If you'd like to read an interesting piece on human tribalism that is contrary to much thought out in the world here it is.

https://bigthink.com/the-well/tribalism-humans-not-tribal/

For me I think the is much in culture and ways of human organizing that humans want to make innate that simply isn't.

No us versus them in nature. Makes sense. We are the same creatures.

> No us versus them in nature. Makes sense. We are
> the same creatures.

The author is not consistent. He says "humans are not tribal" and then claims that means they are not predisposed to "us versus them" behavior, but those two propositions are not the same thing. The fact is that people organize into "us versus them" groups on the basis of religion, politics, social class, and many other non-ethnic characteristics. "Tribal" is just one rationale behind such organization.

Nor is the author right to insist that group divisions aren't real if they are not consistent. Anyone who has studied anthropology or history knows that a change in external or internal circumstances can reverse "us versus them" patterns quickly and lastingly. Think of the emergence of protestantism; the shifts in alliance between the Austrians, French and Swedes in the 30 Years War; or the way minority groups band with each other when confronting dominant elites. Recall also of how quickly the proletarian movement in Europe collapsed along nationalistic lines when World War One began. The fact that the "us" and the "them" are fluid entities does not mean there is no innate tendency towards "us versus them" thinking and conduct.

The bottom line is that in times of stress homo sapiens in all their various manifestations tend, like other primates, to bond into groups to obtain and control scarce resources. The groups can divide and rearrange in new forms, but the size of the band is quite consistent and performs much as evolutionary theory would suggest. Moreover, when bands cooperate militarily or through trade or shared religious activities, they tend thereafter to revert to their previous social networks.

Building durable larger groups requires non-evolutionary forces like religion, the police state, and modern media. But even within such a society there are always fissiparous tendencies as people preferentially identify with smaller collectives. Recent US history shows that in spades.

It's easy to conclude that people don't inherently engage in "us versus them" conduct if you presume that that conduct must be absolute, with no periods of cooperation; and that "non-tribal" forms of organization don't count. But absent such herculean assumptions, people manifest an opportunistic ability to trade and cooperate when convenient and to war when necessary: and when resources are scarce, the latter propensity prevails.

The question is if humans so us versus them inherently and I don't think so but that is my opinion. Human history can justify all sorts of almost opposing theory and evolutionary is no exception.

Interesting idea that us versus them isn't a part of our nature but a meta phenomenon in our adaptable natures.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Human history can justify all sorts of
> almost opposing theory and evolutionary is no
> exception.

Yes, but the author of the article is the only one who insists on an either/or answer to the question. My view is that humans are predisposed to a whole range of social behaviors from extreme generosity to extreme brutality, depending on the environment and other factors.

It's instructive to note that the author didn't really present any examples of societies without us/them orientations either within the group and or between groups. There are some apparent cases of such egalitarianism--most pre-modern hunter-gatherer societies, although anthropologists are constantly finding examples of inter-group violence when resources are constrained; and places like Minoan Crete, which had no coastal defenses (until other polities developed the ability to project force onto the island). That evidence suggests to me that if resources are abundant and the community is small enough that people feel personal loyalty to each other, cooperative relations are certainly within the scope of human social potential.

But if one is going to argue that primitive humans were more "moral" in any way than chimpanzees, the burden is on that person to produce evidence of something having changed. What we see in the article, however, is the claim that “there is insufficient conclusive material evidence from the Pleistocene to see warfare as having been a principal driving force for human evolution.” There are two problems with that. First, you can't read the absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Second, no one but the author is arguing that warfare must have "been a principle driving force for human evolution." To the contrary, if the possibility of group-based violence existed in earlier primates--as it manifestly did and does--there is no reason to believe it have evolved independently in humans rather than merely persisted from earlier eras.

To put the point most succinctly, what is the most fundamental "us versus them" unit? It is the family. I know you, as I, would do anything for your wife and children and presumably for your grandchildren and even for some of your siblings and their children. Is that not implicitly an "us versus them" framework that we would consider morally sound? And are we not soon approaching the one to two hundred members that is by dint of hunter-gatherer economics the standard working group in primate and early human societies?

By saying as I do that there are a vast range of possible social possibilities or, as you do, that there is scope for "adaptation" in our genetic nature, we are both acknowledging that people are as capable of better as we are of worse. That's the challenge the world faces today: can we maintain a sense of inter-group identity on a national or global scale when economic scarcity and personal grievance are constantly driving us apart?

I hope your relative optimism is justified.

I hope so as well. I don't believe any other primates than us actually collaborate. They cooperate and they are well suited for survival. We are well suited to adapt to all sorts of things. I think it a bit myopic to think we are naturally stuck cooperating like great apes when I believe we have much more potential.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/03/2022 11:34AM by Elder Berry.

Chimpanzees and bonobos cooperate, mainly within their groups but they will sometimes join with other groups against a common predator.

We really aren't much different than our closest genetic relatives. Yes, our brains make it easier for us to do all sorts of things like technology and organization. But that tends to amplify the underlying genetic impulses rather than engendering a higher morality. So while it is true that chimps don't have an International Red Cross, it's also true that they have yet to develop nuclear bombs and to date have not started any world wars that kill tens of millions of other chimps.

Murder on that scale requires a human brain: other primates can't organize and cooperate well enough to achieve that.

I've been thinking about this and would like to ask a provocative question. Is not modern warfare the greatest example of the human ability to collaborate between different groups?

I'm not sure this is true, but I can't off the top of my head think of greater trans-"tribal" efforts than, for example, World War Two. In that instance Germany and Japan, countries with little in common, cooperated to establish and consolidate empires in Europe and Asia, respectively, through violence against their "subject" peoples and territories. They also drew in other countries, including Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Thailand as well as political minorities in places like the Poland, Ukraine, France, Spain, and the KMT in China. That was a remarkable inter-tribal effort.

The countervailing alignment was even more impressive. The United States, Great Britain, and the USSR put aside profound ideological and practical differences for years to defeat the Axis powers. That required copious financial assistance and unprecedented logistical coordination over the space of years. Is there any better example of inter-tribal cooperation, on both sides of the conflict, than World War Two?

Is not war the best example of the uniquely human capacity for coooperation?

> Is not war the best example
> of the uniquely human capacity
> for cooooperation?



I just wanted to add another 'o' to the three that Gladys used
...


Now with a tiny bit of retrospect, I can see how humans can make coooooperation fun!!

That's what I get for consuming hard drugs before the cocktail hour.

There is potential archeology evidence of massive cooperative efforts between loads of tribes here in The New World.

And they don't support The Book of Mormon.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is potential archeology evidence of massive
> cooperative efforts between loads of tribes here
> in The New World.

EB, I think the New World evidence supports my comparatively pessimistic view.

As I wrote above, hunter-gatherer societies are more pacific in the sense that bands of a hundred or so are small enough for everyone to have an emotional connection to everyone else. There is evidence that the same thing happened among Neanderthals, with a recent archaeological study finding evidence of small groups caring for crippled individuals who could not contribute meaningfully to their small communities. We see the same among the great apes.

What we also observe among primates is limited cooperation with other groups when resource competition is not too intense; and most "wars" are small scale and result in relatively few deaths or injuries in part because such small and backward communities lack the economic and technological power to do much more. (But researchers have observed murder* and "genocidal" multi-year wars among chimpanzees, so the capacity for mass slaughter is also present there.**)

What is clear is that when the size of the community expands beyond the stable primate level, cohesion requires an supplemental forces--in my words, "religion, the police state, [and/or] modern media."

Isn't that exactly what we see in the large states in pre-modern America? Whether it is the Maya, the Inca, the Aztec, or related civilizations, they used religion, human sacrifice, and the demonization of the "other" to hold their states together. They routinely sent warrior groups out into the neighboring territories to kidnap people to kill on pyramids or in public squares, torturing them and tearing out their hearts and throwing the bodies down the steps in front of the assembled masses.

In other words, we see relatively peaceful interactions between groups whose size is comparable to that of other primate societies--at the level at which genetics would predominate--but much more emphasis on state religion and state oppression when the size of the human community rises much above that "natural" level. What that indicates to me is that the ability to cooperate peacefully decreases with the scale of the polity, as if any pacific orientation stemming from genetics must be augmented with social innovations like religion/ideology when the number of participants grows "unnaturally" large.



*Regicide, reported by National Geographic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XP6T1CMgBQ

Murder: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29237276


**https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/does-chimp-warfare-explain-our-sense-of-good-and-evil/58643/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

The author is not consistent. He says "humans are not tribal" and then claims that means they are not predisposed to "us versus them" behavior, but those two propositions are not the same thing. The fact is that people organize into "us versus them" groups on the basis of religion, politics, social class, and many other non-ethnic characteristics. "Tribal" is just one rationale behind such organization.

COMMENT: Good point! In other words, 'us v. them' may not be a genetic factor of tribalism, but it is definitely a cultural factor in social life.
________________________________________________

Nor is the author right to insist that group divisions aren't real if they are not consistent. Anyone who has studied anthropology or history knows that a change in external or internal circumstances can reverse "us versus them" patterns quickly and lastingly. Think of the emergence of protestantism; the shifts in alliance between the Austrians, French and Swedes in the 30 Years War; or the way minority groups band with each other when confronting dominant elites. Recall also of how quickly the proletarian movement in Europe collapsed along nationalistic lines when World War One began. The fact that the "us" and the "them" are fluid entities does not mean there is no innate tendency towards "us versus them" thinking and conduct.

COMMENT: Agree again! But it is the evolutionary psychologists that have the burden to establish such innateness, which as I noted, they have not done.
___________________________________________

The bottom line is that in times of stress homo sapiens in all their various manifestations tend, like other primates, to bond into groups to obtain and control scarce resources. The groups can divide and rearrange in new forms, but the size of the band is quite consistent and performs much as evolutionary theory would suggest. Moreover, when bands cooperate militarily or through trade or shared religious activities, they tend thereafter to revert to their previous social networks.

COMMENT: Again, point taken, but I dispute the last part of this claim: "The groups can divide and rearrange in new forms, but *the size of the band is quite consistent and performs much as evolutionary theory would suggest.*" This claim is very vague. What evolutionary theory would provide a plausible explanation, over and above pure culture, for such social facts?
__________________________________________

Building durable larger groups requires non-evolutionary forces like religion, the police state, and modern media. But even within such a society there are always fissiparous tendencies as people preferentially identify with smaller collectives. Recent US history shows that in spades.

COMMENT: Again, culture (non-evolutionary forces) predominates over genetics. Nurture over nature. ("Fissiparous"? I had to look that one up.)
____________________________________________

It's easy to conclude that people don't inherently engage in "us versus them" conduct if you presume that that conduct must be absolute, with no periods of cooperation; and that "non-tribal" forms of organization don't count. But absent such herculean assumptions, people manifest an opportunistic ability to trade and cooperate when convenient and to war when necessary: and when resources are scarce, the latter propensity prevails.

COMMENT: Indeed! But, again, I want to see an argument that supports ANY role for genetics in social conflict--other than the basic survival instinct. Like you said, human behavior is way too complex to provide any meaningful theory from either evolutionary psychology or sociology.

Tribalism seems to be common among great apes.

The author despises the word tribalism and repeats over and over that it is a bad word. And over and over. Author has such a strong aversion to the word that it borders on obsessive. It's just as good a word to describe a group as any. Author loads the word however with his own personal agenda. The word being the cause when it's only a noun. Repetition is a cheap tactic that works though.

Meanwhile author claims over and over that "us vs them" is not inherent. Author offers no concrete evidence, just opinion to bolster hate of the tribe word as he says us vs them is not inherent over and over. It's there whether inherent or not so wny make the word the enemy?

Further, "us vs them" is a major part of the world and always has been long before the colonialism the author singles out as the culprit and disregarding most of the world's history.

This is very sophomoric in my opinion. Fluff piece with no backbone. Would make a nice conference talk if we reference the BoM occasionally.


The world is over populated. If we want to make words evil, let's skip tribal and go straight to selfish, power hungry, money hungry, and the need to have the hottest mate. Next, how about manipulative and seductive. Then lets add in 8 billion people co-existing and we are down to the thick of the game and we are back to a very sophisticated version of where we started out millions of years ago:

Survival of the fittest. Might makes right. And Just Take Over if you can--why not?


Man's modern inventions and technologies have not leveled the playing field adding diversity to the game, and, allowed a new set of weapons to be in play, like simply claiming to be offended or a victim can now win you the game against might. Truth is still sitting on the bench hoping to get up to bat. Meanwhile us vs them has evolved into divide and conquer.


Finally, literature itself proves the existence of a deep seated "us vs them". Gotta have a protagonist and an antagonist to make the pages sing. Right? Otherwise you are just watching paint dry.

I'm not a fan of people in general and author is a good example of why because his is sidestepping humanities problems by falling for the ruse that re-branding them solves them.

You can call them a stewardess, a flight attendant, or a space waitress, but in the end, the job has not changed.

Mormons are now Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Changed everything right?


So you can forget tribal and call people ethnic groups, clans, castes, associations, societies, or whatever you want, but people divide into groups and what ensues is strived for dominance of the fittest and their followers even if you claim its not inherent.

In then end, everyone knows that you are only as powerful or as safe as the group that recognizes you as a member. No matter where it came from, us vs them is here to stay.

"Amen."

--Judic West, tribal golfer

What are you amening? All of those sentiments or just the ones specific to tribalism?

How about this?

"I'm not a fan of people in general and author is a good example of why because his is sidestepping humanities problems by falling for the ruse that re-branding them solves them."

You amening this prayer against people?

That is all I got because I have no idea what rebranding human problems means.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2022 12:42PM by Elder Berry.

Yes.

Four questions and one answer. You are very economical in this thread.

The author despises the word tribalism and repeats over and over that it is a bad word. And over and over. Author has such a strong aversion to the word that it borders on obsessive. It's just as good a word to describe a group as any. Author loads the word however with his own personal agenda. The word being the cause when it's only a noun. Repetition is a cheap tactic that works though.

COMMENT: Yes, to the author tribalism *is* a bad theory! And the motivation is to preserve humanistic values. (As explained in my other post) Tribalism is associated with evolutionary psychology, which is associated with nativism, which is associated with biological materialism, which is associated with determinism. So, you have a string of 'isms' that the author is reacting against.
____________________________________________

Meanwhile author claims over and over that "us vs them" is not inherent. Author offers no concrete evidence, just opinion to bolster hate of the tribe word as he says us vs them is not inherent over and over. It's there whether inherent or not so wny make the word the enemy?

COMMENT: It is not the author's burden. He is reacting against the prevailing genetic version of 'us v. them' tribalism. Cultural tribalism is just a social fact; evolutionary tribalism requires a theory with genetic evidence.
______________________________________________

Further, "us vs them" is a major part of the world and always has been long before the colonialism the author singles out as the culprit and disregarding most of the world's history.

COMMENT: Yes, but this is a cultural fact! It does not tell us what the basis for this fact is. Is it genetic tribalism? Or is it just cultural, for example, a product of inadequate economic and educational opportunities. The former we have no control over, the latter we do!
______________________________________

"This is very sophomoric in my opinion. Fluff piece with no backbone. Would make a nice conference talk if we reference the BoM occasionally."

COMMENT: I don't think this is well written or argued, but once you understand the author's concerns, it is not stupid or 'sophomoric.'
______________________________________

"The world is over populated. If we want to make words evil, let's skip tribal and go straight to selfish, power hungry, money hungry, and the need to have the hottest mate. Next, how about manipulative and seductive. Then lets add in 8 billion people co-existing and we are down to the thick of the game and we are back to a very sophisticated version of where we started out millions of years ago:

Survival of the fittest. Might makes right. And Just Take Over if you can--why not?

COMMENT: The problem is this: Survival is no doubt a biological trait that is embedded in human psychology. So, that is a given. The question is how much mileage can an evolutionary psychologist get, in explaining the human mind and human behavior, by simply appealing to this basic evolutionary instinct? Actually, not much, because much of human behavior (and human psychology) is altruistic. So, before you run with the survival instinct to infer all the negative aspects of human behavior, while discounting cultural factors and human agency, you better have a better theory than just 'survival of the fittest.'
__________________________________________

I'm not a fan of people in general and author is a good example of why because his is sidestepping humanities problems by falling for the ruse that re-branding them solves them.

COMMENT: The author is NOT 'sidestepping humanities problems.' The author is presenting a position against genetic tribalism that offers hope that culture can be molded to overcome such problems.

> COMMENT: The author is NOT
> 'sidestepping humanities
> problems.' The author is
> presenting a position
> against genetic tribalism
> that offers hope that
> culture can be molded to
> overcome such problems.


I 'hope' I win the lottery . . .

The greatest form of systemic oppression for pomo moonbeams is reality. Tribalism is common among primates, and it certainly isn't a recent "construct".

Apes aren't tribes. There are literally millions of years between us.

Tribalism like many many reductions is easy to use to brush with a broad stroke conflict between groups of people.

There is nothing that I've read that indicates to me that I or my species is tribal. We are adaptable and social. And when pressed into large numbers we compete more and more.

I'm of the belief that humans aren't tribal primarily but secondarily when we've matured and pruned our neurons into us and them thinking.

I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion. I just want people to consider the possibility.

Apes do form communities and do go to war against one another in groups. If one of them goes against the lead ape then other apes will support him/her. If that isn't tribalism I don't know what is.

"There is nothing that I've read that indicates to me that I or my species is tribal."

Thousands of years of recorded history? Our natural state is tribal. Empires were the first to destroy that, then states. 700 years ago nearly all of Africa, the Americas, Australia and remote parts of Asia were tribal. Even Ireland was tribal. 7000 years ago and apart from Egypt and one or two other places, everyone was in a tribe.

Children instinctively pick on someone that's different, and have to be taught not to. Doesn't matter if it's someone with light skin, dark skin, ginger hair, fat legs, being short or tall or whatever.

Democracy, peace, fairness and all the rest are not our natural condition through history and we have to be continually pulled back to them.

Well, not all apes will follow "their" leader. Also Bonobos don't do it like other chimps.

And just because human history shows something didn't mean other things didn't happened. There might have been huge swaths of European today land ruled by councils of elders worshipping a goddess and putting women in equal if not more esteem than men.

That there is an absence of evidence doesn't mean a evidence of absence.

And my children never were like the children you're painting with war paint.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2022 03:25PM by Elder Berry.

People root for you to get to the apex and then love to watch you fall as salve for their own failures. Everyone wants to be top of the heap and chase away those little town blues and you can only be that by building on the ruins of others.

The groups rallying against those in power don't want to level the playing field, they want to tilt it in their favor. They want their turn to reign, to be on the front page.

So if there is a new construct it is not tribalism but the concept of equality-- which never has and never will exist. Still a good goal, though, and getting close to reaching it now and then has eased some pain. But don't count on it. Better to hone your skills at playing the game.

Don't blame human nature generally for history. We've adapted to every environ and we've created untold cultures over millennia.

And exactly which of those cultures was not "tribal"?

I don't know. It is a lot of ground to cover. And less us and them societies might have been prehistorical.

COMMENT: Although I don't think this essay is particularly well written or argued, I agree with the conclusion that 'tribalism' is not an innate evolutionary trait of human nature that explains social conflict. I agree with the author that such conflict is primarily cultural, and not genetic, and definitely not an evolutionary adaptation.

By way of background: Note that this whole discussion is a throw-back of the old nature-nurture debate, beginning with Chomsky's convincing arguments that human language necessarily involves a 'Universal Grammer' that must be 'innate.' Subsequent Chomskyites, like Steven Pinker, expanded upon this theme by (1) Attributing a host of other human cognitive capacities as more or less discrete mental (neurological) modules that were physically grounded in the brain; and (2) Arguing that all (or most) of these innate mental modules could be explained by appeal to evolutionary adaptations. Soon innateness, or nativism, was off and running, and culture as the sociologists' driving force of human behavior became undermined. The humanist sociologists, however, resisted, because the more behavior was innate, the less human beings could be molded by environmental improvements, like education, to engage in appropriate, moral, social behavior. Here, we have an author challenging the innateness of 'tribalism.' Ultimately, the goal of such essays is to redeem human nature of adverse traits and properties that influence, if not dictate, immoral social behavior. So, that's the background.
____________________________________________

"For me I think the is much in culture and ways of human organizing that humans want to make innate that simply isn't."

COMMENT: Yes, I agree. See above. Human behavior, in any given case, is a complex interaction of many complex variables that involve nature, nurture, and, yes, free will. The whole philosophical and psychological trend since Chomsky has been to 'naturalize the mind' by appealing to "evolutionary psychology." (See, e.g. Fred I. Dretske, *Naturalizing the Mind* (1995); Steven Pinker, *The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature* (1994))

However, as one author noted:

"I view evolutionary psychology as more speculation than science. The conclusion I urge is, accordingly, skeptical. Speculation is just that: speculation. We should resist it as such. It does not warrant our acceptance. Evolutionary psychology as currently practiced is often speculation disguised as results. We should regard it as such." (Robert C. Richardson, *Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology* (2007)

In any event, the burden is on philosophers and evolutionary psychologists--not writers such as the OP link--to establish (1) that tribalism is an evolutionary adaptation, or otherwise a genetic trait encompassed within human nature; and (2) that this trait is linked to human social aggression. Evolutionary psychologists have done neither. Moreover, note that whenever social facts are 'explained' by appeal to human nature, or ultimately to genetics and evolution, not only culture but human free will as a humanistic vehicle to rise above such facts in the face of environmental temptation is undermined. So, the 'tribalism' claim (as an explanation of social aggression) is both unsupported, and dangerous as a social assumption. (IMO)
______________________________________

"No us versus them in nature. Makes sense. We are the same creatures."

COMMENT: Well, the survival instinct itself is arguably a kind of 'us v. them' evolutionary byproduct, which, of course, is part of human nature. So, altruism--setting aside the personal survival instinct--might generally be considered the exception rather than the rule, perhaps rooted to some extent in culture. (Evolutionary explanations of psychological altruism are forced and unpersuasive.) Certainly, altruism cannot be fully explained by tribalism. In any event, the fact that human beings can transcend their survival instinct (or tribal instinct) to act altruistically to other humans, and others not within their tribe, strikes me as evidence that human beings are much more than either nature or nurture.

The "tribal" model offers an effective and durable explanation for human inter-relationships, but in the absence of any other explanation for what we see both historically and in the present, let's not accept it at face value because ... it makes us look bad?

Look bad?

Yeah, that is why I started this thread.

"The "tribal" model offers an effective and durable explanation for human inter-relationships, but in the absence of any other explanation for what we see both historically and in the present, let's not accept it at face value because ... it makes us look bad?"

COMMENT: How about this instead:

'The genetic, evolutionary-based tribal model offers some explanation for human inter-relationships but given the obvious fact of the role played by highly complex cultural factors--and the fact that it makes humans look 'programmed' for bad behavior-- it should be rejected in favor of a theory that allows human societies to affect human behavior through sound, morally preferable, social policy.'

You can also decide to rely on 'ghawd' to make your wishes come true.  No one can prove that your reliance might be misplaced.  So if you didn't lose, you're a winner.  Yay...

You're a winner.

Amen. And . . . I'll throw in an Ave Maria as well.

And without tribes there could be no Survivor to win the million dollars.

And isn't a human construct the natural product of evolution? Brings us right back to ---we cannot separate ourselves from our gene pool. Yet.

Besides tribal warfare, we also get tribal customs, tribal art and lore and ornate costumes, and foods, and wisdom. And even casinos. Those things make it harder to dislike each other. Yin and Yang?

Many people in the tribal sense call themselves "the people." I think of the people of that island off of the coast of India in the Andaman Islands. Their them is literally everyone outside their island. If us and them were genetic I think they would be the rule and not the exception.

I wonder...do people considered tribal think of themselves as such?

It is a useful word like Mormonism but doesn't do justice to the phenomenon it describes.

I'm guilty of using the easy route. I wish I had a dollar for everytime someone thought I grew up RLDS...

> I wonder...do people considered
> tribal think of themselves as such?


I propose back to you that what people think of themselves is not a very useful gauge in terms of how they are judged by their inferiors, their peers, or their superiors.

Most of us are judged by what we are seen doing, not on what we report we're thinking.

I wonder if the author whose work you cited to get this thread rolling evidences tribalism in the manner in which he lives his life?  There's probably no way for us to know, but when people go out of their way to preach to me, I'm always suspicious; it's like when someone whom I know can't putt tries to tell me how to improve my putting.

And yes, we should all set a goal of rising above tribalism, but when push comes to shove and I have five portions to share among ten people, I might cut the portions in half ... or I might speak in Spanish to mention my good fortune, knowing that there are only five Spanish-speakers in the group of ten.

If you confer the tone one hears when speaking of 'family' onto 'tribe', doesn't that make it a little easier?  Who runs around saying "strangers first, family second!"

Who runs around saying "strangers first, family second?

My parents.

I didn't go out of my way to preach to you. I don't know if you even read the article so that high horse just got taller naturally?

What if the horse was Big Jake?

As long as he's part of your posse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2022 04:38PM by Elder Berry.