Is tribalism a problem we should be attacking?

It's just easier to attack people, then ideas, so any conflict that starts out about something quickly devolves into an argument about someone's..... which is daft as funk, but attacking it is just the proverbial laying down with dogs, and then getting angry at the dog for getting fleas from it. And let's be honest, silly people do silly better then normal folk, and it might be all they've got to feel good about their existence so...... if your going to attack something with the goal of destroying it, then do it once, otherwise it's just agitation. Agitation can diminish an opponent to exhaustion but given the platform and time taken in siege warfare.... reinforcements are likely, so as a exercise in attacking it might have some conditional benefit, but likely associated costs. Society evolves to equalize individuals, and tribalism is just retrograde movement into groupthink IMO. So look for the benefits of that, and make them more effective in a context of individuality and freedoms of self expression and don't attack it directly, but just out perform it- as starving something of oxygen is the fastest siege warfare probably!

Republican vs democrat or nation vs nation or rich vs poor as other examples. Is it feasible to bring these disparate groups together,

You can imagine my understanding of Democrat vs Republican....

Nation vs Nation seems less of an issue, world-peace aside, there are presumably good reasons for two nations to compete, both in practical terms, and in "Brand"

You want your people to love your nation, you want them to cherish it's resources, you want them to support it's economy, it's infrastructure systems, possibly it's growth and acquisition of new resources (be they lands, knowledge, income sources, other forms of influence) there is a tangible benefit to promoting your Nation vs Another Nation - and often, in these cases, that is what it is, the tagline of the Australian government something like "For Australians" (i'm guessing, I can't be arsed checking their website) and not simply "Fuck Norway!" - which I don't think is the sort of "tribalism" issue that is being suggested to be "attacked"

as for Rich vs Poor - rich people don't hate poor people. Poor people are incredibly useful, there's not too many Rich People Gatherings where everyone talks about how much better the world would be if we just dumped all the poor people in Antarctica and got on with eating our gold flaked truffle soup and sinking all our yachts to create private scuba diving wrecks.

Poor people quite possibly hate the rich, but there is a justifiable position, at least emotionally, and when someone else has pretty much everything you want, it's easy to also blame them for everything, correctly or not - and while there *might* be a bit of tribalism here, to the point where if you *were* a poor person, and at all the poor person parties (whatever they are? stealing bread off pigeons in parks probably) and you suddenly become well off, you might even find yourself condemned by your old friends as no longer understanding their woes....

I do understand this to a certain extent - I am a capitalist of sorts, and a nationalist, and a few other things - but a lot of my friends and associates identify as communists or socialists or globalists (not sure that last one works for what I think I mean) and I am often the "bogeyman" of the dinner table debate, and I have to spend a great deal of time and patience politely trying to explain how often my methods and processes are trying to (and occasionally succeed) achieve the same rough end-goal they are, I just tend to do it with less dreadlocks, and I use easier to read fonts in my newsletters.

I probably applied a poor choice in words when I wrote “attack tribalism”, mostly because “we” (as a group) cannot attack it without becoming a tribe in the process.

A better expression would be “be in guard against tribalism”, which we (each of us, as individuals) could certainly do.

I define tribalism as a way of thinking in which people are loyal to their social group above all else, and thus arguments and behaviors are shaped not by an individual’s assessment of a case-by-case basis that includes pros and cons, but by latching on to proof that confirms whatever their tribe holds as true, while dismissing proof that might counter the tribe’s views. This is what I believe Jordan Peterson means when he uses the term “cultural marxism”.

I also chuckled at the quite paradoxical phrase "attack tribalism").

This thread (and a few others of recent) shows us why what kind of language we choose to use is probably more paramount to any topic than anything else we expect to come from it. And the idea of tribalism as explained by Manu is a phenomenon that frequently arises from things such as faulty language.

Manu, you had me 100% agreeing with you until the last sentence

"Cultural" or "postmodern" Marxism is a manufactured boogeyman used to artificially create tribalism in the JP ideology. It's the chaos in opposition to his lobster-esque order. In reality, Marxism is a structural approach to history (so Feminist Marxism is valid), while postmodern philosophy stems from post-structuralism: Foucault, Derrida etc. The post structuralists were all influenced by Marxism, but rejected it in favor of something less "geist-y"

The whole first salvo between vixen and sand just illustrates how absolutely pointless it is to have discussions using ambiguous terms.

Rex wrote: Manu, you had me 100% agreeing with you until the last sentence

"Cultural" or "postmodern" Marxism is a manufactured boogeyman used to artificially create tribalism in the JP ideology. It's the chaos in opposition to his lobster-esque order. In reality, Marxism is a structural approach to history (so Feminist Marxism is valid), while postmodern philosophy stems from post-structuralism: Foucault, Derrida etc. The post structuralists were all influenced by Marxism, but rejected it in favor of something less "geist-y"

The whole first salvo between vixen and sand just illustrates how absolutely pointless it is to have discussions using ambiguous terms.

Thank you for the clarification. I had only been introduced to the term via Peterson’s interviews, but after doing a quick internet search after your reply I see it’s not a commonly agreed upon term.

Yes I think Tribalism is a problem. As I said in the Moderates thread:

Brick wrote: I think it is due to society becoming obsessed with 'being right'. So you pick a 'side' and you stick with it no matter what, and anyone who picks the other side is your sworn enemy. Anyone who voted for Trump is a 'Dumb Racist', and anyone who supports Berine is 'Communist Scum'. We've started treating politics like sports teams, instead of a public forum to share and develop ideas, and that's a really dangerous game.

This idea of supporting something so unequivocally, seems to support what Manu what is talking about

Allow me an extreme question, please: How can we assert anything as fact? To do so, unless you did the experiments yourself from the dirt up, is to be relying on a certitude put forth by someone else. The "tribe" of science. Group think has predominately made incredible advances, valid or not. Had tribalism been rejected, we would still be snuffling for ants on a tree for our dinner. The process, the mind frame, has its uses and of itself is not to blame for any evil. I would suggest the ideas pursued themselves potentially represent the issue. Any practitioner of the sciences knows you fail 99 times out of 100.