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Humans have always been social and have probably always had some kind of "us" and "them." That's probably what most people mean by tribalism. That's always been

Humans have always been social and have probably always had some kind of "us" and "them." That's probably what most people mean by tribalism. That's always been there. But wouldn't rewinding the clock to the very beginnings of our species get rid of basically everything that could divide people into groups based on social constructs? I think that's what the parent comment was getting at by "artifacts of tribalism". In that sense it's trivial to consider an ancestor who has never thought of any number of things that split us today. How many potential ways of defining our "tribe" are we ignoring today that were crucial to our ancestors or will be crucial to our descendants? How do you really define experiencing an artifact of tribalism anyway? Once you've invented or have taught the concept of "being French", does it count as experiencing it? Even if you don't believe that concept has merit, or if you're only distantly affected by historical events surrounding France?

ixtli 9y ago
Yes you are correct about what I meant by artifacts: stuff that flows from tribalism. Your question about what we're ignoring is super interesting and while I don't have great answers this reminds me of a super interesting concept discussed in "The Story of B" called The Great Forgetting ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_B#The_Great_Forgetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_B#The_Great_Forge... ) TL;DR: The majority of time humans have existed we've actually been a loose federation of hunter gatherers. When we banded together into towns and cities we very quickly lost tens of thousands of years of learning because the nature of our lives changed and we hadn't previously been writing anything down. Another thing that occurs to me is that complete mutual aid (which required abandonment of tribalism) may very well be "unnatural"! However, if the goal is total equity in society, this isn't an excuse: we're capable of complex problem solving and as a result we're likely capable of "overcoming" our baser instincts, if tribalism can be counted among them. A quotation from The Dispossessed comes to mind, when UKLG is describing the world of an anarcho-communist faction that had, instead of being subjugated, gone to a barren planet and eked out a life there for centuries despite its very harsh climate: "They cut back very hard indeed, but to a minimum beneath which they would not go; they would not regress to pre-urban, pre-technological tribalism. They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism. They built the roads first, the houses second. The special resources and products of each region were interchanged continually with those of others, in an intricate process of balance: that balance of diversity which is the characteristic of life, of natural and social ecology." (pp. 95-96)

ixtli 9y ago

Yes you are correct about what I meant by artifacts: stuff that flows from tribalism. Your question about what we're ignoring is super interesting and while I don't have great answers this reminds me of a super interesting concept discussed in "The Story of B" called The Great Forgetting ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_B#The_Great_Forgetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_B#The_Great_Forge... ) TL;DR: The majority of time humans have existed we've actually been a loose federation of hunter gatherers. When we banded together into towns and cities we very quickly lost tens of thousands of years of learning because the nature of our lives changed and we hadn't previously been writing anything down. Another thing that occurs to me is that complete mutual aid (which required abandonment of tribalism) may very well be "unnatural"! However, if the goal is total equity in society, this isn't an excuse: we're capable of complex problem solving and as a result we're likely capable of "overcoming" our baser instincts, if tribalism can be counted among them. A quotation from The Dispossessed comes to mind, when UKLG is describing the world of an anarcho-communist faction that had, instead of being subjugated, gone to a barren planet and eked out a life there for centuries despite its very harsh climate: "They cut back very hard indeed, but to a minimum beneath which they would not go; they would not regress to pre-urban, pre-technological tribalism. They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism. They built the roads first, the houses second. The special resources and products of each region were interchanged continually with those of others, in an intricate process of balance: that balance of diversity which is the characteristic of life, of natural and social ecology." (pp. 95-96)