There is a widespread idea that people from the past were dumb due to a lack of information, the age of smartphones and free access to information has made it clear that a lack of information was never the issue, we are just really fucking stupid animals.
I mean, yeah, but also we made machines to feed us interesting things and it turns out we really like to be mad for some reason (justified or otherwise) and we’ll share things to make others mad too. Throw in a profit motive, economic woes due to said profit motive, and it’s over.
Part of our animal nature is to be tribalistic, and we don’t often get a lot of that in our daily lives so that people find ways to feed that need. Tribalism involves violent intent about outgroups that don’t conform to our “tribe” (read: pack).
There are two meanings to the word “Tribalism”. One sense of the word just describes people living in tribes. The second meaning involves discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty.
There is a perhaps understandable tendency to conflate these two meanings. For one they are spelled and pronounced the same. We aren’t really taught a lot about tribal cultures, and we just kind of assume things. Also our ‘cultures’ have been teaching us tribal people were savages and we did them a favor by conquering them.
I’m not claiming that they don’t correlate to some extent. Of course you are going to have a preference for the people in your tribe over the people not in your tribe. You know those people, you are around them a lot and can personally vouch for their character. People not in your tribe are strangers and not immediately trusted. That much is true.
What I take issue with is the idea that Tribal people automatically hated anyone not in their tribe (out group) and had violent intent towards them. Also, equating being in a tribe and being in a pack is dehumanizing.
Yes, there was sometimes conflict with neighboring “Tribes”, but for the most part tribes stuck to their own territory and didn’t cause problems for other groups. Tribes often coexisted peacefully near each other for hundreds of years. This was advantageous in that it gave us trade partners and potentially ways to get new genes into the gene pool. Plus unnecessary fighting is just a good way to end up dead for no reason.
Typically tribal people settle on their territory pretty quickly and it’s usually enough or more than enough to provide for the needs of the tribe- so there was little need to encroach on other peoples territory. Also when conflicts did arise, it very rarely escalated into ‘Total War’, where the goal was to kill/subjugate the members of the other tribe and take over their territory, because A) that’s a good way to get a lot of your own people killed, and B) they had their own territory so they didn’t need more.
Ironically, it was the invention of “modern” agriculture and “Civilization” that really kicked off the second type of tribalism. Modern (aka Totalitarian) style agriculture is extremely efficient. As such it nearly always produces a surplus of food (barring droughts, blights, and other natural disasters). When you introduce a surplus of food into a population- it has he effect that the population size increases along with it. Once you get more people than the land can support, then you do need more territory.
Another effect of ‘Civilization’ is that you see full time soldiers for the first time. In a tribe practicing subsistence living, your job would typically be something related to the daily survival of the tribe. Hunter, Gatherer, Cook, Crafts-person etc. If ‘War’ broke out then all of the able bodied Men and sometimes women would become ‘Warriors’ for the duration of the conflict. Again, since there was relatively little conflict there was no need to have people who were warriors exclusively (soldiers). With ‘civilization’ you can pay some people out of the surplus of food to guard the food.
So what happens when you are a large group of people, made powerful by the new technology and you find yourself in need of more land to farm? You take it- typically from the tribe next door. Only now the goal is ‘Total War’. You want to kill or subjugate everyone in the territory you are tying to conquer. The problem is that they are human beings and you are human beings- so how do we get normal people to want to fight and kill their neighbors? The second form of Tribalism. That group is bad. They are uncultured swine. They are subhuman in some way because they are different. That’s the kind of attitude you have to foster about other people to get your people to agree to conquer them.
Pretty much the entirety of human history sees the same scenario play out. ‘Civilized’ groups ‘other’ tribal people and systematically wipe them out and/or conquer them and appropriate their land. It wasn’t until Europe/Asia had basically ran out of tribal people to conquer that nations started to go to war with each other.
The same thing happened with civilizations that arose in the New World, Mayans, Aztec’s, Inca etc. It’s no coincidence that these cultures relied heavily on agriculture.
What is my point? It’s that ‘Tribal’ people are less ‘tribal’ than civilized people. It’s the civilized people who are savage.
Why does this matter? We tend to forget that for the vast majority of human history we lived tribally. It’s kind of easy to forget that because people didn’t start recording history until right around the same time as civilizations were invented.
What am I trying to say? It’s not “a part of our animal nature to be tribalistic”, automatically hating anyone not in our in group and harboring violent intent about them.
Further evidence, look at modern attitudes towards tribalistic thinking. Despite living in the more savage mode of living- a large percentage of humans have woke up to the fact that tribalism is bad, short sighted, bigoted, and unfair. Take some very young children and put them in a playground together and they will play. They don’t form little cliques based on superficial characteristics or ‘culture’. We have to be taught to hate each other. We have to be told the reasons why it’s ok to discriminate or subjugate others.
You are taking what I’ve said far to literally. I wasn’t writing my dissertation, I was making observations. I also did not infer that being tribalistic makes you hate outgroups, but in the sense of “tribes” yes they have always had violence inherent to them, because we live in a violent world. Bears can kill you, moose can kill you, other tribes can kill you. It comes from protectionism more than hate, but that notion gets compromised by bad actors pushing an agenda.
There have always been things to fight for. The good hunting grounds, the good fishing grounds, the safest places to camp, etc… violence isn’t always a bad thing either, it is a necessary part of living in a diverse world. You can’t reason with a fire, or a bear. You can avoid them, but that’s just protectionism again. I never implied tribalism is bad, I implied it’s a part of our nature. Humans are pack animals that have always lived in family groups and fought to protect the sanctity of that group from outside forces. Civilization is the act of forgetting the past to damn the future. It’s not what it is supposed to be, but that’s what it has become. We use our “civility” as a cudgel to beat those who think/live differently.
Perhaps. This particular topic has been a lifelong interest of mine, so if I went into far to great of detail in my answer I apologize. Honestly I tried to hold back and stay on topic, but I failed to be concise for sure.
I wasn’t writing my dissertation, I was making observations.
Fair enough
I also did not infer that being tribalistic makes you hate outgroups.
Eh, you may not have been intending to imply that, but with the statement “Tribalism involves violent intent about outgroups that don’t conform to our “tribe” (read: pack).” you can probably see how someone could easily infer that’s what you meant.
in the sense of “tribes” yes they have always had violence inherent to them, because we live in a violent world.
This may seem pedantic and forgive me if you aren’t interested in the distinction, but a group of people organizing themselves into “Tribes” is no more and in a lot of ways less violent than other ways of organizing yourself, so to associate the two does a disservice to both the method of organization, and the people who have been and still are members of tribes. That was the point of my rant about how ‘Civilization’ was when you really start to see ‘Tribalism’ in the bad sense take off. It’s not your fault that they named the word after the wrong group- I guess I just want to highlight the distinction for the people who are interested. I’m not trying to attack you personally.
Bears can kill you, moose can kill you, other tribes can kill you. It comes from protectionism more than hate
Of course, and please don’t mistake me, I’m not putting forth some sort of ‘Noble Savage’ argument. Tribal people were people and had all of the faults people do. My overall point is one of generalities and not hard and fast rules, it’s still an important thing to consider imo.
but that notion gets compromised by bad actors pushing an agenda.
Exactly. One of those agendas has traditionally been that ‘Civilization’ is an unmitigated good and nothing of value was lost, while ‘Tribalism’ was when humans were at our most animalistic and violent. I would just like to see the narrative more closely fit the reality of the situation
There have always been things to fight for. The good hunting grounds, the good fishing grounds, the safest places to camp, etc…
Eh, kinda but not really. In our modern view we can recognize that other people live in areas that have resources we would like to have, but we don’t advocate for fighting those people to get the resources. We trade for them. Prehistoric and tribal people were likewise capable of trading for resources, and did so frequently. Fighting for it (endangering everyone involved) was likely the the last resort in most cases. We tend to overlook the fact that in our abundant society we always have ‘spare’ young men we can send of to war for territory or resources. People living a subsistence lifestyle typically valued such young men who could go and hunt dangerous prey much more highly than we seem to value our young men.
Only a madman in 2025 would advocate annexing another sovereign nation to get their oil, trees, or minerals. It was likely just as rare for tribal people to fight over such things when ‘sane’ alternatives existed.
Humans are pack animals that have always lived in family groups and fought to protect the sanctity of that group from outside forces.
As you can probably guess because of my username, I am not personally bothered by being called a ‘pack animal’, because I have a deep understanding of what those things mean. There are (perhaps subtle but important) differences between a ‘pack’ and a ‘tribe’, that I won’t go into (unless you are interested), but my point is in light of the way tribal people have been traditionally portrayed by western culture, equating a group of human beings with wild animals has all sorts of icky connotations that perhaps you don’t mean but are present nonetheless. If you wouldn’t refer to a group of black folks as “Monkeys” or “Apes”, you might think twice about making such comparisons, that’s all I’m saying. After all it is a fact that as human beings we are all Monkeys and Apes, but thanks to racist douchebags- it can be hurtful to people not in our ‘in groups’ to go around saying that if you don’t clarify exactly what you mean.
Civilization is the act of forgetting the past to damn the future…
I like that. It’s poetic and there is a lot of truth in that. I may steal that for future conversations.
We use our “civility” as a cudgel to beat those who think/live differently.
Fair enough. I was certainly using broad strokes but thought to say “humanity” should include all of “us”. I get what you are saying and certainly did not choose my words too carefully. I often forget the nuances of speech do not translate to text very well.
I like that you say only a mad man would annex another country for its resources and yet you have Russia trying to rebuild the USSR, Israel annihilating the Palestinian people because of the land they are living on and Mango Mussolini is threatening to annex my nation of Canada for our resources because we have lots and he’s a giant douche. Just saying…
Inherent human traits we like and even traits we don’t like can be traced back to our animal nature and denying the connection has caused so many of the wrongs we in “society” have to suffer. That is the point I was trying to make in the first place anyways.
I like that you say only a mad man would annex another country for its resources and yet you have Russia trying to rebuild the USSR, Israel annihilating the Palestinian people because of the land they are living on and Mango Mussolini is threatening to annex my nation of Canada for our resources because we have lots and he’s a giant douche. Just saying…
Yeah, that was my little way of criticizing such people. It is madness imo. If it comes to that, a lot of Americans will be fighting on your side.
Inherent human traits we like and even traits we don’t like can be traced back to our animal nature and denying the connection has caused so many of the wrongs we in “society” have to suffer. That is the point I was trying to make in the first place anyways.
Agreed. Certainly there is a part of our nature that is fine with violence and a part that nurturing and loving. We are in a privileged position to be able to direct our own evolution, physically and culturally. Hopefully the better angels our our nature will prevail in the end :)
Apparently as many dumbasses around back then as now.
There is a widespread idea that people from the past were dumb due to a lack of information, the age of smartphones and free access to information has made it clear that a lack of information was never the issue, we are just really fucking stupid animals.
I mean, yeah, but also we made machines to feed us interesting things and it turns out we really like to be mad for some reason (justified or otherwise) and we’ll share things to make others mad too. Throw in a profit motive, economic woes due to said profit motive, and it’s over.
Part of our animal nature is to be tribalistic, and we don’t often get a lot of that in our daily lives so that people find ways to feed that need. Tribalism involves violent intent about outgroups that don’t conform to our “tribe” (read: pack).
Warning: Rant
There are two meanings to the word “Tribalism”. One sense of the word just describes people living in tribes. The second meaning involves discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty.
There is a perhaps understandable tendency to conflate these two meanings. For one they are spelled and pronounced the same. We aren’t really taught a lot about tribal cultures, and we just kind of assume things. Also our ‘cultures’ have been teaching us tribal people were savages and we did them a favor by conquering them.
I’m not claiming that they don’t correlate to some extent. Of course you are going to have a preference for the people in your tribe over the people not in your tribe. You know those people, you are around them a lot and can personally vouch for their character. People not in your tribe are strangers and not immediately trusted. That much is true.
What I take issue with is the idea that Tribal people automatically hated anyone not in their tribe (out group) and had violent intent towards them. Also, equating being in a tribe and being in a pack is dehumanizing.
Yes, there was sometimes conflict with neighboring “Tribes”, but for the most part tribes stuck to their own territory and didn’t cause problems for other groups. Tribes often coexisted peacefully near each other for hundreds of years. This was advantageous in that it gave us trade partners and potentially ways to get new genes into the gene pool. Plus unnecessary fighting is just a good way to end up dead for no reason.
Typically tribal people settle on their territory pretty quickly and it’s usually enough or more than enough to provide for the needs of the tribe- so there was little need to encroach on other peoples territory. Also when conflicts did arise, it very rarely escalated into ‘Total War’, where the goal was to kill/subjugate the members of the other tribe and take over their territory, because A) that’s a good way to get a lot of your own people killed, and B) they had their own territory so they didn’t need more.
Ironically, it was the invention of “modern” agriculture and “Civilization” that really kicked off the second type of tribalism. Modern (aka Totalitarian) style agriculture is extremely efficient. As such it nearly always produces a surplus of food (barring droughts, blights, and other natural disasters). When you introduce a surplus of food into a population- it has he effect that the population size increases along with it. Once you get more people than the land can support, then you do need more territory.
Another effect of ‘Civilization’ is that you see full time soldiers for the first time. In a tribe practicing subsistence living, your job would typically be something related to the daily survival of the tribe. Hunter, Gatherer, Cook, Crafts-person etc. If ‘War’ broke out then all of the able bodied Men and sometimes women would become ‘Warriors’ for the duration of the conflict. Again, since there was relatively little conflict there was no need to have people who were warriors exclusively (soldiers). With ‘civilization’ you can pay some people out of the surplus of food to guard the food.
So what happens when you are a large group of people, made powerful by the new technology and you find yourself in need of more land to farm? You take it- typically from the tribe next door. Only now the goal is ‘Total War’. You want to kill or subjugate everyone in the territory you are tying to conquer. The problem is that they are human beings and you are human beings- so how do we get normal people to want to fight and kill their neighbors? The second form of Tribalism. That group is bad. They are uncultured swine. They are subhuman in some way because they are different. That’s the kind of attitude you have to foster about other people to get your people to agree to conquer them.
Pretty much the entirety of human history sees the same scenario play out. ‘Civilized’ groups ‘other’ tribal people and systematically wipe them out and/or conquer them and appropriate their land. It wasn’t until Europe/Asia had basically ran out of tribal people to conquer that nations started to go to war with each other.
The same thing happened with civilizations that arose in the New World, Mayans, Aztec’s, Inca etc. It’s no coincidence that these cultures relied heavily on agriculture.
What is my point? It’s that ‘Tribal’ people are less ‘tribal’ than civilized people. It’s the civilized people who are savage.
Why does this matter? We tend to forget that for the vast majority of human history we lived tribally. It’s kind of easy to forget that because people didn’t start recording history until right around the same time as civilizations were invented.
What am I trying to say? It’s not “a part of our animal nature to be tribalistic”, automatically hating anyone not in our in group and harboring violent intent about them.
Further evidence, look at modern attitudes towards tribalistic thinking. Despite living in the more savage mode of living- a large percentage of humans have woke up to the fact that tribalism is bad, short sighted, bigoted, and unfair. Take some very young children and put them in a playground together and they will play. They don’t form little cliques based on superficial characteristics or ‘culture’. We have to be taught to hate each other. We have to be told the reasons why it’s ok to discriminate or subjugate others.
Tl:DR Nope. Respectfully of course.
You are taking what I’ve said far to literally. I wasn’t writing my dissertation, I was making observations. I also did not infer that being tribalistic makes you hate outgroups, but in the sense of “tribes” yes they have always had violence inherent to them, because we live in a violent world. Bears can kill you, moose can kill you, other tribes can kill you. It comes from protectionism more than hate, but that notion gets compromised by bad actors pushing an agenda.
There have always been things to fight for. The good hunting grounds, the good fishing grounds, the safest places to camp, etc… violence isn’t always a bad thing either, it is a necessary part of living in a diverse world. You can’t reason with a fire, or a bear. You can avoid them, but that’s just protectionism again. I never implied tribalism is bad, I implied it’s a part of our nature. Humans are pack animals that have always lived in family groups and fought to protect the sanctity of that group from outside forces. Civilization is the act of forgetting the past to damn the future. It’s not what it is supposed to be, but that’s what it has become. We use our “civility” as a cudgel to beat those who think/live differently.
Perhaps. This particular topic has been a lifelong interest of mine, so if I went into far to great of detail in my answer I apologize. Honestly I tried to hold back and stay on topic, but I failed to be concise for sure.
Fair enough
Eh, you may not have been intending to imply that, but with the statement “Tribalism involves violent intent about outgroups that don’t conform to our “tribe” (read: pack).” you can probably see how someone could easily infer that’s what you meant.
This may seem pedantic and forgive me if you aren’t interested in the distinction, but a group of people organizing themselves into “Tribes” is no more and in a lot of ways less violent than other ways of organizing yourself, so to associate the two does a disservice to both the method of organization, and the people who have been and still are members of tribes. That was the point of my rant about how ‘Civilization’ was when you really start to see ‘Tribalism’ in the bad sense take off. It’s not your fault that they named the word after the wrong group- I guess I just want to highlight the distinction for the people who are interested. I’m not trying to attack you personally.
Of course, and please don’t mistake me, I’m not putting forth some sort of ‘Noble Savage’ argument. Tribal people were people and had all of the faults people do. My overall point is one of generalities and not hard and fast rules, it’s still an important thing to consider imo.
Exactly. One of those agendas has traditionally been that ‘Civilization’ is an unmitigated good and nothing of value was lost, while ‘Tribalism’ was when humans were at our most animalistic and violent. I would just like to see the narrative more closely fit the reality of the situation
Eh, kinda but not really. In our modern view we can recognize that other people live in areas that have resources we would like to have, but we don’t advocate for fighting those people to get the resources. We trade for them. Prehistoric and tribal people were likewise capable of trading for resources, and did so frequently. Fighting for it (endangering everyone involved) was likely the the last resort in most cases. We tend to overlook the fact that in our abundant society we always have ‘spare’ young men we can send of to war for territory or resources. People living a subsistence lifestyle typically valued such young men who could go and hunt dangerous prey much more highly than we seem to value our young men.
Only a madman in 2025 would advocate annexing another sovereign nation to get their oil, trees, or minerals. It was likely just as rare for tribal people to fight over such things when ‘sane’ alternatives existed.
As you can probably guess because of my username, I am not personally bothered by being called a ‘pack animal’, because I have a deep understanding of what those things mean. There are (perhaps subtle but important) differences between a ‘pack’ and a ‘tribe’, that I won’t go into (unless you are interested), but my point is in light of the way tribal people have been traditionally portrayed by western culture, equating a group of human beings with wild animals has all sorts of icky connotations that perhaps you don’t mean but are present nonetheless. If you wouldn’t refer to a group of black folks as “Monkeys” or “Apes”, you might think twice about making such comparisons, that’s all I’m saying. After all it is a fact that as human beings we are all Monkeys and Apes, but thanks to racist douchebags- it can be hurtful to people not in our ‘in groups’ to go around saying that if you don’t clarify exactly what you mean.
I like that. It’s poetic and there is a lot of truth in that. I may steal that for future conversations.
100%
Fair enough. I was certainly using broad strokes but thought to say “humanity” should include all of “us”. I get what you are saying and certainly did not choose my words too carefully. I often forget the nuances of speech do not translate to text very well.
I like that you say only a mad man would annex another country for its resources and yet you have Russia trying to rebuild the USSR, Israel annihilating the Palestinian people because of the land they are living on and Mango Mussolini is threatening to annex my nation of Canada for our resources because we have lots and he’s a giant douche. Just saying…
Inherent human traits we like and even traits we don’t like can be traced back to our animal nature and denying the connection has caused so many of the wrongs we in “society” have to suffer. That is the point I was trying to make in the first place anyways.
Yeah, that was my little way of criticizing such people. It is madness imo. If it comes to that, a lot of Americans will be fighting on your side.
Agreed. Certainly there is a part of our nature that is fine with violence and a part that nurturing and loving. We are in a privileged position to be able to direct our own evolution, physically and culturally. Hopefully the better angels our our nature will prevail in the end :)
ditto
Again, stupid fucking animals.