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Two thoughts - First, I agree with the author on tribalism in general and technology specifically, but he falls into another common unwritten trap - all his ex

Two 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 ago
Shuttleworth 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.
  - blasdel 16y ago
    A co-social society doesn't really work either — Belgium is basically disintegrating with the government in constant deadlock over Walloon/Flanders tensions.
cabalamat 16y ago
> 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 If for Koreans to be self-confident it's necessary for them to ban non-Koreans from restaurants, then I'd say South Korea is a pretty fucked-up society.
dgabriel 16y ago
I would guess that the Shirley Sherrod mess is a clear rebuttal to the statement: "no one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric." Not only were eyes batted, but heads rolled (even though it was an entirely false accusation of discrimination). Other examples of widely condemned figures who are, or appear to be, anti-white or anti-male: Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Andrea Dworkin.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > clear rebuttal to the statement I don't know, you picked three extreme nutjobs[1] and one person who looked like they were completely derelicting their duty but it turned out it the evidence was mistaken... I'm not sure there's a clear rebuttal of anything. But regardless, that was a small part of the comment. The bigger point was about discrimination articles that focus on examples of discrimination against women and non-whites and not the other way around. Seems like that's a bad thing that teaches bad lessons in the modern world. Would you agree that's a bad thing? [1] I should clarify - Wright and Farrakhan are serious, serious anti-Semites to the point of being totally offensive. Dworkin... well, you can google for quotes from her if you've never been exposed to it.
  - cabalamat 16y ago
    > I don't know, you picked three extreme nutjobs ... I'm not sure there's a clear rebuttal of anything. It's certainly a rebuttal of your statement "No one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric", because it would only take one counterexample to rebut it. Actually I'd guess that quantifying statements as "no-one" when it'd be more accurate to say "few people", is probably positively correlated with tribalistic thinking.
  - dgabriel 16y ago
    I was just pointing out that anti-white, anti-male bias is clearly not considered acceptable, contrary to what you stated. The evidence against Sherrod was not mistaken so much as manipulated to project an anti-white bias that immediately got her fired. In the essay, the examples were chosen to illustrate his point, and were very non-contentious in my opinion. I see no "bad lesson," per say, but I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.
exit 16y ago
you don't make your contrarian point particularly clear. what is there to like about people being "confident and proud" qua their ethnicity?
- lionhearted 16y ago
  It carries over to their other interactions - I generally found Koreans to be more extroverted, social, less meek, more firm, making decisions faster, and less bureaucratic than average. There could be other factors contributing to this, though - there's mandatory military service, so a lot of the men there carry themselves like soldiers. Overall though, I was quite impressed with Koreans and Korea in general. I was lost at one point near Seoul Station, asked a police officer, and he walked me 10 minutes to where I was going while having a chat about the USA, South Korea, politics, and other things - very strong, but also very social and a good guy. I felt some hostility at certain times at Seoul, but I also haven't felt so welcome in a place since I was in Italy. Funny how that all works out.
  - exit 16y ago
    what kind of hostility did you feel?

macco 16y ago

Shuttleworth 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.
- blasdel 16y ago
  A co-social society doesn't really work either — Belgium is basically disintegrating with the government in constant deadlock over Walloon/Flanders tensions.

cabalamat 16y ago

> 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 If for Koreans to be self-confident it's necessary for them to ban non-Koreans from restaurants, then I'd say South Korea is a pretty fucked-up society.

dgabriel 16y ago

I would guess that the Shirley Sherrod mess is a clear rebuttal to the statement: "no one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric." Not only were eyes batted, but heads rolled (even though it was an entirely false accusation of discrimination). Other examples of widely condemned figures who are, or appear to be, anti-white or anti-male: Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Andrea Dworkin.

lionhearted 16y ago
> clear rebuttal to the statement I don't know, you picked three extreme nutjobs[1] and one person who looked like they were completely derelicting their duty but it turned out it the evidence was mistaken... I'm not sure there's a clear rebuttal of anything. But regardless, that was a small part of the comment. The bigger point was about discrimination articles that focus on examples of discrimination against women and non-whites and not the other way around. Seems like that's a bad thing that teaches bad lessons in the modern world. Would you agree that's a bad thing? [1] I should clarify - Wright and Farrakhan are serious, serious anti-Semites to the point of being totally offensive. Dworkin... well, you can google for quotes from her if you've never been exposed to it.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  > I don't know, you picked three extreme nutjobs ... I'm not sure there's a clear rebuttal of anything. It's certainly a rebuttal of your statement "No one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric", because it would only take one counterexample to rebut it. Actually I'd guess that quantifying statements as "no-one" when it'd be more accurate to say "few people", is probably positively correlated with tribalistic thinking.
- dgabriel 16y ago
  I was just pointing out that anti-white, anti-male bias is clearly not considered acceptable, contrary to what you stated. The evidence against Sherrod was not mistaken so much as manipulated to project an anti-white bias that immediately got her fired. In the essay, the examples were chosen to illustrate his point, and were very non-contentious in my opinion. I see no "bad lesson," per say, but I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.

exit 16y ago

you don't make your contrarian point particularly clear. what is there to like about people being "confident and proud" qua their ethnicity?

lionhearted 16y ago
It carries over to their other interactions - I generally found Koreans to be more extroverted, social, less meek, more firm, making decisions faster, and less bureaucratic than average. There could be other factors contributing to this, though - there's mandatory military service, so a lot of the men there carry themselves like soldiers. Overall though, I was quite impressed with Koreans and Korea in general. I was lost at one point near Seoul Station, asked a police officer, and he walked me 10 minutes to where I was going while having a chat about the USA, South Korea, politics, and other things - very strong, but also very social and a good guy. I felt some hostility at certain times at Seoul, but I also haven't felt so welcome in a place since I was in Italy. Funny how that all works out.
- exit 16y ago
  what kind of hostility did you feel?