Like the rest of the world, my attention and intentions got hijacked over the weekend by what is happening in Minneapolis. I did not intend to write this post, but I feel I must.

What is happening right now is – plain and simple – authoritarianism. Some – like Jonathon Rausch in the Atlantic –  have used the word Fascism. Whatever label you put on it, it has the same flawed logic behind it – the belief that might makes right. It’s the same calculus of cruelty and coercion that the school yard bully uses: I’m bigger than you so do what I want you to do.

Here’s the problem with that formula. Resolve, resistance and resiliency aren’t things that can be consistently quantified. They are not static. The bewildering thing about humans when we’re faced with a crisis is this: the harder you push, the harder we’ll push back.

This is the reality of the red line. We accept adversity only up to a certain point. Past that point, individual concerns give way to that of the greater good. We join together into a coalition, dismantling the smaller walls that used to separate us to unite and fight a greater enemy that threatens us all. Rather than being beaten down by adversity, it raises us up.

We have always done this. Journalist Sebastian Junger documents one example in his excellent book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. During the London Blitz, Hitler believed he could bomb Londoners into submission. For 56 days he tried, dropping over 12,000 tonnes of bombs on the city, sure that it would break the will of Londoners. On one day alone, in September 1940, over 700 tones of high explosives and 86,000 incendiaries fell, killing 1,436 people. But the resolve of Londoners never wavered. In fact, it grew with adversity. They kept calm and carried on.

I’ve seen it firsthand in my own community. Our city, Kelowna, B.C., has been threatened with wildfires a number of times. In 2003, our city of 150,000 lost over 200 homes in one night and one third of the city was evacuated.

I have never seen this city come together like it did then. Neighbours helped neighbours. Those of us who weren’t evacuated opened our homes to those that were. In many cases, spare bedrooms and pull-out couches were occupied by total strangers. Crisis centers were swamped with offers of food, clothing, blankets and volunteer assistance.

This is how we’re wired. We band together in times of trouble. We are tribal creatures. As Junger found in his research, psychological health actually seems to improve in times of crisis. He cites a 1961 paper by American sociologist Charles Fritz, which opens with this sentence, “Who do large-scale disasters produce such mentally healthy conditions?” Junger writes, “Fritz’s theory was that modern society has gravely disrupted the social bonds that have always characterized the human experience, and that disasters thrust people back into a more ancient, organic way of relating. Disasters, he proposed, create a ‘community of sufferers’ that allows individuals to experience an immensely reassuring connection to others.”

Humans evolved to join together to overcome obstacles. Our modern world doesn’t often ask that of us. But right now, in Minneapolis, that’s exactly what’s happening as thousands of ordinary people are coordinating protection patrols to document authoritarianism. They are using the encrypted Signal platform to communicate and direct observers to emerging trouble areas. They have established their own protocols of behaviour. It is, in the words of Robert F. Worth, again writing in the Atlantic, “a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest.”

At least two Minnesotans have paid as much as they mortally can, with their own lives.

This is the wrench that humans throw into the crushing cogs of authoritarian behaviour: the more you crack down on us, the stronger we will become as we join together to push back against you.

Of all the places on Earth, Americans should know this.  I can think of one more example of this that is particularly relevant. It happened 250 years ago, when American colonists joined together to protest against the authority of the British Crown.

We shouldn’t forget that.