Active Tribalism

Robb Schachter

Regardless of political ideology, most of us are very nervous about the future. A liberal (not to be confused with “liberal” as an antonym to “conservative”) representative democratic society, theoretically speaking, is one in which each member has an equal voice in choosing those responsible for the development of policies and laws by which everyone must abide. In this theoretical democracy, it is assumed that its members’ multitude of experiences and viewpoints will be rationally debated to arrive at decisions that will benefit society. In reality, however, rationality has little to do with it. We retain neurobiology that evolved over millions of years to help our ancient ancestors survive on the savannah when dangerous predators, food insecurity, and other groups posed an existential threat. On a biological level, we are wired to react to perceived threats in ways that decrease reaction times and prep our body for fight or flight automatically. We know that the threat response negatively affects cognition, increases aggressive protective behavior, and reduces collaboration and empathy (Oschner, 2013). The greater the perceived threat, the more vigorous and generalized the instinctual response. While this response worked well when we were faced with the binary choice of running or throwing a spear, the modern world is a more complicated place in which neither of those two choices is optimal. Survival in such a world requires a more nuanced rational, collaborative, and empathetic thought process.

We cannot, however, escape our biology. We flee from information that scares us and/or fight those who support that information. This results in much of the tribal behavior we see today. Appraisals of friends or “people like us” travel through different neural pathways than those of foes or “people not like us” (Hein, 2010). We use distinct networks in our brains when thinking about a friend or a foe. When we come across people in the “not like us” group we do not take time to think things through. Instead, we become highly reactive as our threat responses kick in, reducing our cognitive resources and causing us to rely more on our biases and cling more tightly to our views. We are “cognitive misers” depending upon biases to preserve cognitive resources and shorten the amount of time it takes to process stimuli (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). For example, the availability bias causes us to pay more attention to information that is more easily accessible and confirmation bias causes us to attend more to information that confirms our way of thinking. These biases are often an effective way for us to deal with massive amounts of stimuli. They can also get us into trouble. In an increasingly complex world, as uncertainty and fear rise, our ability to empathize and collaborate decreases and so does our ability to generate new ideas and solutions. Without this ability major problems go unsolved and threats remain. 

We have recently experienced a presidential election where even the losing candidate received more votes than any other president in history besides the winner. On the surface, that is an astounding amount of participation. Such turnout, is what we would hope for in a democracy. But the staggering number of votes cast is symptomatic of a deeper issue. They show just how deep and energetic the political divide is in this country. More than that, they indicate a level of fear and mistrust that we have not seen for generations. Votes were cast at least as much to keep the other person out of office than a belief in the policies a supported candidate espoused. A great deal of the basis for people’s voting choices was based on misleading or outright incorrect information designed to put them in a triggered state. Exacerbating the issue is that main media channels are no longer objective and everyone can amplify their voice through social media. Whether or not people’s positions are well researched or conform to a moral system, they can be heard by all and the influence they wield is determined by the number of thumbs up they get on the bottom of their posts. The notion of citizenship has become smaller. We have become citizens of a tribe whose political leanings most closely resemble our own over citizens of a nation. Members of the other tribes have become enemies. 

We end up with a country where the members of each tribe view the world in very different ways that seem alien to any not in the tribe. The emotions built around preserving the tribe are so strong that anyone not in the tribe can be viewed as less than human. This holds even when close friends and family members differ politically. Ruled by our primitive instincts, we are acting out of a sense of self-preservation. So while participation in the electoral process and vocalizing one’s views through social media are at an all-time high, it only serves to deepen divisions to dangerous levels. A society cannot survive in which the needs and voices of a significant portion of its population are neither met nor heard. History is replete with the kind of political violence we have seen at the start of 2021 including the very founding of this country and the civil war that followed. Those who think the past remains in the past are doomed to trip over it again.