tribalism [cc]
An exploration of the mechanisms that drive tribalism — and that offer a way out of it.
You can support the channel at: / theramintrees
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opening quote:
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
—Rudyard Kipling
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0:00 tribalism defined
1:12 group biases
1:26 Tajfel on group membership
2:28 Greene's 'Moral tribes'
6:34 Cohen on party politics
8:38 common enemies
10:25 common humanity
12:32 tribalistic wiring
17:26 clashing moral systems
19:19 defending freedoms
21:23 summary
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subtitles
Bulgarian: Djeitko
Dutch: kedrednael
Thank you to the anonymous English subtitle writer who got in there before me and keyed in the captions!
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References:
Cohen, G.L. (2003) Party over policy: the dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs. Journal of personality and social psychology 85 (5) pp.808-822
Greene, J.D. (2014) Moral tribes: emotion, reason and the gap between us and them. Atlantic Books, London.
Hardin, G. (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science 162 (3859) pp.1243-1248
Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
Moore, A. and Gibbons, D (1986/7) Watchmen. DC Comics.
Redish, A.D. (2013) The mind within the brain. Oxford University Press, New York.
Tajfel, H. (1970) Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American 223 (5) pp.96-102.
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Note regarding Holocaust deniers:
To those who've objected to the idea of a Jew — or anyone — defending the freedom to deny the Holocaust, I invite you to consider an important bigger picture going on in this scenario. Whenever we consider restricting someone else's freedom, we should have a hard think about how it might backfire on us in the future.
What if a fake history is established by a ruling power? What if they outlaw people who dispute that fake history? What if there are legal penalties for disputing it? The freedom to dispute a history is extremely important — if the history is fake, people should know. If the history is correct then we can publicise the evidence and expose the ignorance of deniers. When we do that, we educate people, we make deniers look foolish and we preserve a freedom we may need in the future. When we ban denials, people aren't educated, we make deniers look like martyrs and we lose a freedom we may need in the future.
Once we've given up a freedom, it can be extremely hard to get it back.
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Note regarding my departure from theism to atheism:
An assessment that ideas are unfounded is not an automatic indicator of tribalism. That should be apparent from the fact I was a theist, trying to find good reasons to justify my faith. To suggest I was being tribally atheist is clearly nonsense. So something else is happening. I realised I hadn't been presented with any good reasons, and that faith — which can justify any belief — was not a valid foundation for discerning truth. In the intervening decades, I still haven't been presented with a single good reason. If I was presented with good reasons, my views would change — and I will note, the old bad reasons for believing would still be bad and rejected. The new persuasive reasons would be the only significant factor.
If groups make claims they can't substantiate, we have no reason to acknowledge those particular claims — whether those claims are religious, pseudoscientific, medical, etc. Rejecting a group's ideas is not automatically a matter of distorted tribalism — if the ideas are fallacious, the rejection is valid.
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