Will humanity ever be able to overcome that tribalistic instinct of "us vs. them?"
The way I see it that instinct is the cause behind so much suffering and injustice in the world.
You are viewing a single comment
The way I see it that instinct is the cause behind so much suffering and injustice in the world.
“Ape alone.. weak. Apes together…. strong”
So no, it’s baked-in the DNA of how we survive. We group to fight threats. Early days, that threat is protection from hostile wildlife like bears.
You scale that to a modern civilization - and you have groups of people fighting for resources, food, money, opportunities, land, etc. Sometimes they’re gangs. Sometimes they’re entire countries. Sometimes they’re groups of allied countries.
And heck, you see it in stupidly small scales too. “Coke v Pepsi”, “N64 v PlayStation”, “Rock Fans v Disco Fans”.
Sunni and Shia believe 98% of the same stuff. But the bit they don’t agree on pushes fringe lunatics to terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing, etc.
Same deal with Protestants and Catholics.
The only thing could make us drop “us versus them” mentality is a giant alien force more violent and sick than anything you can imagine.
Then maybe, humanity will be the “us” finally.
That you, Ozymandias?
Mankind, that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the 4th of July and you will once again be fighting for our freedom not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution but from annihilation.
Even if this'd unite humanity, it would in the end still be us vs. them (us being humanity).
Also disagreements over what programming language to use. Disagreement is a part of normal decision making that leads to diverse outcomes as opposed to being part of a single minded hive mind.
It's okay to disagree or have differences. The problem arises when the response to disagreement is vilification and violence. Sadly, tolerance and tribalism don't exactly go hand-in-hand.