tribalism
1. the customs, life, and organization of a tribal society.
2. a strong loyalty to one’s tribe, party, or group.
Tribalism is when one group of people start to think people from another group are “wrong by default”. It’s the great-granddaddy of racism and sexism. And the most dangerous kind of tribalism is completely invisible: it has nothing to do with someone’s “birth tribe” and everything to do with their affiliations: where they work, which sports team OR political party they support.
There are a couple of hallmarks of tribal argument:
1. “The other guys have never done anything useful”. Well, let’s think about that. All of us wake up every day, with very similar ambitions and goals. I’ve travelled the world and I’ve never met a single company, or country, or church, where *everybody* there did *nothing* useful. So if you see someone saying “Microsoft is totally evil”, that’s a big red flag for tribal thinking. It’s just like someone saying “All black people are [name your prejudice]“. It’s offensive nonsense, and you would be advised to distance yourself from it, even if it feels like it would be fun to wave that pitchfork for a while.
2. “Evidence contrary to my views doesn’t count.” So, for example, when a woman makes it to the top of her game, “it’s because she slept her way there”. Offensive nonsense. And similarly, when you see someone saying “Canonical didn’t actually sponsor that work by that Canonical employee, that was done in their spare time”, you should realize that’s likely to be offensive nonsense too.
Let’s be clear: tribalism makes you stupid. Just like it would be stupid not to hire someone super-smart and qualified because they’re purple, or because they are female, it would be stupid to refuse to hear and credit someone with great work just because they happen to be associated with another tribe.
The very uncool thing about being a fanboy (or fangirl) of a project/party is that you’re openly declaring both a tribal affiliation and a willingness to reject the work of others just because they belong to a different tribe.
Now, bad things happen everywhere and because we have a huge community, they are perhaps more likely to happen there than anywhere else. If we want to avoid human nature’s worst consequences, we have to work actively against them. That’s why we have strong leadership structures, which hopefully put people who are proven NOT to be tribal in nature into positions of responsibility. It takes hard work and commitment, it’s hard, but sometimes we have to critique people who are associated with party politics, because they have been tribal.
Warfare between tribal groups in the distant past was probably an adaptive device as well. Cultures are conservative devices, the cultural systems of each group, and when taken as an indivisible whole constitute an adaptive mechanism for the group and preserve economically appropriate behaviour. When one unique culture comes into contact with another, cultural sharing could weaken the belief system and the associated economically appropriate rituals, leading eventually to the demise of the tribe. Therefore, warfare against out-groups would preserve the integrity of the cultural system, and improve the chances for survival for the individuals in the group. With widely dispersed groups this is actually a good thing; it's likely that different systems are required to adapt to differing economic environments, as different species do as well, so a little warfare following contact and then separation is a good thing. That said groups can and do borrow selectively from each other, which has occurred for thousands of years without always causing violence: the spread of agriculture, writing, spices, technology, and even ideas and religion as in the case of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.
Those cultures that accept diversity, in the most universal sense of the word, will survive. Those that do not accept diversity will be engaged in conflict and will not survive, or alternatively, if humanity does not have that capacity, none of us will survive. Thinking out loud, perhaps there will be conflict on such an enormous scale that population will revert to 2000 year ago levels with the whole process then to repeat until humanity is able to get past it.
If we don't learn to live together in a connected global community we will destroy ourselves. That is the next step in our evolution.
The question I need to ask is the following:
Is tribalism an issue in your country of birth?
Is tribalism a major issue in the party politics in Jamaica?
AHH SAH
WALK GOOD
