For billions of years, the Earth and its life survived through thick and thin, hot and cold, astroids and volcanoes, ever bouncing back into abundance. Humans emerged from the diversity, organizing themselves into tribes. For millions of years we not only survived but spread like wildfire, bringing growth wherever we traveled: we created dogs and corn, and raised the Amazon into the forest we know today. But with this increased power, we discovered agriculture. We found the unnatural excesses we could bring ourselves, and established civilizations on these crops. However, these civilizations were fundamentally different than the tribes they were descended from and conquered, like Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. They dehumanized their own people. Instead of supporting each other because they were simply in the same tribe, one only gave goods and services if they received some—or the promise of them—in return. Now there was power to steal in the form of riches and not wiseness, so it was and is fought over. Governments kept people from acting for themselves (instead of a tribe where you want to act for the group because they are your means of survival). Now others are your competitors, your enemies. Gathering resources as quickly as possible is your highest priority. So others’ problems are ignored. The world is conquered, mined, raped for resources, as is everyone who isn’t more profitable to keep alive. The shift from tribal, social focuses destroys us and our world while profiting (but never satisfying) the richest, most powerful players. We create tribes in their stead; gangs, schools, sports teams and more, but they are either unsatisfying or outside the law or society. We live unsatisfying and destructive lives in a world tearing itself apart. We have destroyed billions of years of balance by destroying tribes.
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chris mcelroy 
Hello again!
I return from the dark to bring forth thoughts of old. These are musings from over two years ago, as I struggled to react to a video (which I can no longer find), that typified the world’s problems as stemming from its reliance on tribes, when I wholeheartedly believed the exact opposite. This cognitive dissonance prompted this short set of writings, in which I tried to lay down the best arguments I had for both sides in a simple yet effective way. At first, the result just left me more confused than ever. Yet this record has allowed me to return to this issue repeatedly over the years until I could address it cleanly and confidently. I’ll be posting more thoughts on this topic in the comments in the next few days, but for now I would love to know your reaction to this fun little paradox–are tribes the cause of all the worlds problems, or their solution?
Great to see you back, t0rch! I agree with the pro tribes thought. To me it was the expansion of agriculture that allowed storing and “banking” of necessary items so that one person could collect an extraordinary and possibly (in some senses) undeserved amount of power to himself. And now we have taken that to extremes, with the incredible and unhealthy dicotomy between the rich and the poor, and the imbalance of wealth and power in our current society.
But I agree there is a part of me that wonders if the negative energy of tribes is what drives our wars. Yet there are some countries that manage to stay out of the fray and have a more balanced society. What is it that they have found that others have not?
Thanks for the response–it’s good to see you speaking again, Zarathustra. I think you’re looking in the right direction, but there’s still something you’re not seeing. As I intimate (quite briefly, to be sure) in this post, there are many reasons that modern nations would not want to go to war, even in an age of rising nationalism. These reasons are laid out quite well in the video linked in that section. With this in mind, we can see that even with the negative energy of tribes, as you say, nations might stay out of the fray while having no moral high ground. This can be taken in two ways, still. It be a sign of the great peace to come in an increasingly developed (and thus linked and less tribal) world, one which works in spite of the tribal nature of countries. Or it could be seen cynically, as an outlier phenomenon in the larger stream of engineered destruction when humans are left with nothing to do but produce products.
So this investigation led us to yet another dead end. We have taken a single fact, analyzed it in more detail, and we have again come up short, unable to conclude whether tribes are good are bad as a structure. I would point to a few questions to lead your thinking. How would you carefully and consistently define tribes when analyzing these examples? And how do you establish what’s “good” and “bad” in this analysis? I think some clarity on these points would let you come to a conclusion you can confidently stand behind, which does not rely on your interpreting history more optimistically or pessimistically than others. As you might expect, there are still a lot of rewarding thoughts to be uncovered in this clash of ideas!
The chase continues. I dare you to keep up.
Your arguments here betray on both sides a dangerous ignorance of the complexity of the world, or else a conscious act to conceal that which doesn’t align with your own opinions. Tribalism is a tendency of any group of humans; we have been groomed to support and trust each other when it is earned, naturally sorting us into groups of exclusionary loyalty. No part of human history has or ever will be a perfect example or counterexample of tribalism. Any story of history told in such a way will necessarily be grossly incomplete. As you make clear, there are ways in which tribal forces have both proliferated and been diluted in the last few millennia. Are these forces good or bad? This is like asking whether bravery is good or bad. A few stories told in either direction will never be able to present the full picture, and the true answer is more complicated.
But I’ll leave that to your wreckage of a moral system to decide.
-wat3r
A fire thrives on fuel. I appreciate your addition to the blaze.
I think you’re right to say that my initial approach was hopelessly naïve. Tribalism is, as best we can tell, a part of human nature. So I suppose I was more rigorously trying to question whether embracing or fighting this inevitability is more profitable. And you’re right that the answer is more subtle than yes or no.
Looking back on this now, I think my firmer answer, which explains the issues raised in both pro and con tribes, is that the best moral and cultural systems work best when they are built for the humans inhabiting them. Many systems try to ignore or discourage some of humanity’s stranger habits, which is not good, but systems that exploit humans for these predictable or even unavoidable tendencies are especially bad. These systems are not made for people and have no good reason to exist. Often, they lead to unstable or unsustainable cycles, thus failing to meet my minimum bar for moral systems. The parts of tribalism that cause loss and tragedy in the world today are a result of such exploitive systems. The unhealthy move by culture towards the unsupported individual is an example of a potentially well meaning but ultimately unproductive cultural choice. It leaves a void for people’s desire for tribal connection, and often punishes those who seek out a way to fill this void. This is not a great way to produce happiness, fulfillment, or supportive communities in a human population. Our systems have to accept and allow for these essentially innate human traits.
Thank you for helping me see this problem through fresh eyes; I have struggled with it for years in different forms.
But now the t0rch can continue to burn.