Tribalism

Life hundreds of years ago feels hard to imagine. Our modern luxuries are commonplace now and we don’t even bat an eye at all that technology does to support a smoother, easier, quicker lifestyle.

But, while intellectually it’s hard to imagine life without modern-day luxuries, parts of our bodies still drop back to these times quite quickly.

One of these things is tribalism.

The book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, says that the human mind is prepared for tribalism. They define tribalism as our evolutionary endowment for banding together to prepare for intergroup conflict. When the “tribe switch” is activated, we bind ourselves more tightly to the group, we embrace and defend the group’s moral matrix, and we stop thinking for ourselves.”

I have felt this playing out in a variety of ways throughout my life. Sports is a more lighthearted way I can identify this. But, less lightheartedly, is politics.

While I do have a political stance, I admit that I have not always been as well-informed as I would like to be. But, after the 2025 presidential transition, I had groups of people I deeply cared about on both sides of the political aisle and I couldn’t stand being misinformed when the accusations towards both sides have become as weighted, demeaning, and harsh towards each other as they have lately.

So, I decided to step into the middle and become more informed. I’ve been reading, I’ve been talking more, and asking more questions. I am working to sit in the discomfort that things are not black and white, as desperately as we would like them to be. Instead, I’ve been trying to find the grey.

And you know what I’ve found most often? Psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan said it best; we are all more simply human than otherwise.

While I do agree that evil is out there, I can tell you it is not the entirety of the other political spectrum from you. What I predominantly see is skewed information intake from the algorithms, a lack of interactions outside our “tribe” which minimizes challenges to what our algorithms show us, and a lack of understanding and curiosity about what the other side is doing. And in this lack of understanding, we fill in the blanks with assuming the worst.

Lukianoff and Haidt say that merging with our group feels deeply pleasurable. And it does. It feels great to know that we are not alone, that we have people like us, and that we have people willing to stand up for us. And, as much as I wish I could say that neither side of the political aisle has evil on it, they both do. So, at times it will be necessary to join your group and allow your voice to be heard as you advocate for your group.

But what is necessary, is to realize the places for this advocacy, and places where it’s okay to tell the tribalism to step aside while you remind yourself that we are all more simply human than otherwise.