Will humanity ever be able to overcome that tribalistic instinct of "us vs. them?"
Will humanity ever be able to overcome that tribalistic instinct of "us vs. them?"
The way I see it that instinct is the cause behind so much suffering and injustice in the world.
All the Great Apes (probably, definitely), including us, have an instinct and built in skill at identifying snakes.
Researchers did experiments with both humans and other apes where they were shown progressively less obscured images of different predators and without fault we and our relatives were able to identify the snakes faster than any other creature.
This means that the instinct to find, and kill snakes goes back millions of years. Yet now when I encounter a snake my instinct is to move it to a safer spot so it doesn't get hurt or hurt me.
I think that if we can get over such a deep rooted instinct, we can get over the 'Us Vs Them' instinct too.
As long as power hungry people exist. It is basically easiest thing to implement in your politics and get people behind you.
Hey man, we’ll quit fighting when they do.
Humans are reactionary and emotionally driven. Thats why empty hot button issues are such a trigger for people. We need to learn to ignore those things and work together, but the pessimist in me doesn’t see it happening. Thats a massive shift and based on what I’ve observed in the US, that divide is doing nothing but widening.
All we can do is be aware of it, not get roped into manufactured propaganda, and unionize.
“Ape alone.. weak. Apes together…. strong”
So no, it’s baked-in the DNA of how we survive. We group to fight threats. Early days, that threat is protection from hostile wildlife like bears.
You scale that to a modern civilization - and you have groups of people fighting for resources, food, money, opportunities, land, etc. Sometimes they’re gangs. Sometimes they’re entire countries. Sometimes they’re groups of allied countries.
And heck, you see it in stupidly small scales too. “Coke v Pepsi”, “N64 v PlayStation”, “Rock Fans v Disco Fans”.
Sunni and Shia believe 98% of the same stuff. But the bit they don’t agree on pushes fringe lunatics to terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing, etc.
Same deal with Protestants and Catholics.
The only thing could make us drop “us versus them” mentality is a giant alien force more violent and sick than anything you can imagine.
Then maybe, humanity will be the “us” finally.
In my opinion, the result of our tribalism tendency that we are currently discussing has very little to do with "instinct", and it is rather the result of generational social conditioning we are exposed to since the day we are born; values and biases adopted unquestioningly from our caretakers, educators, and the culture and political reality that we grew up and associate with.
If a child without preexisting established knowledge or exposure can naturally make friendly associations toward an abstract-looking plushie that has one big eye and 10 legs, which has nothing similar to the appearance of a human, then the reason they would fear or hate people of different skin color or cultures is apparent.
I'll get more basic than everyone else here:
Unless the human brain collectively evolves in a very short period to function differently than it has since we first started throwing shit at other hominids, no. We, collectively, as a society, can aspire to be better than our animal nature but that hardware is still there and it will never, ever, stop pushing people to tribalism, selfishness, and aggression.
We can't fix us. We can only do the best with what we have and keep moving.
We will not evolve out of our petty differences until we have UtopiaTech like Star Trek Replicators that can satisfy every basic need, and allow people to pursue dreams, ideas, and hopes, free of the burden of having to run the orphan crushing machine just to desperately survive another day.
Remove? No. Overcome? We're already doing it.
Our society is far more accomodating than it has ever been. Different sexes, ethnicities, skin colors, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities and whatnot enjoy more acceptance and equality now than ever before. Something like the EU - a voluntary alliance of this size - would have been unthinkable probably just 100-200 years ago. And for all its flaws the participating nations have grown closer through it.
We still got ways to go particularly internationally and we must be ever vigilat against those that want to drag us backward but the progress is undeniable.
Us ve them is just a convenient cover for me me me, so I doubt it
Never. We will even discriminate against people with different ear length if it get that's far. Conflict is inevitable, it's in our genes, our memes.
Yes and no.
The reason why we form societies this to look after one another, make life easier and safer for us, and find mates.
We have successfully gone from the days where not having kids was a literal death sentence in old age, where a small scratch could easily get infected and kill you, and where starving to death was a frequent occurrence (interestingly enough, your body has all sorts of anti-kill-yourself measures built into your BIOS, such as exercise optimization curves so you don't burn up all your calories exercising (hunting), and starving yourself causes your body to do its damndest to keep as much fat as possible to keep you alive through famines, but I digress).
In some ways, we are at the highest peak of not being tribalistic. But people also invent new ways to create us vs them situations, such as worshiping a gourd vs beating up the shoe worshipers for being blasphemous. You see this often and it's the dumbest shit in the world, lol. Though that particular one skewers it well, haha.
Eventually, I think stuff like race and sexuality will be behind us largely, and it will be the latest minor thing.
Arguably we're doing a decent job right now. I'd say a majority of people in the West think genocide is bad, no exceptions made for any particular case. We'll never move past the tendency, transhumanism aside, but with enough education we can learn to identify it in ourselves and recognise it's wrong and bad.
But it's their fault!
it's what kept us alive during our early days as a specie. I think is it baked into our essence as a human. but if it can be controlled or diverted then yeah. fund us an alien and we'll be an earth tribe against aliens.
Ozymandias was correct
Ever is a long, long time. We won't live to see it, but I'm not confident that it will never happen.
We get tribal over everything. Countries, gangs, skin color, sexuality, religion, even bloody brand of smartphone makes us bicker or call the other person dumb. And the budding optimistic globalism that was happening have totally reversed in the last few years, it was an illusion.
I've stopped watching/reading news. I can't take it anymore. I lost hope.
Maybe in the extreme future but right now we've just barely started as a species, will we exist long enough to grow up?
Yes, because it has for thousands of years. Sure, it draws new lines, but then it overcomes them. It's almost like human history is the history of social and political progress.
Doubtful. Climate change and our own ignorant stupidity will wipe us out long before we’ll ever evolve past idiocracy.
Only if we were forced to and had our free will taken away.
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.
No, not if we existed for another million years. It seems pretty fundamental to how we work, and how animals work in general. We basically discriminate along most possible lines. Few enough people even aspire to anything else.
The late rapper, "Eyedea" of Eyedea & Abilities had a really memorable verse in a song that always comes to mind when I hear this discussed.
Grinding my teeth as I’m peddling uphill / The fight against ape-hood is fate versus free will / We think we've advanced but there's nowhere to go / Mammals stay captive to animal actions / So slowly we climb up this DNA brick wall / Addicted to emptiness, anger and pitfalls / Desire for space, territory, or lust / We'll eventually turn this whole planet to dust
No, and it shouldn't. Not all people are good, not all are working in your best interests and it's high time the rest of you grow up and realize that fact.
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.
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.
Bold to assume that it's an instinct and not a taught and learned behavior.
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.
Outside perspective. Only when we meet another other.
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
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.
The news feeding propaganda over and over isn't helping.
It will never happen as long as there is injustice in the world. Also, there isn't a perfect world where justice is 100% served. A good book to read about that (political book, but goes through the us vs them) is "why we are polarized" by Ezra Klein.
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 unless the fundamentals of human psychology change. Forever is a long time to say that won’t happen but certainly not in the foreseeable future.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be worked on or mitigated. But it’s not going away completely.
Not as long as capitalist nationalism is the dominant economic system. It's just tribalism on a global scale.
No. People are too dumb and a handful of smart ones will always exploit that.
No. There will always be another “them”. That’s 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 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.
Not so long as there are “haves” and “have-nots”.
Maybe if some mad scientist releases a virus with some CRISPR in it to edit our genes and snip out some of the tribalism drive. Otherwise, I doubt it.