In defence of tribalism
Voltaire famously said that “anyone who tries to use the Enlightenment in an argument most likely has no clue what the Enlightenment was.”
He didn’t actually say that, but given a million other media commentators get to totally misappropriate this period of history to suit their argument, let’s pretend he did.
One of the most curious trends in modern politics is the treatment of ‘tribalism’ and ‘incivility’ as moral evils. Anyone who has the temerity to show a shred of conviction in their values and principles — usually a young person like me — is met with tut-tuts and disapproving shakes of the finger from journalists and politicians. “Can’t we just have a civil debate!”, they say. “Let reason light the way!” “Something, something, something, the Enlightenment!”
If any of them actually cared to study the Enlightenment, they’d quickly realise it wasn’t a golden age of tolerance and civility. The murderous ‘Reign of Terror’ of the French Revolution was as a much feature of this period as the treatises of Voltaire and Kant. It was certainly an age of academic titans, but these titans ruled over their intellectual inferiors with acerbic wit and savage invective. Reason was supreme, but so too were biting polemics.
In debates about climate change and bushfires last year, politicians Adam Bandt and Jordan Steele-John were widely criticised for their inflammatory comments linking inaction on climate change to “arson”, but ironically it was these two who best captured the spirit of the Enlightenment. Emboldened by the weight of scientific evidence on their side, they prosecuted their case with passion and verve. Confrontational language was necessary to jolt stagnant discourse.
Pleas for civility and restraint are always vaguely nostalgic, expressing a desire to return to some ideal past where debate was gentle, and political ideology dispassionate. This past, of course, is imagined; politics has always been fiery, right back to democratic Athens and republican Rome, and now in the liberal West.
But these tired refrains from the civility police are not only hopelessly ahistorical. They are the tepid, patronising equivocations of an elite class that is thoroughly out of touch with the urgency of the issues facing our planet.
Carbon levels have already exceeded 400 parts per million, the threshold widely held by the scientists as the point of no return for global warming. Feedback loops — the relentless propagation mechanism of climate change — are already beginning. Rising sea levels are already causing mass inland migration in low-lying countries like Bangladesh.
Passion and conviction in the face of this unfolding disaster is not some irrational evil that tut-tutting journalists should admonish us for. The issues facing young people like me are not abstract intellectual exercises — whimsical thought experiments that are fun to explore with friends at a dinner party. They are issues of vital importance, on which the future of our planet depends.
And you know what? When one side has a coalition of experts voicing concrete scientific facts, and the other side has Barnaby Joyce hissing pagan hexes at Greenies, it’s alright to pick a side, and stick with it. I reckon Voltaire would.
And the chorus of the sensible centrists will reply ‘well sure, but why we can’t be nice about it!’, to which we young people will reply — why should we?
Because tribalism, when it comes at the expense of facts and evidence, may be a problem, but that’s not what’s happening here. The facts that underpin political debates have already been established; the climate crisis is worsening; the gap between rich and poor is widening; housing is becoming less affordable.
The anger of young activists isn’t clouding reason. It’s a reaction against a political system that is wilfully ignoring reason. What would custodians of civility have us say to the politicians who have knowingly chanced our future? “Ah yes, although I myself object to you dooming me to a future with economic insecurity, crippling droughts, and devastating floods and bushfires, I respect your good intentions! Good on you!”
Thanks very much for your concern, but I’m not sure I will be civil and respectful. I, and many other young people, will fight for justice with every tool we have — anger, passion, sarcasm and the occasional insult. We’ll do it through debate, sure, but if you expect that debate to be timid, dispassionate and civil, you’ve got another thing coming for you.
As Immanuel Kant once quipped, ‘shake your finger and tut-tut at us all you like.’ Actually that was me, but the point still stands. We’ve got reason, justice and an accurate reading of the Enlightenment on our side.
We don’t need to be nice.
