A) INTRODUCTION
People are usually (though to varying degrees in different people) instinctively tribal. In the context of a family tribalism can often be helpful, maybe even necessary but when tribalism is extended to larger portions of humanity it can become the cause of conflict and inappropriate partisan loyalties. So tribalism can become perniciously harmful.
Some natural human instincts such as competitiveness and acquisitiveness are useful or can at least be beneficially harnessed within political thought but human tribalism is generally harmful and needs to be overcome rather than exploited in political theory. So beyond family the only helpful tribalism would be considering one’s tribe to be the whole human race.
The starting point of a sensible political philosophy is the statement that first and foremost ‘I am a human being’ as so well expressed by Joan Baez (a popular twentieth century folk singer). I don’t agree with some of what Joan Baez has been saying in politics but she is an independent political thinker and very gifted in linguistic expression. Furthermore (as Joan Baez well understands) treating the whole human race as one’s tribe and rejecting the notion of overriding divisions within humanity does result in important social and political consequences.
B) PEOPLE ARE TRIBAL
So let’s begin by looking at animal tribalism.
It is not just people who live in groups and are tribal. Animals that live in groups are normally tribal. In contrast to many animals who may have many eggs and young and leave the young to fend for themselves and survive as a species due to only needing a small percentage of a multiplicity to survive, virtually all mammals form family groups. At the least females (mothers) look after their young until they are adolescent. However very many animals, ranging from elephants to zebras to hyenas form herds or small tribal groups. Most significantly many of our closest animal relatives, notably chimpanzees, form groups or herds, normally of related individuals and live their lives within the context of a group. This is a form of protection for the group members who would as individuals find it difficult to physically (and perhaps even mentally) survive and could also be more vulnerable as individuals to predators. Yet even with chimpanzees there are drawbacks to living as troupes or in a herd as they tend to fight other groups or troupes of chimpanzees for territory or dominance or sometimes perhaps just because they like a fight. These fights often result in injuries or even death for some of them. Indeed even within the troupes all is not harmony because there are often fights, notably between adult males, for dominance or mating rights, or even for a higher place within the pecking order within the group. So though belonging to an animal group may afford a social life and some protection against the rest of the world it also has massive downsides in terms of the often deadly and certainly damaging conflicts it generates.
Much the same is true of humans. People readily, almost spontaneously form themselves into groups. I have observed that people readily form into groups or quasi-groups. For instance if one goes on a holiday package tour one may readily observe how quickly, almost instantaneously, the travellers on that package tour form into a group. Such groups tend to be quite loyal to each other and keep themselves quite separate from other groups (even from the same tour company) it encounters. This is just an example of how people form naturally and easily into groups, soon become loyal to their own group and separate from other groups. Yet permanent groups, be they racial or geographic, are even more strongly adhered to by most people.
Originally when people were nomadic they travelled around and lived in small groups, based largely on families. As with animals that afforded both social life and also some protection in an often hostile environment. Indeed just as lions and hyenas hunt in groups, nomadic people could hunt and so feed themselves more readily and more effectively, even with tools, by coordinated group action. However one presumes, just as with animals, within groups there were often struggles over the group’s hierarchy or leadership. There were probably also struggles, probably violent struggles between human groups as well as probably some mixing and indeed interbreeding between groups.
However several thousands of years ago (but relatively recently in terms of the history of homo sapiens, within the last 5% or so of the history of our species), people began to change from being nomadic to living in settled communities, based originally primarily on agriculture rather than on hunter-gathering. Although initially those settled communities were relatively small, they gave rise to larger ‘tribes’ and larger rivalries. People began to be members of two separate communities or two tribes. In addition to their family, they became members of their village. These ‘settlement’ communities sometimes expanded into towns and in ancient Greece and elsewhere also into ‘city states’. Loyalty to towns as distinct communities (each with their own political leadership and each liable to fight other town communities) became strong. Indeed even when existing within larger communities as today, local village or town loyalties, as with modern football club ‘fans’ is often very strong.
In due course villages and towns often combined to become statelets or kingdoms, and thereafter countries or nations. So accordingly people came at one and the same time (in contrast to their ancestors and other animals) to be members of several tribes simultaneously, their family, their village or town, perhaps their region and certainly their country.
Furthermore there are some racial and skin color differences among people which are generally geographical in origin. These racial, particularly color, differences are the biggest differences of all because they are very observable and unmistakable and are generally enhanced by some differences in physical characteristics, mannerisms and customs. In the past trade, international trade has led to some admixture of populations. Also, to a limited extent conquests (such as when the Normans who spoke a different language conquered England in 1066 and it took over 100 years for the Norman and native populations who were both white skinned to become substantially integrated) led to admixtures of populations. Yet it is only recently in an age of mass international travel and migration that populations have really started to become significantly racially mixed. Accordingly natural racial prejudices that to a lesser or greater extent most people innately and instinctively have whether they admit it or not have recently become more significant, more divisive and at times very damaging. These differences are often nowadays aggravated with more immigration by differences in lifestyle, most particularly and often most damagingly by differences in religion and religious outlook.
However over generations these differences which can now be very sharp and extremely tribal are likely to become much diminished. This will happen not just by ‘integration’ though integration may be very hampered by aggressive religious outlooks even if that aggressive religiosity is only caused by one sizable group in the population. It will also happen, even more so, by intermarriage and interbreeding between different racial groups. So in the end, in a century or two, the different population groups will mostly become practically indistinguishable. That along with the decline in adherence to all religions (as being both unevidenced, no longer geographically monopolistic, and personally inconvenient to adhere to) should lead to the end of at least this very pernicious form of tribalism based on race or religion. Brazil seems further advanced down this road of integration than most other nations although to an extent some ‘tribal’ differences still exist and are still perceived to exist in Brazil.
Yet what will happen over the geographical tribalism of ‘nations’ is still unclear. The tribalism of nations is even more damaging than racism because such groups cause not just individuals or sundry individuals to act individually against each other but entire communities or nations to act or potentially act collectively against each other.
So tribalism is natural and instinctive for many species of animal and for most human beings. It can be, like many natural or instinctive reactions, beneficial. Yet I suppose the big difference between modern man and animals is that whereas tribal animals belong to only one smallish tribe, modern man belongs to many different tribes. It is mainly the membership of larger, particularly many larger, tribes that does most to transform tribalism from a predominantly beneficial into a predominantly malevolent force.
After all what animal can conceive of a nation or a country? Nor of course did people ever work out the effect of multiplying and enlarging the tribes they each belong to. As a general rule the problem is the less primarily ‘protective’ a group or tribe becomes, the more primarily divisive, conflict engendering and destructive a tribe or group becomes, especially if its members become strong devotees (as happens with fundamentalist religions) of that tribe.
C) WHERE TRIBALISM MAY BE PROTECTIVE OR BENEFICIAL
There are times when small groups or small tribes of humans are beneficial to the wellbeing or even survival of people.
Human beings like other mammals are born weak and in need of both food, milk from their mothers and also of protection and ‘education’ (in how to live and survive) from their parents. Indeed new born humans cannot even survive without adult help (as distinct from some other animals where a few from very large numbers of offspring do survive by sheer instinct and good fortune without parental assistance). In ancient times people in many societies, such as the ancient Romans just abandoned (‘exposed’) those babies who they didn’t want to bring up (often because of apparent physical defects or weakness) and accordingly those babies did soon die.
So the family unit, or at least the protective caring it provides, is not merely an instinctive unit but also an essential unit to human survival and human welfare. Indeed ‘the extended family’, as originally human families mainly were, though more tribal was even more beneficial since infant caring duties could be shared or assisted with and it was able to provide food and care to assist elderly or sick relatives if they needed it.
It is also worth observing that though mankind now dominates the world by virtue of its brainpower and advanced technology, physically speaking men and women are very weak and not even at all agile compared to similar animals such as chimpanzees.
Therefore on their own men and women would be very vulnerable as prey and scarcely able to feed themselves. In fact nomadic, primitive people needed vast areas to ‘gather’ food and their population density was small. Weaker animals that hunt (and people certainly don’t eat grass as herbivores do) such as hyenas tend to hunt in packs as that gives them more scope for confusing and rounding on individual prey animals. That applied even when people began using tools such as spears for hunting or digging animal traps. Few animals can withstand a multi-faceted attack from many sides compared to surviving one predator face to face. So the tribalism of small groups was very beneficial in that way for individuals within the tribe.
Even within groups the weaker members of the group need and benefit most from close association with each other. Minority groups (or minority races) within a society defend themselves by close association with each other and develop a tribal mentality rather than allowing themselves to be picked off one by one by stronger people.
Furthermore it is the poor, the ‘working class’, the less wealthy and the less privileged within a society who tend to preach the virtues of collective ‘defense’, collective action and so called ‘solidarity’. It is such people who tend to be more intolerant of different or divergent members of the group and individualism. It is the middle and upper classes of society who are usually far keener on individual effort and usually more tolerant of differences and more self sufficient and more individualistic. They don’t have the same need of tribalism or ‘solidarity’ and are far freer to express themselves and live individualistic lives. One need only look at the conformity in poor neighborhoods compared to the far less conformist, freer, more tolerant, less tribal attitudes that usually exist within wealthier neighborhoods. The stronger one is either as an animal or as a person the less important the protection of tribalism becomes and the less virtue there is in tribalism.
Another point I would make about the benefits of tribalism is that it can be beneficial for spreading and developing knowledge, especially technological knowledge. Though it is usually individuals and detached free-spirited individuals (like Isaac Newton or Charles Darwin) at that who make the scientific discoveries, the development and consolidation of technologies is assisted by scientists working in teams within larger societies or nations. Millennia ago there was a big advance when writing got started as that is a better means of communicating and consolidating any advances in knowledge than is word of mouth (which is liable to become distorted in the re-telling). That advance was much enhanced by the development of printing (and nowadays also by computers). Printing needs a market to make it worthwhile and that market can only exist within large societies which nowadays exist as tribal groups organized as nations. Science and manufacture generally require organized groups within larger societies. Furthermore competition between nations (such as The Space Race between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R.) helps motivate advanced and large scale activities.
So team or tribal competition and even national competition often helps in the scientific and technological advance of Mankind. Yet business enterprises and nations can also exist in diverse, relatively untribally differentiated societies. Nations can indeed exist without much nationalistic tribalism. Indeed the leading Universities may also on occasion compete with each other but they tend to be diversely staffed and often value individualism and individual merit above ‘tribalism’ and should certainly do so!
D) WHERE TRIBALISM IS A FAILURE
The biggest underlying problem with tribalism is when it extends beyond being a system for mutual protection into a system for conflict based on whatever the tribal division may be, be it based on geography, race, class, religion or whatever.
This does occur even among animals with small groups of animals like chimpanzees having the equivalent of gang fights with other groups. Though these fights often result in injuries, injuries that are sometimes fatal, the deadliness of such conflicts is much increased among humans due to the groups and therefore the fighting groups being much larger and more organized. Also developing technology has produced ever more dangerous and deadly weapons with which people can fight each other. This has extended from spears or knives for more private fights right the way up to nuclear and biological weapons that might destroy much or even all of the human race. This makes tribalism much more dangerous and makes the conflict inducing disadvantages of tribalism exceed the protective benefits of tribalism, certainly when tribalism extends beyond individual families into larger groups of people and even worse into larger sections of humanity.
It is important to understand that tribalism is often grounded upon at least ‘on average’ real differences between people, especially in the larger tribalisms (differences between neighboring villages or settlements are more usually artificial than real). Tribalism also persists from the exaggeration of such differences, an exaggeration which usually discards the huge overlaps between groups. For instance it is true that the Dutch are in general taller than the British and much taller than say Thai people. Yet that is just an overall average with a great deal of individual overlap. Many Dutch people are shorter than many British people and some Dutch people are even shorter than some Thai people. Indeed even between men and women, though men are usually bigger and stronger than women there are quite a lot of women who are bigger and stronger than quite a lot of men. Likewise with intelligence and mental abilities. It is true that on average I.Q. tests (admittedly how appropriate as measures of intelligence I.Q. tests are is debatable) white and indeed Asian people are more intelligent than black people but there are huge overlaps. Very many black people are even on such measures more intelligent than very many white or Asiatic people. Likewise as between men and women, women tend to be more interested in other people and men tend to be better at more abstract things but there is much overlap. However there are instances such as in world Chess champions, self-made billionaires and pioneers in Science and technology in which the preponderance of men (for whatever reason) is and has been absolutely overwhelming, indeed sometimes exclusive.
Yet even so similarities between people, whether racial or sexual, are so great as to distinguish virtually all people from other non-human species, even other apes. Within that perspective although we as people can observe general differences between people, those differences are insignificant in comparison to what distinguishes people from other animals! The real question is whether to emphasize, enhance and often exaggerate the differences between people in tribalistic ways or whether to suppress or discard the differences in a universalist way that emphasizes integration. My thesis is that it is damaging and harmful to emphasize differences and fragment humanity into different groups, especially large groups whether based on geography, class, race, religion or whatever. It is more beneficial to humanity, albeit somewhat contrary to many natural human instincts, to become more tolerant and more integrated as a human race and as human societies.
Another drawback of tribalism is that it favors ‘nepotism’ rather than ‘merit’ or ‘ability’ which is damaging to society or people as a whole. Naturally parents wish to do the best they can for their children and indeed to some extent for other people within their extended family or even their tribe. That mattered little in small hunter-gatherer groups but as groups got larger and labor became more specialized it meant that the most well connected people got the best jobs. That of course applied to tribal chiefs and monarchs who were generally hereditary but also even to tradesmen. In Western Europe at least and I expect elsewhere via the guild system (a sort of early ‘closed shop’ for the benefit of guild members) trades (such as blacksmiths) became a family business, handed down from fathers to sons. This possibly had some advantages then in that it stabilized trade and meant tradesmen did not generally then (as often happens now) go bankrupt during their working lives as without local competition they were assured of what trade there was. However that system became ever more inappropriate as technology improved. Improved technology meant it was better to have somebody who was really skilled at the job rather than just children of previous people in the same trade. Obviously one would want an able and skilled medical doctor treating you rather than just the previous doctor’s son who had just (within his mental limitations) learned his medicine ‘on the job’ from his father. So nepotism which never was a very fair nor advantageous system for the general public has become ever more damaging. As human technology advanced the need for more intelligent and skilled people to do the most demanding jobs in society has become ever more pressing.
So nepotism through tribal prejudices (beginning with favoring family members) is a shortcoming, indeed an ever increasing shortcoming of Tribalism.
E) NATIONALISM, THE BIGGEST ORGANIZED TRIBALISM
Nowadays nations are in general terms both the biggest and most dangerous human tribal units though even they can sometimes be challenged and disrupted by fervent tribal or religious allegiances. Religions can be strong because whereas nations deal with temporal Earthly business, religions often lay claim to an eternal future. It is a general principle of human nature that the greater the benefits or rewards an ideology offers, the greater and the more demanding the adherence its followers claim and the more ruthless they are to their opponents.
Nationalism was most trenchantly criticized by Joan Baez. She wrote (in her autobiographical book ‘A Voice To Sing With’) – ‘Politicians’ allegiance was to the nation state. Whether they were Chinese, Russian, American or Tanzanian, they took the CHANCE location of their birthplace as the most serious event in the world and made a living out of it; other people took it just as seriously but were not in a position to do as much damage’.
I think Joan Baez’ comment here is particularly incisive in that she equates nationalism to ‘the CHANCE location of one’s birth’ which shows how inherently absurd nationalism is. Basing one’s outlook and primary concern on the chance location of one event, one’s birth, is about as absurd as one can get, especially as many nations, particularly in the West are run and organized economically and politically, especially nowadays, along very, very similar lines. One can reasonably, as I by and large do, support a particular system of running society (and accordingly I rather support though with some proposed amendments the Western model of Capitalism and freedom under the law). However in our world it is absurd, indeed one might say ridiculous, to be too attached or indeed overwhelmingly or fanatically attached to the particular place of one’s birth. I am grateful to Joan Baez for the clear way in which she expressed this. I would add that in his recent book ‘Nexus’, Yuval Noah Harari has said much the same thing in more intellectual and unfortunately oblique (and less accurate) terms. Harari wrote – ‘Take for example the truth about nations. It is difficult to grasp that the nation to which one belongs is an intersubjective entity that exists only in our collective imagination’. I personally though agreeing a nation is an artificial construct would also point out that nationalists have managed to turn nations into real countries that now have actually been made to exist for better or worse in geographical and structural terms. In a previous age John Locke (1632-1704), an extremely famous British philosopher had written,’he and all the rest of Mankind are one Community, distinct from all other Creatures. And were it not for the Corruption and Viciousness of degenerate Men, there would be no need of any other; no Necessity that Men should separate from this great and natural Community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided Associations’ -paragraph 128 of Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. I may like Locke’s sentiment but he is factually wrong there as towns, kingdoms and countries first arose historically not from splitting up one community of mankind (which has never existed organisationally) but by combining families into settlements and then combining settlements into kingdoms. That is countries arose not by division of a world community but from combinations, usually by force, of smaller settlements. (Locke’s chosen adversary, Sir Robert Filmer was closer to the actual truth in theorising that national leaders were in effect the equivalent of greater, expanded versions of the father in the family, becoming the father of the nation.) Pity it is that most supposedly eminent thinkers seem to attach overriding importance to their personal notions as against actual reality!
I certainly do not always agree with Joan Baez. I fundamentally disagree that her pacifism is sensible or viable in the far from ideal world we live in when some countries (like Russia under Putin) are ruthless and aggressive in expanding and in extinguishing freedom where they expand into, as well as in their own countries. To her credit Joan Baez has also actively championed universally freedom via non-violent resistance in Eastern Europe and ‘civil rights’ in America and did so before other celebrities were willing to do so. She found that in speaking up against the idols of the political left as well as the political right she had few political friends (as happens when one is not just copying others but tells the whole truth as one sees it). Both in music and in politics Joan Baez is far more original than she has ever publicly admitted. Though she refers with admiration to Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi was very much a nationalist (championing the creation of the Indian state) which she is not. Joan Baez is very much (and remarkably her essential views, though unorthodox, were mainly formed at a very young age) an outlier as a political thinker. I agree with much of what she says about ‘nationalism’ and her other main contention, and probably even more significantly, the rather innovative starting point of her politics which is ‘I am a human being first’. That emphasizes her identification with and loyalty to mankind as a whole as a tribe rather than to any particular faction or group within mankind.
Apart from the tendency of nationalistic beliefs to be a cause of conflicts and the most damaging conflicts since it is primarily nations that run armies, armies that are in substantial part organized human killing machines, I have another major disagreement with the notion of nationalism. That is nationalism is a concept that relies primarily on human collectivist instincts and behaviors whereas I favor primarily human individualism and human freedom. The nation is a collectivist concept that functions most effectively through the subordination of individual humans to a collectivist belief in and conformity to its customs and the rather standardized behavior of others within one’s nation. If by contrast people believe in their own freedom to say and do as they diversely wish they are not going to be so motivated by a common overarching loyalty to a nation, nor conform to the pressures of what most others are doing and thinking within that nation.
I also point out there is or can be a difference between ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’. A nation needs to achieve order rather than anarchy and needs to defend its own and its people’s broad interests so as to be viable as a nation or country, especially against exploitation by other countries. Just as a commercial company’s manager has to defend his own company’s interests against unfair competition or threats to his company’s viability, so also does a political leader need to act in the broad interests of his country and resist the infringements of others. So I have no difficulty with Donald Trump as President asserting the interests of and acting to stop the United States of America being unfairly taken advantage of by other countries including allies such as N.A.T.O. countries disproportionately dumping a huge portion of the cost and responsibilities for defending themselves upon America. Nor do I dispute his precept that the terms of international trade and regulations should not be to the great advantage of other countries at the expense, sometimes exploitative expense of America. That is merely sensibly protecting the interests of the country he led rather than ‘nationalism’. Nationalism by contrast is asserting the superiority and uniformity of one’s nation. It is the attempt to mold a nation into a uniform whole, based on a belief and assertion of national greatness (usually a historically viewed ‘national greatness’) based probably on race and certainly upon geographical area. That is usually at the expense of minorities, divergent notions and behaviors and individual freedoms within a country. This often extends to aggression towards neighboring countries, especially those that contain some of the same ethnic populations as one’s country (engendered by a belief that one’s ethnic kith and kin belong not as a minority in a neighboring country but within the great glory of their brethren people within one’s own nation).
So nationalism is partisan, divisive and undesirable, indeed one might say ‘an evil’ in the world, especially now that many nations have weapons of mass destruction within their armories. Yet what can be done about, what can be done to, reduce this problem (or ‘evil’)? The problem with having very many states is the possibility of some of them being ruled by a ‘madman’ and so of many being able to destroy all mankind or at least a very large part of mankind with their weaponry. The problem with abolishing all countries, even if one could, is that without governments resisting individuals’ crimes and even organizing collective infrastructure, humanity would descend into mindless anarchy which would be at least very dangerous, if not impossible to live in. This is especially so since the world is so densely populated that most people cannot live by hunter-gathering (as primitive people did) and without organized and stable technology. Nor is coalescing all states into one global government an ideal thing. For a start that one state might be badly governed or be totalitarian in government or both and freedom would then be extinguished in the whole world. At the least there would not be any diversity nor alternative modes of governance operating in the world nor competitive impetuses between nations. The best way would be the compromise of drastically reducing the number of states (or nations) in the world so as to reduce the dangers of conflicting states while still maintaining some diversity of governance and some international competitiveness in the world. That does not look like happening anytime soon. Yet just as the individual states in America gradually merged into the U.S.A., there may also be mergers of states in other regions. For instance in Europe where the European Union is in effect causing this to happen (although the European Union is now an extremely flawed, over-regulated Union) or Africa where the embryonic Organization of African States may develop into this. Of course some international disaster may turbo-charge such developments.
F) THE SENSE AND IMPLICATIONS OF MAKING ALL HUMANITY INTO OUR PRIMARY TRIBE
Joan Baez proclaimed, “I am a human being first” (and then she said in order of her priorities ‘a pacifist second’ and ‘a folk singer third’). ‘I am a human being first’ is very inspired and I think the appropriate and correct starting point for politics and political thought. It has multiple implications (and Joan Baez knew it has at least many of the implications I draw). It clearly means that humanity as a whole is or should be everybody’s overriding tribe, the tribe to which above all others one is loyal. While most people would now say one’s country or nation is one’s overriding tribe, though some might say it is one’s ethnicity or geographical area or religion I (and Joan Baez) would say all those are mistaken. Whereas proclaiming and acting as though humanity as a whole is one’s tribe is unifying, cooperative and helpful, being tribal for primarily one part of humanity is divisive and generally leads to conflict, destructive and usually futile conflict. Yes, there are differences between people, physical, ethnic, geographical and religious differences, differences that are often keenly noticed by individual people and group partisans. Yet they are relatively small differences compared to the characteristics people share with all (or very nearly all) other people and separate people from even our closest animal relatives, say chimpanzees. Not recognizing this leads to divisions and conflict, usually unnecessary, unhelpful and often destructive conflict between people. Recognizing this should lead to more harmonious tolerance and should lead to policies that are more beneficial to people as a whole, including most individual people whatever their ethnicity, nationality or religion or ancestral traditions may be.
Considering humanity as a whole as one’s tribe would also preclude ideologies designed to divide and concentrate on one part of humanity, as feminism in our age does (as Joan Baez recognized and accordingly has dissociated herself from Feminism). Also LGBT (homosexual and transexual) divisions and campaigns in society are unhelpful, especially over what are or should essentially be private matters. Furthermore campaigning on especially ‘trans-rights’ can lead to patent absurdities that contradict biological realities.
Also if one makes ‘Humanity’ into one’s overriding tribe to which one is primarily affiliated and loyal, it makes vegetarianism and veganism even less appropriate. There are already problems with vegetarianism since it is hard to deny that vegetation is also ‘alive’ and it too may also have at least primitive ‘feelings’. Yet we live in a world of predation, natural predation among animals and the only way individuals and species can live and survive is by exploiting and eating other parts, usually other living or once living, parts of the world. Our planet Earth is not infinite nor extendable. So the only way life forms can live is by a process of individual birth replacing other individuals that die and so make way for them and secondly by eating (and thereby recycling) other things, usually ‘living’ things that happen to exist alongside them on Earth.
Another and very central political point about the precept ‘I am a human being first’ is that any sensible political system should recognize that people are not blank canvases on which to devise and impose political systems, any kind of political system one may dream up. Rather people have distinct natures and proclivities that should be accommodated within any sensible political system. For instance people are usually naturally acquisitive (though some are more so than others) for themselves and their families. So for example it is no good devising a system based on enforced economic equality between people because due to human nature most people would then do the minimum of work they could get away with and avoid jobs requiring hard work or unsocial hours. Furthermore some would try to buck the system under the radar and find ways of unofficially making extra, unequal income that would accordingly need to be severely punished and repressed. So if one proclaims ‘I am a human being first’ we should understand that human beings are not robotic, neutral entities without distinctive natures. I say sensible governance must accommodate and accord with the realities of human nature, certainly where doing this is ultimately beneficial (such as in terms of overall wealth or creativity or development) to most people. I see that as absolutely fundamental to the kind of rational governance I advocate.
G) SUMMARY
In summary I am observing people are naturally tribal in favor of their own group. That is a characteristic inherited from numerous animals. However in animals it only applies to family and smallish packs or troupes, seldom numbering more than several dozen. However with modern humans it applies not only to families and small settlements but (after people stopped being hunter-gatherers and started to live in ever larger villages, towns, cities and countries) also to whole geographical areas, ethnicities, nations and religious groups. In animals, though neighboring groups of some animals, notably monkeys and apes, do sometimes fight each other, groups are mainly a cooperative way of joining together for mutual protection and advantage. However the problem for humanity is the larger tribal groups become the less protective use they are and the more liable to generate conflicts, harm and nowadays with ever more advanced technology (notably in weaponry) the more destructive they become.
Of course humanity cannot go back to living in small groups of hunter-gatherers (as there are now far too many people to survive, to even feed themselves, on that basis). What I say is that beyond small family units which overwhelmingly do serve a beneficial, protective purpose, people need to recognize that they are all much alike and see their tribe, their only real tribe as humanity as a whole. That would encourage cooperation and harmony (while maintaining friendlier though still useful competitiveness) rather than conflict between the perceived (and to some extent real, yet relatively minor) divisions within humanity. That is the real need and way forward for humanity now. I am not saying the recognition and acting as though humanity as a whole is our real and only tribe would lead either to an ideal world or to universal happiness. There is and still would be at an individual level misbehaviors and personal conflicts between people which is also an unavoidable part of human nature. Yet such personal conflicts though they can still be harmful are far less harmful than group or societal conflicts because they take place with less ‘weaponry’. They are just at an individual level (usually discouraged by society, certainly discouraged by nations) rather than at a very damaging mini (in relation to humanity as a whole) tribal and societal level.
I really dislike the modernistic term ‘far-right’ to mainly describe intense nationalistic and sometimes other tribal partisan loyalties (partly because ‘far-right’ is just dismissive of anything such people say on any topic even if it is valid). However it is the belief that humanity as a whole should be our overriding tribe rather than a faction or part of humanity that mainly distinguishes my right wing, more conventional right wing beliefs from what are now commonly called ‘far-right’ beliefs.
Geoffrey H L Berg