Culture Wars of the Soul: Why the Light Triad Struggles to Go Viral in America

Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

There’s something embarrassingly earnest about the Light Triad, which is exactly why it gets quietly ignored in a culture that rewards the opposite.

American culture—at least in its loudest, most exportable forms—is built on a cocktail of competitive individualism, performance-based worth, and the myth of redemptive dominance.

We believe in reinvention and bootstraps and the kind of redemption that requires a visible, crowd-pleasing arc. There’s no Netflix drama about someone who stayed kind when no one was looking.

And so, Light Triad traits—Kantianism, Humanism, and Faith in Humanity—don’t just go uncelebrated.

They’re quietly mocked.

In the social-media-muddied waters of modern courtship, being too earnest gets you ghosted. Being too forgiving makes you “low value.”

And expressing Faith in Humanity in public is like showing up to a gunfight with a tote bag that says “Feelings Are Valid.”

This cultural backdrop matters, especially in couples therapy, where partners come in steeped in narratives shaped by their environment.

Let’s take a look at these traits one at a time, and examine what they’re up against.

Kantianism vs. Transactional Love

American culture likes reciprocity with receipts. “You owe me.” “I did my part.” “What have you done for me lately?”

In romantic relationships, this plays out in the ledger mindset: people keeping silent score, waiting for the other to mess up just enough to feel justified in disengaging.

Kantianism—treating the other as an end in themselves—flies directly in the face of this.

It requires a kind of philosophical maturity that American consumer culture doesn’t incentivize. When everything else in life is about optimization (from your Amazon cart to your dating profile), it’s hard not to start optimizing your partner too.

But there’s a cost.

Seeing a spouse as a tool for our own happiness makes us miss their humanity right at the moment we need to see it most—during conflict.

This dehumanization is subtle, but corrosive.

Couples who lean into Kantianism create a culture of respect even when angry, and that’s what allows relationships to survive grief, illness, and those weird times when everyone’s chronically overtired and vaguely resentful.

Humanism vs. the “Failure-Is-Contagious” Mindset

Humanism asks us to see every person—including our partner—as fundamentally worthy.

This sounds lovely until you realize how countercultural it is in a country addicted to status hierarchies.

In the United States, identity is too often shaped by achievement, productivity, and a stubborn Protestant ethic that equates hard work with moral worth.

If your partner is failing—emotionally, financially, existentially—many Americans are culturally primed to internalize that failure as shame-by-proximity.

So instead of compassion, they reach for criticism. Instead of curiosity, they grab control. We’ve replaced grace with “grindset.”

This is where Humanism becomes a radical act.

To say, “You are still worthy when you are failing” is to break the algorithm.

It’s to stand outside of capitalism’s core feedback loop and whisper, “I’m not keeping score.”

And in couples therapy, that whisper can be the beginning of a massive repair.

Faith in Humanity vs. the Market for Mistrust

Let’s be honest. America sells mistrust better than it sells compassion.

The cultural assumption is that people will screw you over unless you get there first.

Our most celebrated American antiheroes—Don Draper, Tony Soprano, Logan Roy—aren’t wise because they trust. They’re wise because they don’t.

Faith in Humanity is therefore coded as childish or weak. And yet, paradoxically, every successful long-term relationship is built on exactly this kind of “naivety.”

Not blind trust, but chosen optimism.

In couples therapy, Faith in Humanity manifests as believing your partner is trying—even when they fail.

But that belief is fragile in a culture where we’re always half-expecting betrayal.

Add in childhood trauma, social media microbetrayals, and a glut of dating apps whispering “you could always do better,” and you get a society where hope feels foolish.

So therapists have to teach folks how to hope again.

Not with slogans. With small, observable data points of decency.

With the slow accrual of trust in low-stakes moments: remembering the coffee order, showing up to the appointment, not retaliating when things go wrong.

Why the Light Triad Matters Even More in American Culture

The truth is, the Light Triad isn’t weak.

It’s an adaptive response to a relational ecology that’s grown brittle and suspicious.

If the Dark Triad thrives in scarcity and threat, the Light Triad quietly rewires the nervous system for relational abundance.

That’s not idealism. That’s psychology.

Attachment theory tells us that secure relationships require responsiveness and trust. Polyvagal theory tells us that our nervous system is constantly scanning for safety cues. The Light Triad traits are those safety cues, fully embodied.

In American couples therapy—where partners are often overworked, under-touched, and half-convinced that they’re not allowed to need anything—the Light Triad becomes a quietly revolutionary model. Not just for behavior, but for worldview.

Final Thought: You Can’t Fake the Light

Here’s the riddle in all this.

You can’t perform Kantianism. You can’t stage Humanism. You can’t fake Faith in Humanity with a well-timed apology and a good Instagram caption.

These traits aren’t branding tools. They’re habits of bestowed attention, cultivated over time, often in the face of cultural resistance.

But for couples who choose to practice them—imperfectly, consistently—the payoff isn’t abstract.

It’s a nervous system that settles in your partner’s presence.

It’s a rupture that ends in repair.

It’s knowing that when life guts you (and it will, eventually), someone will still see you as worthy.

And in this culture? That might be the most radical act of all.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Aron, A., & Aron, E. N. (1986). Love and the expansion of self: Understanding attraction and satisfaction. Hemisphere Publishing Corporation.

Freedman, S. (2015). Betrayal trauma: Healing from the scars of infidelity. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 16(4), 381–396.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Crown.

Kaufman, S. B., Yaden, D. B., Hyde, E., & Tsukayama, E. (2019). The Light vs. Dark Triad of personality: Contrasting two very different profiles of human nature. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 467. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00467

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W.W. Norton & Company.