Tribalism is Good

Tribalism separates the wheat from the chaff.

I have been reflecting on the alleged negative effects of tribalism – almost every mention of it is linked to some negative consequence. “Tribalism is bad”, say the intelligentsia. “It causes conflict and division.”

It can cause division, but is tribalism really bad?

I wonder.

A 2019 research study found that:

“Humans evolved in the context of intense intergroup competition, and groups comprised of loyal members more often succeeded than those that were not. Therefore, selective pressures have consistently sculpted human minds to be ‘tribal,’ and group loyalty and concomitant cognitive biases likely exist in all groups.”

Some psychologists and social scientists argue a brain designed for interaction among a few hundred relatively homogenous people is simply not capable of adapting to entire modern societies full of cultural and racial diversity. The argument is that tribalism is not scalable, that even if large aggregations of tribal structures have the same small set of objectives they all collectively recognize as beneficial in common, the smaller, lower order differences will eventually and inevitably lead to internecine conflicts that will rip the loose union apart.

The extension of that argument would seem to mean that uniting as a nation is a complete impossibility. Could that be true or do tribes have the ability to set aside inter-tribal differences in service of the greater good?

We are all members of a tribe at some level.

I have written about my extended family, we fit the definition of a tribe. Tribes are united by loyalty and work together in defense of their own common interests.

I said today that I thought I was coming around to a legitimate defense of tribalism, and I believe I have.

Bo Winegard, an essayist with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, wrote at Quillette that tribalism is a net good, stating that:

“On balance, we should applaud tribalism, not condemn it. It is the solution to a fundamental dilemma faced by any social animal: How to distinguish cooperators from exploiters. At bottom, tribalism is simply a division of the social world into ingroup and outgroup with a concomitant preference for the ingroup. We tend, when we discuss tribalism, to think of potentially pernicious instances: countries battling for prestige, gangs fighting for territory, political ideologues promoting hatred of opponents. But there are many wholesome and even inspiring instances of tribalism: Church communities working together to feed the poor, husbands and wives doting on each other, cousins helping each other through financial hardships. And without the tendency to make this distinction between ingroup and outgroup, human sociality could not arise.”

It is no surprise that cooperation is far more difficult than individual action – and that even gets more perilous as the group grows. Managing disagreement often pales in comparison to managing agreement. One would think that being able to separate the looters from the producers would be a prized characteristic because others can always cheat, steal, and manipulate. It is always helpful to know who is on your team and who might be willing to sacrifice the tribe’s goals to satisfy their own.

Given that we are humans, and humans are inarguably imperfect, the loyalty of the tribe would seem to be a valuable tool to offset the threat of the cheaters. Those who cheat, exploit and break the trust of the tribe are chastised, chastened or simply cast out and become part of an untrustworthy outgroup.

Only the trustworthy remain in the tribe.

Winegard goes on to note that:

“Tribalism, as noted earlier, can be harmful, and not all forms of tribalism are healthy. Social groups that are highly nepotistic, clannish, and skeptical of strangers, are limited. They struggle to build and maintain impartial institutions. Some of the great achievements of the West did in fact require transcending certain kinds of tribalism and relaxing other kinds. But they did not require the eradication of tribalism altogether. One important feature, for example, of Western tribalism is that much of it is voluntary. People are free to choose their tribal affiliations (for example, their spouse, community, religious group, political party). But once they choose, they are still tribal. They still prefer their spouse’s company to that of a stranger (or they had better!).”

Personally, I think the key to making tribalism work is to reduce the common goals to the absolute minimum that can be achieved, and that all tribal members unequivocally understand with which the all agree. In my estimation, that is exactly what the Constitution of the United States did – it took the most important things necessary to keep a nation sized tribe together and cut them to the absolute minimum.

I was thinking about this the other day when I said there are only two ideological divisions that matter -those who believe in and protect the Constitution and those who don’t. That is the only aspect of American life that separates us into tribes at a national level.

Tribalism makes it easy for all of us to understand which tribe people are in.

Maybe I made the case, maybe I didn’t, but even with its risks and negatives, I tend to agree that tribalism is a net positive.