The Human Struggle to Overcome Tribalism and Superstition

Posted on Tuesday 2 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Revisiting Steven Pinker, and how the human race has struggled to escape tribalism and superstition (and violence) by way of progressive policies that conservatives to this day still resist;
  • Adam Lee on the continued secularization of American society;
  • How Christianity is struggling with empathy;
  • And how Trump demonizes anyone he thinks is not compatible with his idea of “Western Civilization”;
  • And how loyalty trumps everything else, in the matter of Pete Hegseth.
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This week I’m revisiting Steven Pinker’s 2011 book THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURES, in part to catch up posting here notes on substantial books I’ve but not yet posted about, and in part to revisit one of the central books that has formed my worldview. I go on and on about the spectrum of human nature and the endpoints of conservativism and progressivism. At the extremes, cave-man tribalism, vs. a sort of science-fictional utopianism. The history of the human race has been a struggle to break away from the mentality of ancient humanity and find better goals and meanings for life than stultifying tradition and inter-tribal animus.

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Steven Pinker, THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, post 4

Posted on Tuesday 2 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Why Violence Has Declined”
(Viking, Oct. 2011, xxvii + 802pp, including 106pp of notes, references, and index.)

Here, a full eight years after I began, I’ll finish posting my outline and notes on Steven Pinker’s 2011 book. This is not, I stress again, a dry treatise about rates of violence over the centuries, but rather virtually a history of the human race, considering how the forces that have changed it have brought about a more peaceful and enlightened world. (And his almost-as-substantial follow-up book, ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, 2018, extends this book’s case.)

If there’s a grand theme of the book I can boil down into one sentence, it’s not about violence per se, it’s about how forces we would now call progressive have, throughout history, improved the human condition. And my observation: that these are forces that many conservatives to this day resist.

Posts on this book: This page with quotes at the bottom; Post 1; Post 2; Post 3; Post 4; Post 5; Post 6; Post 7

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The Limitations of Human Cognition

Posted on Monday 1 December 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Anti-Vaxxers and how it’s not about evidence;
  • Paul Krugman on Trump’s incoherent war on drugs;
  • Short takes on how Trump is elevating Sen. Mark Kelly; how Maga’s idea of Christianity implies a “cold-hearted Jesus”; and why a Bible-based essay on psychology was given a failing grade;
  • Connie Willis’ Trump Dementia Watch today.
– – –

Once again, I am thinking that the limits of cognitive ability, combined with the inclinations toward tribalism and intuitive superstition, may cap the progress of the human race.

NY Times, Rachael Bedard, 25 Nov 2025 (but in yesterday’s paper, 30 Nov): I Went to an Anti-Vaccine Conference. Medicine Is in Trouble.

It’s never about debating evidence. It’s about stories and belonging to a tribe. The writer seems to conclude that there’s no way to overcome this. Concluding,
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Because It’s There, and Because We Can

Posted on Sunday 30 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 28 Nov 2025: Ask Ethan: What’s the point of exploring the Universe?, subtitled “There are so many problems, all across planet Earth, that harm and threaten humanity. Why invest in researching the Universe?”

(My first comment, something of an aside: The photo shows the so-called “Pillars of Creation” nebula first photographed in 1995, and more recently by the James Webb Space Telescope in mid-infrared and in near-infrared, left and right, shown here. I’ve always been slightly annoyed by the nomenclature “pillars” because they only way the term can apply is because the photo has been turned to make those nebular extensions seem to go upward. It’s an example of humans imposing our own biases on the universe at large. Even the ‘north’ indicator is arbitrary, since the way we view maps and the globe could just as well been the other way around.)
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Incoherence

Posted on Saturday 29 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Trump presumes to close Venezuelan airspace, as part of his campaign against drug smugglers, while pardoning a former Honduran president sentenced to prison for drug smuggling;
  • About the new Connie Willis Daily website;
  • The global decline in murder;
  • Short takes on COVID vaccine deaths, Hitler Youth reborn, and Trump’s continued innumeracy.
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By what possible authority can Trump say this and expect it to happen? Oh, I forgot, he thinks he’s a king.

NY Times, 29 Nov 2025: Trump Declares Venezuelan Airspace Closed, subtitled “President Trump said days earlier that the United States could ‘very soon’ expand its campaign of killing people at sea suspected of drug trafficking to attacking Venezuelan territory.”

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Thanksgiving

Posted on Friday 28 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Thanksgiving with an Asian family;
  • A Facebook graphic about hospitals and who gets the money;
  • Carl Sagan on Who Speaks for Earth?
  • Recalling quotes by E.O. Wilson and Robert A. Heinlein;
  • Don D’Ammassa on humanity’s death spiral;
  • NYT articles on Russia’s Nazi narrative about Ukraine, and how the UK public thinks immigration is up even as it’s down.
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Another family get-together yesterday evening of course, after cooking and prepping until late afternoon. (Curious thing: the American style I grew up with would hold holiday dinners, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, at mid-afternoon, 2pm or 3pm. The Chinese/Asian extended families of my partners sit down to dinner at 5pm.) And we bought a Christmas tree today.

This year I am thankful that Trump and MAGA have not *quite* destroyed everything that America has been aspiring to for two and half centuries. And I’m grateful that, after two and a half years of intermittent work, my essay for Gary Westfahl has finally been published.

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False Equivalences

Posted on Wednesday 26 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Frank Bruni on people who excuse Trump’s outrageous behavior for the relatively minor sins of the previous administration, unable to tell the difference in magnitude;
  • Briefly noted items about Mark Kelly and Benedict Arnold; NYT on Trump’s fatigue and Trump’s resultant outrage; Republicans getting rid of auto safety features; Trump wants money so he can get into heaven; Liberty Counsel’s boycott list and what it means; how Trump is what the founders were fighting against; and how new US rules subvert the idea of human rights.
– – –

This is about motivated thinking, whataboutism, projection, and insensitivity to scale (i.e. black-and-white-ism). About seeing the speck in your brother’s eye…

NY Times, opinion by Frank Bruni, 24 Nov 2025: The Outrageous False Equivalences That Prop Up President Trump (gift link)
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Principles vs. Loyalty

Posted on Tuesday 25 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • More about the ad that advised soldiers they don’t need to carry out illegal orders, with threats against Senator Mark Kelly;
  • The demise of DOGE, which accomplished nothing;
  • Tom Nichols suggests the Sen. Mark Kelly should be secretary of defense;
  • Or maybe, Robert Reich suggests, president;
  • Incompetence: Accidentally invading Mexico, reversing course about swastikas, Trump believing his poll numbers are his highest ever, and cutting pollution standards without considering long-term consequences;
  • Paul Krugman on the demise of DOGE, and how Democrats will have to repair the damage.
– – –

My current top-level thesis: while liberals/progressives are about principles, empathy, and reality, conservatives are about loyalty (at the expense of principles and competency), selfishness, and ideology. It’s easy to find examples every day that support these ideas.

Case in point:

The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait, 25 Nov 2025: Trump and Hegseth’s Hysterical Reaction to an Ad, subtitled “For the president and his minions, loyalty is more important than legality.”

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Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on Monday 24 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • What a no-immigration economy looks like;
  • A profound psychological question: why is RFK Jr. so convinced he’s right?
  • A thought for the day about childhood religion;
  • Briefly noted items about an administration of liars; how MAGA is tearing apart following Charlie Kirk’s death; the Christian lies behind Alabama’s voucher program; more about the demise of DOGE; and about the incompetence of the Trump administration.
– – –

NY Times, guest essay by Wendy Edelberg, 23 Nov 2025: We’re Seeing What a No-Immigration Economy Looks Like [gift link]
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Getting the Joke

Posted on Sunday 23 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Family in town this weekend, a pre-Thanksgiving get-together to avoid busier plans next weekend. Michael and Honey and baby here; trips to Alameda and Foster City and Berkeley; I put 100 miles on my car in three days, driving back and forth across the bay. I am grateful for being part of an extended family, on my partner’s side.

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Mostly long-form pieces today. Saving fringe bits for tomorrow.

  • Peter Wehner on the intellectual and moral decline of the American right;
  • Joshua Rothman on whether MAGA has any ideas, and my two big problems with the book he discusses (about “Great Books” and the source of morality);
  • How Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t get the “joke” — that all of DC’s “talk of ideas and principles was flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the public’s expense”;
  • Contrasting Trump’s posts with what “treason” and “sedition” actually mean;
  • Why Trump got along so well with Mamdani;
  • Tom Nichols on Trump’s recent outbursts;
  • Short items about how “MAGA” is being replaced by “America First”; how Musk and DOGE have withdrawn and left only wreckage, and no documented savings in their wake; and how Trump eliminates bad news by deleting it.
  • And, listening again to Beck.
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The big picture: as I said last time, the political ideals of the Enlightenment, such as those in the US Constitution, may forever remain aspirational, always undermined by rank tribalism and greed.

*

The Atlantic, Peter Wehner, 22 Nov 2025: The Intellectual and Moral Decline of the American Right, subtitled “The conservative backlash against Nick Fuentes has yet to challenge the president who had him over for dinner.”

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