Any humilitarian, whatever their political beliefs, is a light to America’s present darkness.

And by declaring themselves as such, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, Greens, Christians, atheists, writers, gamers, broadcasters, waiters, home-makers, soldiers, politicians, employees, employers, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, can bring these fundamental values to the parties, societies, media, families, homes, churches, companies, and homes of which they are a part.

Humilitarians don’t have to agree with each other to recognize each other, because, in their humility and decency, they can judge ideas without judging each other.

Love is inherently humble, from which characteristic humilitarianism takes its name. If you love someone, then you want to know what makes them happy, so Love listens. And it acts on what it hears. Love acknowledges that different people experience Love and life in different ways. Even when it hears something that seems misguided, wrong or even unloving, it doesn’t assume its own superiority or disregard what it hears as having nothing of value to teach.

Humilitarians understand that different people assign different moral and material values to ideas and things, and that these differences do not mean that they are inherently morally or intellectually inferior or superior.

Both Love and Humilitarianism refuse to aggress. Neither seeks to constrain another, except perhaps in an emergency, when someone’s life is in immediate danger, unperceived by the endangered party.

Love is concerned with consequences, seeking to improve itself and adjust when its well-intended actions are received badly. In other words, it cares and is responsive. That makes it empirical. There is no dogma or ideology of Love. There can be no formula. And so Love is not measured theoretically by some abstract or impersonal metric: rather, it is measured mostly by the experiences of those at whom it is directed.

Accordingly, humilitarians never forget that the primary purpose of politics and measure of policy are the genuine wellbeing of people - and the facilitation of our own and others’ self-realization.

Humilitarians, whether they be liberal, conservative, libertarian or progressive, measure their compassion and their effectiveness by the good that they do for everyone they affect, allowing each affected person their own metrics – and not by the strength of their intentions or the number of wins against their ideological opponents.

Humilitarians realize that they have a greater responsibility to look at all of the human outcomes that are caused by policy and to be humble (there it is again) enough to change policy and their ideological preferences when outcomes aren’t positive.

Love has myriad manifestations, flavors and expressions. It allows that imperfect people with various experiences can express it in ways that conflict with each other. But that doesn’t have to put the people themselves in conflict; nor does it mean that some of them are any less loving than others.

In our lives, we may love different people differently, and we may love the same people differently as they change, or as we change. Accordingly, humilitarianism recognizes the importance of sensitivity to context: an appreciation that different people, sub-cultures and traditions may emphasize different principles, evolve in different ways, or see different ways to get to the same ends.

Therefore, humilitarianism, like Love, gives the benefit of the doubt. A person’s commitment to a policy that someone else may feel harmed by doesn’t prove that that person is ill-intended. Rather, Love draws the most benign inference that best enables mutual understanding whenever there are various inferences to “choose” from. In other words, Love looks for the Good, not the bad, in others. That can sometimes be hard work. Those who Love do not divide against each other because their Love brings them to opposing conclusions in a few areas of their lives, and humilitarians take care not to divide among themselves or from others “on principle” just because they differ in how a principle can be best advanced by policy or manifest in a particular context.  This is why humilitarianism is, like Love, unifying.

And Love’s unifying quality is served by its always being respectful. If there is any one thing whose loss has made American politics so toxic, it is respect. Respect is what makes giving the benefit of the doubt easy, and shortens the time to mutual understanding. It is most simply expressed in good manners and decency.  It is what reminds us that “being right” doesn’t justify everything a person might say to another. Kindness, necessity and effectiveness should also be considered.

Love lets people follow their own path not only for the metaphysical reason that life is a journey, but also for the practical reason that judging someone for a mistake that they cannot perceive, while insisting that they comply with your judgment, always backfires, as it breeds resentment and alienation – the very stuff of American politics today.

Humilitarians, therefore, are respectful in the face of disagreements, even those that rest on obvious errors and ill-informed opinions. In particular, they recognize that part of being human is sometimes not to behave consistently with one’s values, the facts on the ground, or even oneself the day before.

Whether we like it or not, all reasoning is motivated – including our own. Humilitarians treat the mistaken with respect because they know they too are mistaken sometimes. And this respect offers the practical benefit of opening the minds of those with whom one disagrees to one’s ideas when they are ready to hear them. Humilitarians do politics in a way that recognizes their own imperfections and the huge amount they have yet to learn. Their humility and openness make it safe for others, including their political opponents, to address contentious issues in the same spirit, preventing division and fear of “the other”.

Humilitarians always remember that what they don’t know may have a greater effect on the outcomes of the policies they support than what they do know. (Can one ever be sure that’s not the case?) So they tread carefully.

Finally, Love cares, and that means making principled compromises without compromising principles.

Those who Love go out of their way to ensure that their interactions with their beloved are fair, not just in their own sense of fairness but also, whenever possible, in a way that is judged as fair by their Beloved. That always means letting the other speak – and genuinely trying to understand what he’s saying and why he’s saying it - not out of obligation, but out of a genuine desire to connect.

Love acts to replace division, condescension, and aggression, with their opposites.

To change American politics, you must be a light in the darkness – not just right in the wrongness.

So don’t wait for politics to change and bemoan it in the meanwhile.

Instead, declare yourself a humilitarian.

Be progressive, conservative, libertarian or anything else.  Stay in whatever political party you currently identify with. But whatever else you believe, declare that the best way to change politics, each other and the world, is to follow Ghandi’s famous phrase: to “be the change you seek”.

Declare yourself a humilitarian to let others know that whatever else they believe, and whatever you may disagree with them on, when they speak to you, they will get less division not more; they will get a genuine attempt at a shared solution, not a zero-sum argument were one of you proves the other wrong; they will get someone, in other words, who is motivated by understanding “the other”, and finding solutions that work for them too.

By the simple act of declaration, we can create thousands of humilitarian Republicans, humilitarian Democrats, humilitarian Libertarians, humilitarian Greens, humilitarian Independents, etc., all coming together in the knowledge that the values that unite them as humilitarians are more powerful than their differences of political opinion.  More powerful, because those turn their sincere differences from sources of mistrust and darkness to the starting points on millions of journeys toward mutual understanding and light.

The problem is not “them”, whoever you think “they” are. Rather, it is the very idea that politics is about “us vs. them” at all.

You see, there is no them unless we keep making it so.

So what will it be — more division dressed up as resistance against those who seek to divide?

Or a coming together of humilitarians on every side of every issue – and a coming together of America?