Showing posts with label Tribalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tribalism. Show all posts

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Tribalism poisons everything...

...but the problem is that we are hardwired for tribalism.

Todd Kelley ponders the recurring fact that we have a tendency to take sides even when taking sides means that we line up with those who hurt what we love:

Clearly, this kind of tribalism is destructive. It keeps us from getting to the best solutions for our children, our country and ourselves. Worse, it forces us to become champions of the very things we most despise, things such as child abuse, sexual harassment and crony capitalism. So what, then, is the answer?


There is no easy answer, of course – or if there is I have no idea what it might be. The best I can manage is two very small pieces of advice to people of all political, religious and alma mater stripes.

The first is to always be willing to take a step back and audit your beliefs. When someone you are supporting is being “unfairly crucified” by FOX or the lame stream media, take a step back and ask yourself: If this was happening to the other tribe’s team, how would I be reacting right now? If the honest answer is anything other than “the same,” it might be wise to go back through all of the facts you had previously dismissed to see if perhaps you’ve let yourself miss something. More important, though, is this:

Be an advocate for what your tribe stands for, not an advocate for your tribe.

I simply don’t believe that there aren’t a ton of Republicans out there that are very disturbed by what has transpired with Herman Cain this week. Similarly, I am sure there are more than a few (maybe a large majority?) of Penn State students and alum that know that people have to be held accountable for their school’s horrible scandal. And since it is my understanding that a lot of Rick Perry’s own GOP brethren actually can’t stand the guy, I am very certain that there are a lot of Republicans that pay close attention to his cronyism.

These people need to speak up; not to the world at large, but to the members of their tribe. I’m not a Republican, so I can point to the myriad of things that don’t add up about Cain’s denials all day long and it’s going to fall on deaf ears. The same way, not incidentally, that Democrats shrugged off all evidence of Clinton’s pattern of sexual harassment fifteen years ago. People don’t listen to those outside their tribe when their self-identity is on the line. But they might be open to peeking at reality when it’s being presented by one of their own.

These two bits of advice aren’t much, I’ll be the first to admit. But they’re a start.
It's a good essay.  Read the whole thing.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Sport Poisons Everything, or....

...so much for the utopia promised by Richard Dawkins and Christoher Hitchens, or...

Post-modern soccer fans still find ways to threaten each other with violence in Post-Christian Europe.

The story is how fans of the [Catholic] Celtic Glasgow soccer team are being threatened with mailbombs sent by the fans of [Protestant] Rangers Glasgow soccer team.

Except they call it "football."

Silly Europeans.

Here's the section from the story on why the essentially pagan fans still manage to nurse hatred based on religions that they have long-since abandoned:

In time, the animosities found expression in the two soccer teams, and in the so-called “90-minute bigots” who pack the stands. Celtic, which plays in green-and-white stripes, was founded in 1888 by a Catholic priest, partly to counter religious persecution. Rangers, whose colors are the blue, white and red of Britain’s Union flag, drew mostly Protestant support. From the start, the underlying loyalties — Protestant and Catholic, British and Irish — lent strong passion to their encounters. Yet these seem to have intensified even as their original causes have eased. Religion has declined in an increasingly secular Scottish society, and 13 years have passed since Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland concluded the Good Friday agreement that has brought at least a fragile peace.


That has led Devine and others who have studied the issue to say that the enmities now are more tribal than religious, and fueled by poverty and social breakdown. Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, has pockets of poverty that are among the most extreme in the developed world. The Catholic minority, particularly men from 18 to 35, has traditionally been among the poorest, and has suffered “a bigoted anti-Catholicism in certain sections of society,” Devine said.

In the most deprived areas, encompassing crumbling public housing towers ravaged by joblessness, and alcohol and drug abuse, male life expectancy is 54 — four years lower than in war-torn Sudan — according to World Health Organization figures.

In the soccer rivalry, the resentments have often found expression in violence, but soccer authorities have been slow to act. Rangers were fined $12,000 last week by UEFA, soccer’s governing body in Europe, after its fans continued singing sectarian songs at high-profile matches, including one that urges those of Irish origin to “go home,” and another, “The Billy Boys,” that includes the refrain “We’re up to our ears in Fenian blood,” Fenian being a derogatory term for Irish republicans. Celtic supporters have refrains of their own, including “The Fields of Athenry,” an old Irish republican ballad.
Several points:

First, isn't it reassuring that reality can mess up the best theories of intellectuals, such as Hitchens and Dawkins, who assure us that we will immantize the eschaton once we get rid of religion.

Well, apparently not.

Second, kudos to post-modern, post-Christian Europe in creating a culture with a male life-expectancy that is shorter than "war-torn Sudan."

Seems like they could use a religious revival, or a shot of Pentecostalism, to revive their flagging work ethic.

Third, the ability of human beings to "tribalize" based on sports isn't new.  It was a mainstay of the politics of the Eastern Roman Empire to keep the population divided between the Reds, Greens, Blues and Whites - and woe betide the Empire when these sport factions united.

[Via Vox Day.]

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Understanding the Middle-East...

...understanding tribalism.

This Stanley Kurtz article on tribalism is worth reading.

Modern Americans aren't good on tribalism. except in parts of America which instinctively makes one hear the sounds of the banjos playing in "Deliverance."  This description of tribalism put me in mind of that odd and mysterious part of the world depicted in the recent film Winter's Bone - Appalachia.

The central institution of segmentary tribes is the feud. Security depends on the willingness of every adult male in a given tribal segment to take up arms in its defense. An attack on a lineage-mate must be avenged by the entire group. Likewise, any lineage member is liable to be attacked in revenge for an offense committed by one of his relatives. One result of this system of collective responsibility is that members of Middle Eastern kin groups have a strong interest in policing the behavior of their lineage-mates, since the actions of any one person directly affect the reputation and safety of the entire group.


Universal male militarization, surprise attacks on apparent innocents based on a principle of collective guilt, and the careful group monitoring and control of personal behavior are just a few implications of a system that accounts for many aspects of Middle Eastern society without requiring any explanatory recourse to Islam. The religion itself is an overlay in partial tension with, and deeply stamped by, the dynamics of tribal life. In other words--and this is Salz-man's central argument--the template of tribal life, with its violent and shifting balance of power between fusing and fissioning lineage segments, is the dominant theme of cultural life in the Arab Middle East (and shapes even many non-Arab Muslim populations). At its cultural core, says Salzman, even where tribal structures are attenuated, Middle Eastern society is tribal society.
 
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