One thing I read in Sapiens that has stuck with me is that a natural group/tribe size is only 40 or so. Anything above that needs a common belief/god or a common enemy. God/religion served that purpose for a long while, then philosophies like communism/capitalism/marxism/liberalism/conservatism, etc. took over. Hitler/nazism is an example of a common enemy uniting people. More recently, and more relatable, you can see how lemmy itself grew exponentially because of the common enemy reddit. All this to say, tribalistic behavior can never be overcome as far as homo sapiens are concerned, because that is what defines us as a species.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
294 points (96.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43946 readers
552 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I think using a political philosophy or a common enemy to unite a society is more harmful than it is good, since those things will inevitably be held sacred, and it becomes impossible to think rationally about them. Religious people are able to disagree on things like economics because the things that they hold sacred are supernatural sky gods, instead of things which are of this world (Americans are an exception due to the polarization of the two-party system and the compelling force of American Civil Religion, which makes freedom, democracy, and the Constitution into sacred things), but people who hold a political ideology like Marxism or Liberalism to be sacred (Tons of people, many of them on this very website) cannot tolerate disagreement and will ignore facts that might disprove their ideology. This is manageable when it involves nothing more than a sky god, but when it involves the very basics of how society should operate, it gets bad, quickly, which is how you get thousands of dead dissenters and a permanently stagnant society. Using a common enemy is even worse since it leads to an irrational hatred of said enemy that drives people to do horrible things to eachother, with the most infamous example being the Holocaust. The Nazis also held their political ideals to be more sacred than their religious beliefs, coincidentally.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Doubtful. Climate change and our own ignorant stupidity will wipe us out long before weβll ever evolve past idiocracy.
The "Us vs. Them" mentality is also called the "in-group bias", in which you tend to align with other members of a perceived group (with little to no logical reason, it can be as simple as belts vs. suspenders). Like many other fallacies or biases, it is a built-in feature of our caveman-brains that no longer benefits us. When used in propaganda, it is often paired with the "strawman fallacy" to build the perception of an enemy that is barely even human.
You can learn to recognize these biases in yourself and in others - This is called critical thinking. I recommend the podcast "You Are Not So Smart" to everyone to get more insight on this subject.
No. That is human nature. In order to overcome that, we would have to evolve into a different species, which I would argue is less appealing than it might sound on the surface.
Instead of trying to overcome it, it makes more sense to build a society that directs that energy in a positive direction.
Maybe a solution could be getting rid of some tribes entirely, so that we're not so divided? We can still have tribes, but we really don't need this many of them
Are you from the future? It says this will be posted in 2 hours. Am I from the future??
Seriously though I think your admin can fix that, I've seen similar things before and it may be a configuration issue.
I'll just assume you're not talking about the people themselves, but rather the institutions that funnel people into modern day tribes. And in that case, I would agree with you, currently people are getting funneled into extremely niche groups that are inherently going to come into conflict. It might be necessary to reduce the granularity of human communities in order to arrive at a more cohesive whole. And doing that would not necessarily involve violence, but rather shutting down many of the commercial influences that create certain mindsets and desires in people that they wouldn't otherwise have.
Uhhh are you calling for genny cide ride now my man?
Nutteman! Hey, Nutteman! Race war? Nutteman! Hey, Nutteman!
God dammit why did Trevor have to die? Wkuk sketches bum me out now. Still so fucking funny though.
There's a book I read a few years ago named "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" that delvs into this a bit and why humans are so tribal instinctively. Would highly recommend.
I just finished this one today! Introduced me to a lot of new ideas and contexts. Good read
The way I see it that instinct is the cause behind so much suffering and injustice in the world.
That's just what they want you to think.
Outside perspective. Only when we meet another other.
The news feeding propaganda over and over isn't helping.
No
Bold to assume that it's an instinct and not a taught and learned behavior.
This current version of humans? No. But could it ever happen? Absolutely, if we assume our future evolutionary human descendants survive and provided we can supply everyone's needs.
Yes ...and the name will have to change from Homo sapiens to something else.
Homo Evolutis
I've heard from other evolutionary biologists that the next gen will be homo sapiens sapiens, and we'll be renamed something else.
interesting ... so I looked it up here :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_taxonomy
...and "homo sapiens sapiens" is not well defined for now at wikipedia - - maybe not the best source I know.
Do I read it correctly that you are an evolutionary biologist ?
No, I just watch content from evolutionary biologists, because it's something I'm interested in.
It may not be that our version of the species will be renamed, but since species delineations are somewhat arbitrary (where does one generation stop and one start, when it's actually a gradual process?), future generations of biologists may decide that we are something else. Either way, we won't be around to know!
Not unless the fundamentals of human psychology change. Forever is a long time to say that wonβt happen but certainly not in the foreseeable future.
That doesnβt mean it canβt be worked on or mitigated. But itβs not going away completely.
No. There will always be another βthemβ. Thatβs what makes humans so great, but also so destructive. We never settle, and will always look for division, even if we need to create it.
I don't think it's an instinct, because it can absolutely be taught.
I encourage my kids to get along with everyone, but at the same time I can see how some of their peers are taught to be racists and other clique behaviours from home by parents who are just like that and don't even think about it when they pass it on.
But by default, nobody is like that from birth. Babies aren't racists or afraid of different kinds of people. The fear of others is taught.
It will take many generations to change.
I think we could if enough effort was put forth into making it happen. The problem is that very same "instinct," or rather the plethora of different experiences and ideals held by individuals seems to make it harder if not impossible to ever come to a global united consensus on anything.
I hope so. Knowledge and curiousity feed intelligence feed knowledge feed curiousity. A highly educated society with healthy education sytem and good working socioeconomy (concurency in news coverage) can theoretically get over "us vs. them". Until we someday maybe lose it as evolutionary trait.
I don't think it needs to be overcome, just applied differently. A more global "us" vs problems like global warming or poverty would be fantastic.
It's also a self preservation instinct - sometimes there's just too much going on and you gotta narrow your focus to the people around you.
It's a good question. I think it's been shown it's in our DNA to have a tribe that we associate with, and anything outside that tribe is a threat. Used to be a literal tribe, now I think it's mostly based on race. Can this be overcome with education? Unfortunately I'm really not sure.
Not as long as capitalist nationalism is the dominant economic system. It's just tribalism on a global scale.