We are all familiar with the concept of hubris. The vice of excessive self-confidence and ambition which, by inducing a form of blindness in the sufferer, inevitably leads to their downfall. That hubris, at least understood this way, lies at the heart of today’s ideological left, is self-evident. If you assert, with absolute conviction, that you can change the climate, fashion a perfect world, or even erase biological facts you are clearly transgressing limits all sane people recognise, risking disaster in the time-honoured way.

The classical Greeks had a different conception of hubris. For them, it entailed someone intentionally dishonouring a fellow citizen. Hubristic acts typically involved some form of physical violence, but this need not be the case. Aristotle defined hubris as ‘doing or saying things’ intended to ‘shame’ the victim, not in response to a real or perceived slight, ‘but simply to get pleasure from it’. The cause of this pleasure, he explained, ‘is that by harming people’ the perpetrators come to ‘think themselves superior’. In other words, one confers honour on oneself by dishonouring someone else, reflecting the ancient Greek notion of honour as a zero-sum game.

Aristotle singled out ‘the young and the rich’ as the most likely to engage in this form of behaviour. The Athenian legal code prescribed strict penalties for it, given the threat it posed to the cohesion of the city-state.

This form of hubris is arguably more dangerous than the popular one of legend. It afflicts the many, not only the select few. In its psychological form at least, it is not widely acknowledged, so does not attract critical scrutiny. True, people have always sought to elevate themselves by diminishing others; psychologist Alfred Adler called it a superiority complex. But in recent decades, progressive ideology has given it new impetus.

Think about it. The most important thing for the progressive zealot isn’t the particular agenda they are pursuing – they are more than happy to shift between climate, gender, Palestine, and Indigenous affairs – it’s their need to feel superior to everyone else. If this judgement sounds harsh, look at the way they seek to promote their cause.

They make no attempt to frame persuasive arguments, respond to legitimate objections, or offer reasonable compromises. They do not afford their opponent’s respect. No, the progressive’s tactic of choice is to play the man and woman, not the ball. To pre-emptively and summarily brand their opponents as morally corrupt or mentally incompetent, expelling them from the public square. Cancelling them.

Progressivism also seeks to shame – in effect silence – the non-committed. Subtle tripwires are put in place for the unwary, including the notions of micro-aggressions, cultural appropriation, and unconscious bias. And, as we all know, members of oppressor groups – Caucasians, Jews, and others – are expected to carry a permanent burden of shame. A moral stain they can never expunge.

The pernicious effects of progressive hubris, understood in this way, are obvious. It fosters social friction and discord, undermining mutual trust. It destroys spontaneity in our everyday interactions with each other, making even the most innocuous small talk a potentially hazardous exercise. It has a chilling effect on public debates, allowing progressive views to go unchallenged. Above all, it is a form of oppression and control.

I worry that progressive hubris (in the classical sense) is not a passing fashion, but instead is symptomatic of something far deeper. In his celebrated lectures on the romantic movement, Isaiah Berlin observed that historical periods are characterised by particular worldviews: the dominant mental models that, both consciously and otherwise, shape the way people act, think and moralise, giving meaning and resonance to their lives.

For Berlin, romanticism – which celebrated emotion and passion over cold reason, and the particular and eccentric over the general and abstract – was a reaction to the excesses of classicism: the belief that man and society could be perfected by the application of science alone. Unlike so many, however, he declined to demonise either worldview. He felt both, at least in their early phases, were liberating forces (with classicism freeing us of irrational suspicions, for example), before ending up as tools of enslavement.

The progressive worldview can be seen as the bastard child of classicism and romanticism, combining the worst aspects of each. The intolerance and arrogance of classicism, which as Berlin observed held that there was a single correct way to do everything, from framing a constitution to writing a poem or novel, and which reduced man to no more than the external forces which shaped him. And, on the other hand, the irrationality and self-indulgence of romanticism, with its elevation of passion and action over all else, and its belief that all constraints, including our biological make-up, can be imagined away in the quest for authenticity.

Think of the philosopher kings of Plato preaching the moral relativism and power worship of Nietzsche. That hubris in both senses of the word flourishes in these circumstances is no surprise.

There is an alternative worldview, however, one we used to be familiar with and take for granted. It places the individual’s rights and obligations at the centre of things. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, to God his creator but also to his fellow man and woman, as the commandments require. And in secular liberal thought, which removed God but retained the practical ethics of religion.

In this worldview, hubris (in the classical sense) is strictly outlawed. Its basic ethical rule is clear. We must treat others the way we would have them treat us. Underpinning it is the notion that, as human beings, we are all equal. Utterly unique, to be sure, in how we look, live and pursue our goals, but in this diversity bound by a common humanity.

Progressivism may be riding high, but nothing is fixed in human affairs. Every excess, every abuse of power, sets off a reaction. We are seeing this in Western countries already. Indeed, the more dominant progressivism becomes, the more it exposes itself – even to the many well-meaning people who subscribe to it. After all, no movement based on dishonouring large sections of society can ultimately prevail. As the Athenians knew, and I think we are beginning to recognise, without civility no civilisation can endure.