Thank you for this informative and compelling post.
"a humanist movement that acted for the benefit of all and sought a government that did the same was always incompatible with power-hungry individuals who sought their own interests."
—There is a third option, though. Individualism, if correctly applied, can produce similar results to the former, but without the risks of falling into collectivism.
The notion of acting for "the benefit of all" is fine, especially when part of the philosophy is that each person should be free to choose to act in that way, rather than being forced to do so. Unfortunately, these sorts of collectivist notions ultimately metastasize into leftist flavors of totalitarianism. Ultimately, individuals end up being forced to act in ways that (a small group of overlords tell us) are for the benefit of all.
IMO, we must evolve to the next level, in which individuals see each other as precious, sacred, sovereign, irreplaceable individuals, and act accordingly. That will produce roughly the same results/outcomes as Mohism, but without the risk of a slow drift into totalitarian collectivism.
