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Tribalism is as old as humans, and previous successful attempts at “defeating” it have typically involved warring tribes being wholesale eradicated by, or assim
by jl6 6y ago
Tribalism is as old as humans, and previous successful attempts at “defeating” it have typically involved warring tribes being wholesale eradicated by, or assimilated into, larger tribes, then states, then blocs. Now we have global tribes and nobody bigger left to defeat or assimilate them.
The only way out I see is to try to grow the “sensible majority” into a dominant majority that can robustly eject extremists - make a bigger tribe, essentially. But what cluster of issues unites enough people to form a dominant political force, while also rejecting the dark patterns that consume the current political tribes?
- wincy 6y agoI’d guess economics is the only thing that can really unite people across all cultures. I live in an upper middle class Midwestern suburb , and my neighbors are Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Jordanian, Nigerian, Kenyan, and the people we bought our house from had Nepalese names based on a few Google searches. If we just make everyone rich, maybe they won’t want the world to burn?
- lotsofpulp 6y agoHaving disposable income is a culture itself, and different levels of wealth/income can be broken down into different tribes as well. Economics is also at the root of tribal disagreements. It’s all about securing assets for your tribe, and that doesn’t just mean money. It could also be the unquantifiable qualities that make up a stable tribe, which are found less frequently in tribes with less security of housing, food, energy, and opportunity. “You are the company you keep” is a popular saying that sort of touches on it.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago> The only way out I see is to try to grow the “sensible majority” into a dominant majority that can robustly eject extremists - make a bigger tribe, essentially. That's only good if we have the ultimate truth - if we have no entrenched wrong ideas ourselves. I think that's a dubious proposition. If we have an entrenched false idea X, then anyone who denies X is one of those extremists that we eject. But if X is actually false, by ejecting them we destroy the ability of society to figure out that X is in fact false.
- jl6 6y agoI think it’s the entrenchment that’s the problem. Science, for example, has a pretty good track record of coping with false ideas by being self-correcting and avoiding dogmatic truth claims. I don’t think a political body needs to be in possession of ultimate truth to identify and disempower those who do not seek it.
- jberryman 6y agoSo, like... the Democratic Party? I'm less than half joking. At least in the US (and oversimplifying) "tribalism" is what keeps the conservative party intact, while the liberal party is a big tent. One way you see this is that liberal policies tend to be broadly popular when presented outside the partisan frame. Meanwhile Republicans eneltered the election without even an official policy platform.