Human beings can’t seem to get beyond their tribal origins, i.e. acting as small groups with self-serving and often fanatical goals. If we can’t get beyond this, our social structures will never develop beyond our savage natures that define them. Desmond Morris in his classic The Naked Ape theorized that we’re victims of our basic apelike natures. His theory is only valid to the point that the great apes’ tribes were the origins of our own, and the latter have come to be the bane of human existence.
Tribalism represents the ultimate us-versus-them building block of world societies. With all the technical advances and wonders seen in the last two centuries, the twentieth and twenty-first, our social structures are still tribal-based and basically the same as they were at the dawn of human civilization when Ugh and his tribe huddled around a bonfire, a fire they tried to keep going because they had no idea how to start a new one—that fire started by a lightning strike must certainly be a gift from the gods!
And that foundation of tribalism mixed with prehistoric ignorance still exists! Sure, our wonderful science and technology allows the tribe to become larger and more deadly—the one invading the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was certainly larger than Ugh’s—but that often just translates into the more vicious form of savagery we call “mob rule”—just another name for an attack by a large, savage and uncontrolled tribe.
Tribalism isn’t always negative, of course. A tribe of scientific geeks can produce vaccines that help save lives, for example. But peaceful tribalism is rather rare these days as the us-versus-them attitudes become more common and extreme.
One has to conclude that human beings are doomed if they can’t get beyond tribalism. Those chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” might be outliers in the spectrum of human behavior, but they are dangerous and violent motivations that destroy public order. The tribes corresponding to the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys have been decapitated with their leaders’ prison sentences (I wanted more years for them), but what about the other MAGA maniacs in the US Congress who encouraged these savages? What about that ex-president who used them to mount an insurrection? Are we going to allow him to do that again?
Our country might be committing suicide by confusing free speech with tribalism. In Montana rececently, LGBTQ sympathizers used free speech to express their displeasure with the state’s rabid anti-gay policies; neo-Nazis attacked them. In Germany, hate speech from neo-Nazis isn’t allowed. Anti-semitic speech isn’t allowed either. We must equate hate speech with yelling “fire” in a packed theater; that’s not protected! Free speech ends when it becomes the savage utterances from a violent mob.
If we don’t contain our most violent tribes, our country will be torn apart! Decent people don’t want that to happen. Savages revel in it.