Universalism Isn’t Utopian — It's the Principle That Holds Civilizations Together
How Abandoning Universal Human Dignity Leads to Tribalism and Decay
There’s a quiet war happening beneath most modern debates.
It’s not about economics.
Not even about politics.
It’s about how we see people — and whether we believe there’s such a thing as shared human worth.
Universalism says:
“All people are inherently valuable. All people are deserving of dignity.
Not because of what they’ve suffered — but because they’re human.”
This idea used to be the bedrock of liberal thought. It was the principle behind civil rights, free speech, and due process. The idea that every person counts — not just the powerful, not just the popular, not just the loudest.
But lately, universalism has been rebranded as naïve… “outdated.” Even dangerous.
And that’s a mistake we may not survive if we don’t correct it.
The Collapse of the Common
When we abandon universalism, something else rushes in to fill the void: tribal moral sorting.
That’s where we are now.
Every person is flattened into a set of labels:
Race
Gender
Class
Sexuality
Politics
Then those labels are assigned a moral weight:
This group = oppressor. That group = oppressed.
This view = sacred. That view = heresy.
Your status determines your voice. Your identity determines your guilt or innocence.
There’s no room for nuance. No space for complexity or individual histories.
And worst of all — no mechanism for redemption.
You can’t grow out of your “privilege.”
You can’t apologize your way out of a demographic.
You can’t heal what you are unable to be separated from.
In this world, justice isn’t blind — it’s color-coded and crowd-sourced.
And that’s not “justice.” That’s just moral tribalism with sophisticated advertising.
The False Charge Against Universalism
Critics argue that universalism erases difference — that it’s blind to historical injustice, that it serves power by pretending everyone starts from the same place.
That’s a strawman.
Universalism doesn’t deny differences. It just refuses to weaponize them.
It says: “Yes, your struggle is real — but so is his. So is hers. So is mine.”
It’s not about ignoring context. It’s about resisting the urge to reduce individual people to the presumed context of their assigned group.
The alternative is what we’re seeing now:
A race to establish who has the most moral leverage, based on assumed suffering and assigned by fiat — which inevitably leads to moral cannibalism. Every movement devours its own, trying to stay ahead of the purity spiral.
Universalism ends that game.
It says: “You don’t need to compete for dignity. You already have it.”
Why It’s Not Utopian — It’s Practical
Some call universalism idealistic, or even “regressive.” Meanwhile, the new “progress” is reducing people to stereotypes and sweeping generalizations.
We must look deeper.
What actually works — in the long run — isn’t ideology.
It’s principles that scale. And universalism scales.
You can build a civilization on it.
You can write laws with it.
You can resolve conflict through it.
You can teach respect and human decency with it.
You can confront evil without becoming evil.
That’s not idealism — that’s infrastructure.
The Core Truth
People are not functions of their skin color, net worth, or voting record.
They are not inputs to your moral calculator.
They are people.
Virtually every war, every genocide, every totalitarian regime in history began by denying that truth — assigning “villain” or “victim” status to entire groups, and erasing individuals in the process. Every act of real progress began by reclaiming it.
Universalism isn’t “utopian.”
It’s the minimum viable ethics for any society that wants to survive itself.