To my middling shame, I enjoy baiting strangers on the internet. I know it isn’t good for me, it’s bad for the country, but I rationalize that at least I abstain from smoking. My innards get happy when I ensnare the guilty in a trolling trap.
My extensive trolling experience has taught me that blue-light blocking screens really do help going to sleep, but that’s not important right now. I’ve also learned that nothing angers a true believer like attacking his idol. Whether the idol is Hugo Chavez, Barack Obama, or Donald Trump, disparaging the idol rarely fails to anger. That’s the tribal mind at work.
During most of human existence, our ancestors lived in bands (colloquially ‘tribes’), of a few hundred people. Everybody knew everyone else. Those bands were usually lead by a socially adept middle-aged man, who had to fend off rivals to stay on top of the societal pole. The egalitarianism imagined by early anthropologists is a myth.
Survival of the band depended, in large part, in unity against external threats. Everyone had to support the leader against outsiders. Loyalty to the leader was loyalty to the band.
Venezuelan society today consists of about 20 million people. American society is much larger—about 330 million people. But our minds are still tribal. It makes no logical sense to be upset when somebody disrespects a leader who wouldn’t know you from pigeon droppings. Yet, anger often follows disrespect, because we human beings are not logical. Disrespecting the leader is akin to betraying the cause.
This tendency to follow a charismatic man is pre-programed in our minds. It is part of the “software” of the species. I expect future of political mass movements to continue to be lead by men, for this reason among others. Feminists say that “the future is female”. In the political arena, I very much doubt that.
