The Angry Hypocrite Despises his own Tribal Instincts

If you're familiar with my philosophy (and who isn't, really, given the world-renowned renaissance figure of towering influence that I am, with almost four followers on blogspot, and a couple dozen others who are nervously aware of the existence of this thing), you'll know that if there's one thing in the world I despise, it's the irrational instincts that happen to pervade mankind. Those instincts, at least for the social judgment aspects, have a deep root: tribalism. Tribalism was an attitude born from the days when you and your kin stuck close and fought together over scarce resources. Any outsiders were treated with suspicion at best and outright hostility at worst. However, even as civilizations began to develop and the logical rationale faded away, the tribalist attitude persisted.

Tribalism not only causes rifts on its own; it often exacerbates existing conflicts (or the converse, where other factors exacerbate tribal conflicts). Religions very often rise and fall along tribal lines, with the Arabs fighting to convert the pagan Berbers, the European Christians crusading against the Muslim Turks and Arabs, and so on. Even today, for example in Sudan (Muslim 'Arabs' fighting against Christian 'Blacks') and Nigeria, and the continuing ethnic distinction drawn between the Jews and other white races (far more culturally visible than the distinction between, say, the French and the Germans), religion and tribal animosities go hand-in-hand. In the end, it simply undermines rational thinking and promotes prejudices, which is bad for progress (I consider progress the only true good).

There are probably a few people who are naive enough to think that I succeed in my efforts to practice what I preach (the very existence of the blog actually attests that I don't; logically, if I harbor extreme opinions, I should try to keep them mostly to myself because of the risk of social stigma). As I already stated, this is unfortunately untrue. Every time the Olympics come up, I try to remind myself that according to logic, I ought to root for those countries that most closely resemble my values. And I partially succeed; for example, I always root for the Swedes and the Swiss during the Winter Olympics, mostly because I want prestige to go to a country whose government is very similar to the style of liberal democracy I support. However, the main problems with my logic appear when the Summer Olympics come around; I root for China, on the basis of half my bloodline and Israel on the basis of the other half. I know that the Chinese government is not exactly a paragon of freedom and democratic values; I know that the Israeli government, particularly those that have been unfortunate enough to be headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, are not exactly kumbaya-singing peace-lovingly rational and that they infuriatingly (given that I value Israel's security out of a tribalist sympathy for Israel) provoke the Palestinians and other Arab groups when there is a chance for peace. But I root for them anyway. And these sentiments are real, not just confined to the sports arena.

I'm currently trying to think how this tribalist problem can be countered. Unfortunately, it seems simply too deep-rooted to effectively combat. Hopefully one day we'll realize the importance of a united sentient front to spread life and thinking as far as we can. Until then, we'll be mired in that same old ugly thought: as the War Nerd so aptly put it, "My tribe YAY, your tribe BOO". What an infantile creed that is.