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Tribalism is the enemy within
- sabat 16y ago"Tribalism": a great term for what's wrong with the world today in general. I'd been fishing for a word, calling it "the team sports mentality" for lack of something more insightful and concise.
- seanalltogether 16y agoIf that were true, the entire history of humanity would be wrong in general.
- kiba 16y agoMore like tribalism make sense in a stone age environment, but not so much when you're trying to build a civilization that last.
- seanalltogether 16y agoI disagree and would argue that all societies continue to evolve as a consequence of ongoing tribalistic thinking. edit/ and just to clarify, i don't think it's the only reason, but it is one of a few primary catalysts
- thwarted 16y agoMost of the meaningful (and most interesting/worth talking about) events in humanity's history have been because of an us-vs-them mentality. Even something good and benign like landing on the moon was partially because of a desire to best, and differentiate from, another world superpower. The critique ("wrong with the world today") is if this is a good way to go about it when it's used in the extreme (or tending towards being extreme), not the quality of the results. Does the means justify the ends?
- sabat 16y agoThe money comes from those with us-vs-them mentalities (your example of the Moon shots), but that isn't where the urge to innovate usually comes from. when it's used in the extreme (or tending towards being extreme) That's what I was trying to get across -- extreme behavior considered to be normal. Everyone on the freeways driving either 45 or 90, no sane moderation.
- sabat 16y agoIt's not binary. I'm speaking of a matter of degree, and about US culture specifically. Meaning: we're becoming a polarized nation, two Americas (America and 'mer'ca). Of course the human race has always had tribes. But tribalism (tribalitis?) means: too much tribal loyalty.
- rue 16y ago"Becoming"? Just cursorily, first there were the colonies - some of which felt more British than others - who well into the 1800's were essentially nations: you had your Georgia mans and your Virginia mans and so on. Even during the secession there were more than two groups people associated themselves with.
- cabalamat 16y ago> for lack of something more insightful and concise What's wrong with "bigotry"? It covers roughly the same meaning IMO.
- stcredzero 16y agoNoam Chomsky calls it "irrational jingoism."
- whichdokta 16y agoIf Greg had started his post with a question along the lines of: "Dear Mark, what can GNOME do to help Canonical integrate your work & devs with upstream?" Rather than: "*omfgroflcopter* you Canonical dudes are all like soooo lame and have never done anything for GNOME" ...then maybe his post would have translated to a measurable improvement in my reality. As it stands all he's created is a distraction from getting code written. sigh
- CodeMage 16y agoI've often wondered what it would be like to work on Open Source projects and contribute to something like that, but I've never done it before. This post piqued my interest, so I read it and followed the links and read the comments and, in general, spent more than an hour on reading the discussion. Which leads me to my question: is this normal, widespread behavior in Open Source? I'm honestly interested in answers, because, frankly, to me this looked like a boatload of politics. I get enough of that at work.
- zaph0d 16y agoNo, but shit happens. Update: Added Forrest Gump wisdom.
- davidw 16y agoIt depends on the project. They all have different flavors. And of course if you create a project, you can set the tone.
- whichdokta 16y agoIs normal, widespread behavior for humans when we are not getting what we want I think! One practice is to be more conscious of when we're not getting what we want and pay extra special attention to how we're reacting to others as a result. Greg says he wants Canonical to contribute more to upstream. Mark probably wanted Greg to not badmouth Canonical. Now neither party are getting what they want so the question is can everyone pay enough attention to their reactions to avoid a full-blown civil war? Oy vey.
- mkr-hn 16y agoTribalistic thinking is something I've been trying to break myself of over the last few years. When I avoid it, I end up being better off. I used to be firmly in the "all conservative republicans are gibbering idiots" camp, but was able to break out and have a genuinely useful discussion with one. He and I still don't agree on most things, but we did convince each other of a few things (he no longer believes atheists are inherently amoral, which I consider a big success). Tribalism wouldn't permit that.
- gaius 16y agoHe starts off by saying tribalism is the root of racism. Then he says it's judging people on choices they've made. These are obviously mutually exclusive definitions!
- jerf 16y agoTribalism is "the other". Racism is "the other". People who have made other choices, such as religious choices, can be "the other". There's no contradiction here. It's just two different elaborations on how you get to "the other".
- Nwallins 16y ago> These are obviously mutually exclusive definitions! Not at all. He is saying racism is a subset of tribalism, as is being an OS fanboy. Tribalism the the umbrella term.
- motters 16y agoYou also should recognize that whether you like it or not tribalism is part of everyone. There always exists the temptation, especially when under pressure or in a crisis, to revert to a tribalist mode of thinking. Tribalism no doubt had adaptive advantages in our past in terms of group cohesion, but it can also be one of the most destructive forces.
- fwez 16y agoTribalism in politics leads to identity politics rather than governance politics. I grew up in Lebanon where there is no single religious majority. Political discourse has mostly been about how different factions (sunni, shia, maronite christian, orthodox christians, etc.) should be represented within the ruling coalition. Deadlocks are common and appropriation of ministries is mostly based on sectarian identity rather than competence. Discourse is rarely about fiscal, educational, or health policy. I think a similar unhealthy situation can exist within open source projects or professional organizations.
- lionhearted 16y agoTwo thoughts - First, I agree with the author on tribalism in general and technology specifically, but he falls into another common unwritten trap - all his examples are of discrimination against women or minorities. That's subtly saying - "White males, don't be tribalistic" - maybe the particular author doesn't feel that way, but certainly a lot of people tell Caucasians and men to stop hating/oppressing/discriminating, but ignore very real instances of discrimination and hate against men or Caucasians. No one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric, which is certainly tribalism. I haven't seen any equality movements to make everyone register equally for the military draft in the United States, for instance, or make traditionally women's work environments more open to men working there, nor are there any advocacy groups for a white person is wronged on account of their race. Second, mildly contrarian point - if you've never lived somewhere where nationalism/tribalism is rampant, you haven't really experienced it. Yeah, it sucks and produces all kinds of idiocy. But there's actually a few good things about it that never makes it into the literature - if you've never been somewhere like South Korea, you don't really know what it looks like. Frustrating as it was for me as an outsider, I did admire a few points about it. There's an attitude of, "I am KOREAN and STRONG" built into most Koreans - this can be insufferable if you're not allowed to eat at a restaurant, but I also find Koreans to be a bit more confident and proud than people in surrounding areas, and I've some time in all of those places and admire all those cultures. I guess it's unfashionable to say this, but my eyes say there are a few limited upsides to tribalism.
- macco 16y agoShuttleworth comes from South Africa, so he lived in a place where nationalism/tribalism is rampant. I think the whole Gnome debate is rubbish. Canonical did a lot to the OSS-community. Look a the Ubuntu documentation project or simular things - there is more to OSS than code commits in Gnome.
- w00pla 16y ago> Shuttleworth comes from South Africa, so he lived in a place where nationalism/tribalism is rampant. Especially black nationalism (such as is practiced by the next president [Malema](http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20100310041938251C304265&singlepage=1 http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20100310041938251C30...) ) is extremely rampant. The problem in South Africa is that it is a very diverse country with people of differing economic development, languages and cultures. The idea of apartheid was that each ethnic/cultural group could have their own state (let’s not talk about the implementation but the ideology). That way each group can have self-determination. Unfortunately this did not work. One reason for this was the industrialisation of South Africa in 60ies and 70ies. Many black people moved out of their traditional places of birth to major cities, etc... The other idea is a very powerful central government based on majority vote. This is what is implemented now. This system (like Apartheid) doesn’t work. Each election is a census and the main aim of government is to disadvantage one group of people to benefit its majority support (while making white people universal scape goats for all ills). None of these systems are working. The new system is just as broken as the Apartheid system that liberals in the west complained about. --- A system that could have worked was a third system: A co-social society. Each group can have their own areas in a society where they can express themselves (e.g. own sports, universities & schools in their language, etc…). There can be constitutional guarantees that a groups rights would not be infringed upon, etc… Unfortunately this did not happen.
- j_baker 16y agoIn my anecdotal experience, Canonical hasn't exactly been a shining example of working with the community instead of being tribal. They have open source projects, but they don't tend to go very far out of their way to make those projects useful to other organizations. The pace at which changes from outside Canonical get merged into their projects is very glacial. But that's just my experience. I'm sure others have had plenty of great experiences with them.
- kylemathews 16y agoHmmm... that doesn't sound like tribalism, that sounds like Canonical has a strong product vision and strong internal engineering culture.
- mapleoin 16y agoAnd here's Greg's response to Mark's response: http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/its-not-about-tribalism-mark/ http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/its-not-about-...
- abalashov 16y agoDon’t do it because you feel intimidated or threatened or belittled. I suppose ideally, no. However, it runs against basic psychology to fail to consider the enormity of the motivating force that is this kind of coercion throughout human history. It has untold power. So many things - good and bad, but all having enormous displacement - have been spurred by motives like proving something to someone, showing someone up, avenging an insult, publicly righting a false claim, establishing identity, going through a socially acknowledged rite of passage, validating strength, etc. Sex, money, power... It seems to me patently self-evident that such forces underlie, in whole or in part, the actual activities of open-source developers, and technologists in general, though the level of indirection that must be navigated in order to see it is often greater than in more naked and crude testosterone plays like much hedge fund management and so on. Don't pretend that we're somehow above the general liabilities of humanity (if that's how you see them).