A very reasonable piece,
Sci. I thank you for taking the time to respond, and outline your position like this.
I am a tribalist--or, rather, a tribalist lite. What I mean by that is that I recognize that even if the specific question of what constitutes a society varies from culture to culture and over time, the simple fact of the matter is that it is intrinsic to the overwhelming majority of human beings that they are social animals who need, want, and create group identities for themselves--who create societies for themselves to live in. Yeah, there are always going to be outliers who are quite literally anti-social, but they're always the extreme minority. Human beings need and want other human beings.
Oh, there’s no argument on that point. I would suggest, though, that it's a common misconception that the choices available are "structured tribal identities" or "anti-social", with no other options. That dichotomy isn’t by any means the entirety of the matter. Non-tribalists are not necessarily anti-social at all; in fact, I'd argue that they're usually naturally cooperative, and most comfortable in loosely affiliated but truly extensive collectives. If one automatically assumes themselves to be part of a group, then they have no need to construct or join one (and therefore no need to place their own individuality second to group identity). It’s the individualist who happily exists within the structure of the shared rules, because community is intrinsic, while the tribalists outwardly rebel and agitate because all communal interaction is a negotiation (you’ll rarely see a true individualist waving a placard or joining a march, even though they're the first to have private issues with the status quo).
(Most politics is essentially relational aggression or implied threat of such, to varying degrees. The true individualist has little grasp of such things, and therefore isn't very effective at it. Or so I'd argue).
One doesn’t need to construct (or join with) a structured identity in order to achieve sociability. Picture instead a sense of community that exists as a continuum - a sphere perhaps, encompassing all, and within that sphere are individual entities who all float as unique drops. Through various currents and swells they interact, brush against or latch on to each other, sometimes briefly, sometimes all but permanently. The desire for emotional connection, a sense of belonging - these are indeed intrinsic to most humans. It doesn't follow, though, that this involves group structure, at least as a matter of actual psychology and not a constructed law or societal contract.
I think that the creation of group identities is a legitimate act. And, yes, I think that the group identity that is created subsequently has in and of itself certain rights, including the right to perpetuate itself as a group, and the right to defend itself from hostile foreign groups.
I understand this. Most people, I think, would agree with you. After all, as you note, that form of group dynamic is intrinsic to the sense of identity and the evolutionary hard-wiring of most humans. Indeed, although I find it questionable myself, I'm not trying to say it's illegitimate - I don't think that would be at all justified of me, any more than saying that one’s sexuality, say, is illegitimate. It’s simply the way people are. I just like to stress at times that it's not the only way, and that plurality is not a natural tribalistic concept, so alternatives are often unlikely to be considered.
I also think that those groups benefit most when they are able to work together with other groups, to create feelings of loyalty and kinship between themselves. This is how tribes turned into clans, clans turned into cities, cities turned into nations, and (in the Star Trek Universe) how nations turned into unified worlds, and how unified worlds turned into Federations.
This is why I call myself a tribalist lite--it's not that I think my tribe, or any particular tribe, is inherently better than any other tribe. (At least, not consciously; I am of course as prone to falling into ethnocentric thought patterns as anyone else, and have to consciously work not to fall into those patterns that my racist, nationalist tribe has indoctrinated me into.) In that sense, I am not a nationalist. But I do think that tribes are a necessary component of human identity that can be forces for good instead of evil. And I think that each tribe is worthy of respect and value, of being seen as beautiful, even if it comes with some aspects that are objectionable.
So, to me, yeah, I do assert that genocide is, if not worse than mass murder, then wrong in a different sort of way, in a very unique sort of way. It's not that the lives of 600 national villagers in New Guinea are worth more than the lives of 1,000,000 Han in China. It's that the rest of humanity has, in addition to those individual human lives, also lost a culture, a language, a group identity whose uniqueness made the world a more beautiful place. Group identities are like colors on a painting -- they may not be "objectively" real, but they are real to human psychology, and losing one makes the painting less beautiful than it had once been.
Again, I respect and understand this perspective. I would say myself, though, that losing an individual makes the painting less beautiful, and it is always the individuals that matter, overshadowing any secondary effect of the simultaneous removal of a shared culture (a simple result of my default worldview being essentially that of individual people within a shared community rather than structures, which I have difficult recognizing as “legitimate” on the same level). I'd argue that individuality is the only real measure of diversity. It's certainly not the case that I wouldn't feel or acknowledge the loss of any cultural, ethnic or linguistic bloc (I myself think that having individuals marinated in so many distinct customs, cultures and languages is unendingly delightful, and attempts to quash them or remove them from the tapestry are indeed distasteful in the extreme. Indeed, I'd act to preserve any in danger of being lost like most anyone else) but unlike most people I don’t see a cultural, national, political, ideological or religious identity as intrinsic. Most people protect such things as they would protect their own self – indeed, they see them as all but synonymous with the self, another consequence of that tribalist need to dig in the claws and never let go. Again, though, I accept that this is an area where I’m in a distinct minority. As you say, most people perceive a group identity as a form of corporate personage, with its own intrinsic rights. I imagine it would be difficult for most people to have it any other way.
This also causes occasional problems, in that I respect individuals but not group identities, whereas many people consider membership under an umbrella identity to be a defining aspect of their individuality. They're also likely to hold the group sacrosanct and the individual as the legitimate target of attack, where I'm more likely to view it the other way around.
Well, more to the point, the idea that killing huge swaths of a population is acceptable occurs when those people are made the victims of "Othering," of making them seem less like legitimate members of the tribe and therefore subject to the kinds of violence to which foreigners are subject.
I'm not sure I agree. Unless the idea is that one's own soldiers are illegitimate to the tribe. The tribe’s defensive ring often has great esteem and cultural regard, sometimes to the exclusion of almost any other segment, depending on how one looks at it (there are many valid angles of perspective here, I think); that doesn’t stop leaders and governments, or even sometimes whole populations, from cheerfully sacrificing them in droves.
The point you make, though, acknowledges the idea that a "foreigner" - one not subordinated within the structure to which the individual has affiliated - is somehow external to the community; they and you are not part of the same continuum, and yet they are nonetheless an irritant or an intolerable provocation. It’s essentially the opposite of what I’d define as the non-tribalist view, wherein everyone is part of the same continuum, but there is (usually) no inherent relationship between you and the other – unless you merge with them in an augmentation of the similarity/unification pole of empathy to the exclusion of the difference/distance pole, which is always a danger.
As for killing, well, the “modern” extrapolation of war (which curbs the prior excesses, for better or worse) is based around the notion that it is acceptable to kill or attempt to kill individuals – often in reasonably large numbers - but not to destroy groups or the structures to which those individuals are subordinated. (Incidentally, I would argue that this is why no modern tribalist culture has a coherent sense of young adult or late adolescent males as a distinct socio-political grouping, even though it clearly often acts as though they are, because to recognise them as such would be to illegitimate the basis for warfare, threatening to turn war itself into something in contravention of modern sensibilities). No-one ever bothered preventing warfare so long as only
individuals were killed. Once it got to the point that a war could conceivably destroy the tribe – when planes began bombing the cities far from the front – only
then did it give many people pause, because the tribalist viewpoint defines the world in terms of blocs and structures, not individuals, which are subordinate pieces of those structures. The loss of a certain structure, unless an actual straightforward goal (I.E “exterminate that filthy tribe, as is our right by vengeance!”, etc., etc.), shocks and disturbs tribalists on a level that killing an individual, or a million individuals, does not.
Large-scale political actors cannot be trusted if they do not feel a kinship to your large-scale political actor.
Ah, Tribalists. Again, everything is about group structure and membership and subordination and control.
Well, no--sometimes it's about group structure and membership, but subordination and control aren't factors because your tribe is internally egalitarian.
Ah, well, the people within such a tribe may be on equal footing, but all are subordinate to the tribal identity. The reason I added the amused laugh there is because – and I say this in salute to what I see as your perceptivity, not as a criticism – you summarized the tribal perspective for me quite perfectly in that sentence. It’s indeed the need for
kinship. Unless a being feels that the other being is subordinated into the shared group identity of which they are a part – that (s)he has, essentially, a claim on them - then the tribalist can never rest easy, because (s)he cannot tolerate anything which doesn’t work for their betterment (a shared good of which their own good is included) for fear that the other person might then be working in
opposition to their betterment. Unless one's claws are dug into the others around them, the fear is that one faces a rival/competitor.
I don't really see the world like that. This is why I often find myself on the same general page as other people, regarding various opinions on social or political matters, but resisting them regardless (which I imagine can be frustrating). For example, I’m very big on socialist programs and the lure of unifying alliance. But I’m also sharply aware that for
me to pursue such ends is different from many others pursuing it. It’s not quite the same thing, because the basic assumptions on which it rests are distinct, and the end result will not be the same. Which is why I’m also very sympathetic to many criticisms and concerns regarding the sort of policies and ideas that I’m actually inclined to support. A global government as I imagine it, for example, would not be the reality that emerged. The difficult question, I find, is that of whether my ideas and opinions are actually workable outside the limited context of my own pondering. Can they actually apply usefully or legitimately in wider practice? But that’s how all people work, of course. Their ethical assumptions are outgrowths of their natural instincts; as you have noted here, the evolutionary pressures that produced the tendency to a tribal identity in humans inform the mindset of most people.
But, yeah, that is the basis of most human psychology--and of most humanoid psychology in the Trekverse. The simple fact of the matter is that human beings evolved from social animals that organized themselves into groups in order to survive and reproduce, and that these groups inevitably had to compete with one-another for resources. This meant that those tribes composed of individuals with a propensity to feel alienated from members of foreign tribes and loyal to members of their own, and willing to use violence against the former in pursuit of the economic interests of the latter, would be more likely to survive and reproduce. Thus, evolution selected for tribalism, pure and simple.
Indeed, this is entirely true. But evolution isn't a zero sum game. Remnants of the non-tribalists remain. Those who would no doubt be considered liabilities in prior times of struggle, though I believe that in the modern world it’s the tribalism that is the disadvantageous trait (but that’s a matter for another debate!)
I’m always reminded of the fable of the bat and the war between the beasts and the birds. It’s often interpreted as being about righteous distaste for deceit and self-serving amorality, with the bat switching sides to its current political advantage and therefore rightfully earning the disdain of all. However, I’m more partial to the interpretation that paints the bat sympathetically (removing the idea that it was motivated by deceitful gain or was mercenary in its allegiance, instead suggesting that it simply didn't have one). The bat can find itself at home in either group, and equally doesn’t truly belong in either. It is the only animal that doesn’t instinctively assign itself to a group identity or subordinate itself to their ownership, nor requires others to do so before it can relate to them. It can move between the groups, making half-hearted efforts to respect their ways by trying to fit itself to their tribe. Of course, the birds and beasts succumb to tribalist squabbling and go to war with one another, and then decide that the
bat is the evil one for refusing to commit to a tribe. And now they’ve stopped pointlessly warring, and are united in hating and shunning the one being who was immune to their silliness. It’s a very telling story, really). Several other sub-species of human didn't survive to the modern era, according to some accounts I’ve read possibly because they didn't adopt certain behaviours that our kind did, so I’ve long accepted that what was, was, and it is foolish to really moan about it. Or indeed condemn it.
Tribalism is just human(oid) nature. It's not going away. The trick is to hack it so it works for peace, justice, equality, and liberty instead of against them.
Oh, indeed. I've long had to accept that there’s nothing to be done but to live with it. It's part of the reason why I try not to be too judgemental. Also, why I'm wary of announcing my own positions on most matters, since I don’t believe the worldview I’m describing is really useful in general. (This is why I’m sure I can seem to support a position at length and then suddenly swing out to undermine it, or dive into the same thing I'm apparently defending like a marlin into a bait ball. I wouldn’t be a very good political ally
at all, because I can’t be trusted in that context
. Not that such would bother me
)
Again, everything is about group structure and membership and subordination and control.
