Is Muhammad more influential than Jesus?

In the below list of the history’s most influential people Muhammad comes in at number 1 whereas Jesus only makes number 3. Can this be justified? There are 2.1 billion Christians (about a third of the human race) compared to about 1.3 billion Muslims (about a quarter of the human race). So surely Jesus wins? Well, not necessarily. Jesus was the principle prophet of Christianity and Muhammad the principle prophet of Islam. But the primary text of Christianity (the Gospels) were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, whereas the primary text of Islam (the Koran) was written by Muhammad. The primary missionary and proselytiser of Christianity was St. Paul, whereas the primary proselytiser of Islam was Muhammad. Muhammad is also a unique example of a political and military leader who was also a religious leader – he conquered much of the Middle East, and created his own Empire. On the other hand, Jesus let Julius Caesar and Augustus do the dirty work – they created the Roman Empire, and then Christianity took it over, when Constantine converted. So Mohammed is Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Julius Caesar, Augustus and Constantine all rolled into one. This is why he is the most influential human in history. The philosopher Nietzsche defined the Overman or Superman as “the Roman Caesar with the soul of Christ”. I submit that the prophet Mohammed was Nietzsche’s Overman – the prophet Mohammed was the Roman Caesar with the soul of Christ.

(PS: the above picture is of Muhammad Ali, rather than the prophet Muhammad)

The 100 Most Influential People in History

A book has been written, ranking the most influential 100 people in human history. Below are the top 30 most influential people. I have my doubts about the list. Einstein in the top 10? What did Einstein ever do? His so-called theory of so-called relativity makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, if you ask me. And why is Christopher Columbus at number 9? Because he "discovered" America hundreds of years after the Vikings, and thousands of years after the Native Americans? Big deal.

1. Muhammad
2. Isaac Newton
3. Jesus Christ
4. Buddha
5. Confucius
6. St. Paul
7. Ts'ai Lun (inventor of paper)
8. Johann Gutenberg (developed movable type)
9. Christopher Columbus
10. Albert Einstein
11. Louis Pasteur (invented pasteurization)
12. Galileo Galilei
13. Aristotle
14. Euclid
15. Moses
16. Charles Darwin
17. Emporer Qin (unified China)
18. Augustus Caesar
19. Nicolaus Copernicus
20. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (beheaded during the French revolution for being a chemist)
21. Constantine the Great
22. James Watt (developed steam engine)
23. Michael Faraday (discovery of magneto-electricity, boring git)
24. James Clerk Maxwell (discovered the electromagnetic spectrum – who cares?)
25. Martin Luther
26. George Washington
27. Karl Marx
28. The Wright Brothers (inventors of airplane)
29. Genghis Khan
30. Adam Smith

Slavery and Fear of Death

"The man who is not afraid to die will always be your master." - Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher.

A corollary: Fear of death is what enslaves a person, and a person who is not afraid of death cannot be enslaved. Given that death is inevitable, it could be argued that to let one’s life be determined by fear of death is the most irrational thing in the world.

The above painting is “The Death of Seneca” by Rubens. Seneca was accused of treason by the Emperor Nero and was forced to commit suicide.

Other quotes by Seneca:

“Life without the courage for death is slavery”

“He who is brave is free”

“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.”

“Death is the release from all pain and complete cessation, beyond which our suffering will not extend. It will return us to that condition of tranquility, which we had enjoyed before we were born. Should anyone mourn the deceased, then he must also mourn the unborn. Death is neither good nor evil, for good or evil can only be something that actually exists. However, whatever is of itself nothing and which transforms everything else into nothing will not all be able to put us at the mercy of Fate.”

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”

Worry Machines

A READER WRITES: “I am amazed that you have not taken the opportunity to heal the masses or at least alleviate their post-budget trauma by a few well-chosen philosophical adages. Are you neglecting your mission?”

BB SAYS: So the masses are suffering from post-budget trauma. Why? What are they worrying about? There is nothing to worry about. Human beings are designed to worry – we are created in order to be fearful and anxious. We have evolved to notice bad news and to ignore good news. Often the bad news is not even bad news at all.

Psychologists call this human trait Negativity Bias – this is the psychological phenomenon by which humans pay more attention to and give more weight to negative than positive experiences and information. Negativity bias is the biggest source of human misery in the world. Some people literally worry themselves to death, mostly over nothing. Most of the fear and anxiety we experience is completely unnecessary.

Why do humans suffer from negativity bias? Because we have evolved that way – during the most of our evolutionary development, the potential cost of not noticing something bad, far exceeded the potential cost of not noticing something good. The people who spent all their time worrying were less likely to be eaten by tigers.

The environment in which we humans evolved was much more dangerous than the environment we now live in. Thanks to efforts of our stressed-out ancestors, we actually live in the safest period ever in human history. There is higher life-expectancy, much less violence, much less hunger, much less disease and much less suffering than there ever has been before. But you wouldn’t know this by reading the newspapers would you? There is actually much less need to worry about anything than ever before in history. But are people worrying less? Like hell they are. They still have the same brains that they had during the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution when there was a predator around every corner, and when life-expectancy was about 30. But our ability to assess risk is hopeless.

Here is a small list of things that people spend their time worrying about, even though there is no need to worry about any of them: the recession, terrorism, religion, unemployment, crime, illness, careers, nuclear warfare, the environment. Expand the list for yourself. Doing so will brighten up your week.

There is too much worrying in the world, and there will continue to be too much worrying. A deficit of worrying is not our problem. So the wise thing to do is this: stand back and let other people do the worrying.

Boris to save us from the Great Bee Crisis – 4 years left for the human race?

The Mayor of London has much on his mind these days – the financial crisis, traffic jams, crime rates … but above all bees. This is what happens when you elect amusing, lovable sociopaths to be mayors of major cities.

Recently there was a bee in Boris’s bedroom annoying him, so he “bound naked from the bed, brandishing the 580-page biography (unread) of Marcus Aurelius” and launched himself at the unsuspecting creature. However, at the last moment Boris held back because bees, he tells us, are “as threatened as the panda”. If you are lucky enough to have any bees in your house “you must treat them as honoured guests” because “the global bee population has recently entered a catastrophic decline” and “if the bees go, the human race will perish four years later”.

Never write off a Korean

A much underestimated peninsula is Korea, sandwiched between its two more powerful neighbours – China and Japan. I have long admired the tenacity and audacity of the plucky Koreans. Where else, for example, can one find a head of state who has written an opera? Not one opera, not two operas, but SIX operas. Sure, Barack Obama may have written a couple of lively autobiographies, and Brian Cowen has done his bit for the arts by posing nude for young, ambitious painters. But what world leader has even come close to matching the cultural achievements of Kim Jong-Il (pictured above)? His latest opera was met with standing ovations in North Korea and received unanimous critical acclaim in the press there, where it was declared to be “a triumph”. “Our Deal Leader’s arias kick the ass off Verdi, and leave Wagner in the dust” cooed the opera correspondent in the state run newspaper. Or something like that.

My latest brush with Korea is “Buya’s Diary” by graphic artist Seyeong O - a rather splendid novel, which I would recommend.

“Your posts are too long”

A READER WRITES: “Your latest post on Epicurus was a real snooze. It rambled on and on and on. I thought it would never end. Haven’t you ever heard of editing? Please keep your posts shorter.”

BB SAYS: Okay.

“Do not fear god”

The philosopher Epicurus is often held to be an advocate of hedonistic indulgence in the pleasures of the senses, even though his philosophy was, in fact, a teaching in moderation. This erroneous view results from the anti-Epicurean propaganda of Stoics, Christians and others. Powerful people and priests have always hated Epicurus, because he teaches people to live without fear, and people cannot be controlled unless they are fearful.

However, Epicurus is sometimes held to have based some of his ideas on Aristippus, a student of Socrates and founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy. The central injunction of the Cyrenaics was “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”.

But Epicurus advocated the pleasures in moderation: “No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves”. He advocated the pleasures of the mind and friendship, as much as he advocated the pleasures of the flesh. “If the things that produce the pleasures of profligate men really freed them from fears of the mind concerning celestial and atmospheric phenomena, the fear of death, and the fear of pain; if, further, they taught them to limit their desires, we should never have any fault to find with such persons, for they would then be filled with pleasures from every source and would never have pain of body or mind, which is what is bad.”

Regarding death, Epicurus regards it as inevitable: “It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls”. But there is no point in worrying about the inevitable: “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist”. So, according to Epicurus, when we die we will return to the same state we were in before we were born – a state of non-existence, which was not bad, and which is no cause for fear. In order to live well one must free oneself from fear of death: “The art of living well and the art of dying well are one”.

Also, living well means that the mind must control the flesh: “The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life”.

Regarding religion, Epicurus believed that the gods are utterly unconcerned with us, and therefore there is no need for us to be in the slightest bit concerned with them. For all practical purposes, his teaching was indistinguishable from atheism. He was also sceptical about the effectiveness of prayer: “If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another” and “it is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself”.

He advocates knowledge as a means of liberation from fear: “It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.”

Epicurus advocates acting in accordance with reason – this is wisdom: “Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life”

In order to live a joyful life that is free from fear, one must, says Epicurus, be just:

“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.” What is justice? “There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men”. It is based on the Golden Rule. Epicurus says: “Justice is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed” and “Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another”.

Epicurus is a great advocate of friendship: “Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship”. Also “The same conviction which inspires confidence that nothing we have to fear is eternal or even of long duration, also enables us to see that in the limited evils of this life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship”.

The unjust man cannot have friendship and love in his life, and is therefore depriving himself of the greatest joy and happiness that human life offers. Not only is the unjust man depriving himself of positive joy, he deprives himself of the protection of friends, and he also lives a life of fear: “It is impossible for a man who secretly violates the terms of the agreement not to harm or be harmed to feel confident that he will remain undiscovered, even if he has already escaped ten thousand times; for until his death he is never sure that he will not be detected”. Thus “The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance.”

So Epicurus says that we should live joyfully, without false hopes and without false fears. The Epicurean formula for the best life was stated by Philodemus in four simple lines:

“Do not fear god,
Do not worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure”

End the Insanity: For the love of God STOP CHANGING THE HOUR

This weekend the hour will be brought forward, and then in six months, it will be brought back again, for no reason whatsoever, thus inflicting yet another unnecessary disaster on the British Isles. It is estimated that in Britain and Ireland, bringing the hour back in the autumn costs between 100 and 160 lives a year. It raises carbon emissions by up to 3 per cent, equivalent to almost half of all aircraft pollution. It brings misery to families up and down the islands. It causes depression and health problems for hundreds of thousands.

How long must we suffer this indignity? How long will this pox continue to govern and control our lives? How long must we endure with bovine complacency the animadversions of the pro-clock changing fanatics and propagandists? How long must the silent majority cower before the sinister forces of unreason? For how many more winters must we face 6 months of mid-afternoon darkness and dreariness?

End this insanity now – stop bringing the hour back!

The Menace of “Populism"

I notice that the media have started labelling the anger of people at bankers and the existing financial system, as “populism”. This is an interesting manoeuvre. The implication seems to be that the ignorant “populace” is succumbing to visceral and unfounded rage against its masters. According to the Economist magazine, people have been “seized by a spasm of fury” and there is a disturbing “storm of outrage”. Most horrifying of all there is a new political disposition that “tries to return power to ‘the people’” (note the inverted commas around "people"). Is this “just a storm in a teacup?” asks the Economist, hopefully. According to the Financial Times, there is a worrying “McCarthy witch-hunt” against bankers that could “send the country back to the stone age”. One senior banker told the FT that recent taxes aimed at bankers were “the most profoundly anti- American thing I’ve ever seen”. He objects to such anti-free-market measures. But presumably he does not object to the anti-free-market multi-billion dollar bail-outs of all the world’s banks?

“A recent Harris poll” the Economist observes with dismay “shows that 85% of Americans believe that big companies have too much influence on politicians and policymakers”. If only the irrational masses understood what was really going on, seems to be the argument, they would not be surrendering to their base emotions. But even Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator of the Financial Times, says his “blood boils” at some of the bonuses that bankers have recently received. But he hastens to reassure his readers: “I am no populist”. Phew!

In recent decades, the Economist magazine notes with satisfaction, “economic populism was trumped by cultural populism. The Republican Party championed the interests of the ‘silent majority’ against bra-burning feminists, civil-rights activists and effete liberals who were more interested in protecting the rights of criminals than preserving law and order. The Democrats made desultory attempts to revive economic populism in 2000 and in 2004”. But unfortunately this Republican tactic may no longer be working - trembles the oracle of the powerful “Economic populism is returning to the heart of American politics” .

The chief economic correspondent of the London Times says that “the only way to revive the system is to offer vast public subsidies and support to the banks. Who owns the banks and whether bank shareholders or managers benefit unfairly from public subsidies are irrelevant … What politicians must now do is to persuade the public that the time for quibbling about the precise rules of bank rescues is over”. He says that the BBC should play its part in performing “a priceless national service by distracting the British people and the media from throwing tomatoes at pilloried bankers”.

So what exactly is unfounded about this “populist” rage? The rage is, in fact, entirely justified – and its source is precisely the fact that people can clearly see, for once, what is “really going on”. The system is profoundly unjust. The rage is a function of this awareness of injustice. We live in a world where some people get slapped in prison for minor thefts, or taking drugs or whatever, and where other people work hard in order to earn modest wages. Meanwhile, people in charge of financial institutions earn millions, and when they lose billions, they are supported by the rest of us. Many of these charitable donations to bankers have simply been pocketed by them in the form of massive wages, bonuses, and pensions. The credit crunch was one of those moments where the essence of the state capitalist system is revealed for all to see: socialism for the rich, free-markets for everyone else.

There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of a tummy on you …

… not if you’re the Buddha, there isn’t.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”

“Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair”

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”

“In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”

Kill the Buddha

My new-found obsession with Buddhism is now escalating into a very un-Buddhist like frenzy.

“Embrace nothing:
If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill the Buddha.
If you meet your kinfolk on the way, kill your kinfolk.
Only live your life as it is,
Not bound to anything.”

How cool is that!

Buddha

I wonder is there ANYTHING in what the Buddha said or did that any sane person could object to?

• “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

• “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.”

• “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering.”

• “He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.”

• “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”

• “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

• “Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.”

• “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”

• “The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”

• “The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.”

"Cull the Living Flower"

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people… The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness….The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo….Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and cull the living flower.” Karl Marx

Michael Fingleton – even worse than Sean Fitzpatrick?

I see that after his “bank” was bailed-out by the rest of us, Michael Fingleton took the trouble to award himself a one million euro bonus and a 27 million euro pension.

Will Michael Fingleton apologise and give back all the money he has stolen from the rest of us? No chance. And even if he did it would be too late. We already know what kind of man he is.

www.brianbarrington.com

Celebrating the arrival of www.brianbarrington.com

Who amongst us has not dreamed of becoming a dotcom? I toyed with the idea of becoming a .ie, but this blog is an international event with global implications, so that kind of parochialism would be inappropriate. I also considered .net and .org – on the basis that .com sounds too commercial, too mercenary. But let’s not fool ourselves – I’m in this for the money! So dotcom it is.

Will the world ever be the same again?

Er, yes, if I continue to desist from posting anything new on this website.

"Make me happy, not suicidal"

A READER WRITES: "This blog is supposed to increase happiness? Now I might be missing something, but I get enough doom and gloom from the RTE News, Vincent Browne and Pat Kenny without you joining in......get back to basics........make me happy, not suicidal".

• If you are not happy here and now, as you read these words, then you never will be - Author Unknown

• I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves - Wittgenstein

• You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy - Eric Hoffer (Readers will note that U2 stole this idea for a line in one of their songs)

• Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations - Bono (that's Edward de Bono, not Bono)

• Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city - Burns

• It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis - Bonnano

• Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own - Heinlein

• What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner - Colette

• Happiness is a form of courage - Holbrook Jackson

• One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers - O'Neill

• Happiness is a function of accepting what is - Werner Erhard

• It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely - Duhamel
  

• The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not - George Bernard Shaw

• I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen - Abd-El-Raham

Real World Maps

The above is a map of the world based on wealth - the size of each country is in proportion to its nominal GDP. The larger the GDP the larger the country. The below is a map of the world based on tourist destinations - the more tourists a country receives the larger the country is shown on the map.

Great site. http://www.worldmapper.org/thumbnails/mapindex1-12.html. It shows world maps based on everything from nuclear arms to prisoners to murders to agricultural output.

The latest on the global economy: screwing ordinary people again

All the world’s largest banks are insolvent, due to bad debts, and they will go bankrupt without government intervention. The major Central Banks in the US, Europe and Japan are creating money in an attempt to stop these banks going bust. The governments will, at the behest of the banks, try to avoid nationalising those banks – they will give the banks the money in return for no increase in control over them, although cosmetic changes to “regulation” will be talked about. The new money will be given directly to the banks so that they can “recapitalise”, write off debts and start lending again to “consumers”, so that people can borrow more.

Note that the newly created money is NOT to be given to “consumers” (i.e. ordinary people) in form of higher wages or higher incomes of any sort. The chief economist at the Financial Times identifies the main problem with the world economy: “The highest priority is to halt the free-fall in demand”. What does he mean by this? He means that people have stopped spending. There are two ways to increase demand and spending: increase people's incomes or increase the amount they borrow to spend. Now, most people's incomes have not been going up much. Remember: nearly all the increase in wealth from the last 30 years has gone to the wealthiest 10% of the population. Inequality of wealth has increased hugely. Median incomes have hardly increased at all, and now they are decreasing.

The governments and banks know that they need to increase demand, and get “consumers” (i.e. ordinary people whose average real incomes have hardly increased over the past 30 years) spending again. But they want to make sure that the money is borrowed by those consumers, and that the current bank system is kept in tact. At all costs they need to avoid increasing the real incomes of the non-wealthy – because then the non-wealthy would be able to buy what they need without borrowing, and the banks would not be so necessary. In short, people are to borrow the money, and get themselves further into debt, because modern Western economies and financial institutions depend on keeping most people is a state of debt-slavery.

When the banks make profits they keep them; when they lose money they are bailed out and everyone else pays. Then they are given more money to lend, so that the process can start again. This is all in keeping with the basic principle of state capitalism: socialism for the rich, free markets for everyone else. As Nicolas Taleb (who predicted this current crisis) says: “Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically – while bankers strike it rich.”

In sum: The governments and the banks are hoping that they can manufacture inflation by creating money, and that this will force people to keep borrowing. Whether this attempt to create another credit boom will succeed or not remains open.

Do YOU have a problem? Leave an anonymous comment, or send your problem in confidence to brianbarrington@gmail.com

Christian Reader thinks Brian Barrington might be engaging in "Tribal Apologetics"

A READER WRITES: A popular suburban myth has it that when asked, many primitive tribes identify themselve simply as "The People." They assume that their own tribe is set apart from all others, that they are human in some innately superior way.

I thought of this after reading Brian’s post called "tribal mentality versus humanist mentality”. Brian begins his post as follows:

"Humans can broadly be divided into two types - those with a Tribal Mentality and those with a Humanist Mentality. Both mentalities exist in most people to varying degrees."

Brian is a smart fellow, and presents his argument with grace and wit. My question is, could his argument ultimately be an exercise in tribal self-justification?

The term "humanist" often can describe a tribe, rather than the cosmopolitan brotherhood Brian refers to. It may refer to a (1) late Medieval movement in literature; (2) the vaguely progressive "Enlightenment" project and its modern disciples; (3) "secular humanism" in the sense set out by Paul Kurtz, for example -- the assumption that there is no God, death is the end, but we should therefore care for ourselves and for others (which itself splits into hundreds of tribes); or (4) the assumption that "all men (and women) are brothers & sisters . . . no man is an island." (5) There is also something called "Christian humanism," a subset of 4.

I think Brian may have a good point about psychology types. But I am wondering if he confuses some of these meanings, and philosophical positions that he happens to hold, and social groupings that he happens to feel comfortable in, with the characteristics of a nascent psychological Ubervolk -- "We are the people."

As a Christian, I feel I can identify with people of all ideological tribes, Marxist, Buddhist, Hindu, neo-Platonist, Stoic, Muslim, or, yes, secular humanists, on many levels. We are all created in the Image of God. We are all sinners. And each of these ideologies carries some implicit shadow of the divine Logos, some "seed of the Word," that as a Christian I affirm and respect. While I think it is necessary to fight Osama bin Laden, I don't question his humanity, and we might be able to talk (if one of us were held captive by the other, maybe) a common theological language that would seem foreign to many "cosmopolitan" humanists.

So what is the relationship between skepticism and humanism? Is there any relationship? Might there sometimes be an inverse relationship, and those who are most inclined to see all humanity as one, be those who reject materialism, or even political liberalism?

BB SAYS: I think the Tribalist\Humanist distinction is an attempt at a personality distinction, not unlike the extrovert\introvert distinction. Introverts and extroverts are found in most groups. So are Tribalists and Humanists. Now, there are Christian introverts and Christian extroverts. Similarly, there are Christian Tribalists and Christian Humanists. And the same can be said of most large, diverse complex societies and groups.

Now, your question is: can you have a Tribal Humanist? Well, can you have an introverted extrovert? You can’t.

Personality theorists think there are five big personality distinctions: introvert\extrovert; agreeable\disagreeable; conscientious\not conscientous; stable\neurotic and open-to-experience\closed-to-experience.

The Tribalist\Humanist distinction is closest to the closed-to-experience\open-to-experience distinction. People with low scores on openness tend to have more conventional, traditional interests, they prefer familiarity over novelty, they are loyal to their own group. People with high scores tend to be the opposite. This is not an exact parallel with what I mean by Tribalist and Humanist but perhaps there is some overlap.