The Cannibal Left (Food Poisoning for Thought Reprint)

(*Reprinted from Food Poisoning for Thought as part my ongoing process to unify my web presence.*)

Why we're inherently tribal and exclusionary

I loved Mad Max: Fury Road. It is almost certainly my favorite film of the year. It includes a strong depiction of sexism and religion gone mad, and also provides strong female characters acting against the sexism and characters questioning the religious dogma forced upon them. The film also succeeds as a relentless breathless action movie.

But according to some on the so-called progressive left, this doesn't make the film feminist. According to one commentary that I read, the fact that the former 'wives' of the villain are impractically thin and willowy despite being ostensibly meant as breeding stock, and the fact that they are clad in objectifying clothing means that the film cannot be sexist. This despite the fact that the film explicitly deconstructs the acceptability of the assumptions that would lead to the design decisions in a lesser film and that the film pretty explicitly points out that the film's villains are not as smart as they like to think they are- and thus would likely pick brides based on superficial standards that would appeal to a sexist overlord. According to other critiques I have read, the movie cannot be feminist because it endorses violence as an acceptable means of solving problems. Apparently, this line of thinking conflates gender equality with pacifism by directly linking violence with masculinity and non-violence with femininity. If find this analysis to be sexist in its underpinnings, but that is not my point.

My target here is a left wing progressive subject, but I could just as easily pick a right wing hot button topic and do the same thing, with groups factionalizing into little balkanized tribes over what they appropriate response is. The right, at least, has a counter term to try and suppress this phenomenon in their conception of 'Big Tent Republicanism'.

But the observation remains the same, we have trouble dealing with allies who have slightly different views from our own. Christians have warred with each other arguably as much as they have warred with the 'infidels'. Both the left and the right are infamous for their intragroup squabbles. What constitutes a proper member of every group is subject to constant reassessment. And I have a hypothesis regarding why that this. My hypothesis involves the law of 150, and out tribal roots of our current neurological limits.

Our brains are hardwired to relate to small groups, we exclude outsiders as a normal course of doing business because our brains aren't wired to know that many people well enough. The world as modern humans experience it has expanded and extended due to the reach of technology. No longer are our small groups limited to the people in our physical and biological tribe. We can pick and choose from amongst a multitude. But, our neurological limitations remain the same. And so, we get pickier about who is part of our in group. We exclude people more rigidly based on their ideological conflicts with our own ideas.