.
P.S. I don't have an opinion on the alignment of the EU with this sort of large scale governance, I'm just sad to see abandonment of what could one day be that large scale governance in favor of none at all.
I'm against all the tribalism stuff...in fact, anti-tribalism is something I'd identify as one of my main motivating principles.
And it's that that's largely driven my long-standing cosmopolitanism.
However, now I'm swinging in the direction of more localized control...especially as the left seems to be moving toward misusing the power of highest-level institutions in the service of thought-control. I'm suddenly thinking that it might be better to have smaller political units in which people can actually have some hope of exercising political influence...and also having some kind of choice among different political entities.
I certainly wouldn't want the U.S. joining an EU-type entity.
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