[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 82, Issue 15

[darren shawn greer]

Tribalism.
> 
> A central feature of tribalism is the us/them dichotomy. "Us"
> truthful and good, "them" untruthful and evil.

 

Edward Said said in his book Orientalism that the battle of the times is not East vs. West but fundamentalism against modernity. Margaret Lawarence (from my own country) wrote in her essay Tribalism: Us and Them that the battle consists of tribalism vs. globalism, and that tribalism is the blight in the centre of the human heart. 



Per Ardua Ad Astra
For more info on author Darren Greer visit 
http://darrenshawngreer.blogspot.com



 

> Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:27:53 -0700
> From: jrd1415 at gmail.com
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: Re: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 82, Issue 15
> 
> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 7:03 AM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > The thing that shocks and depresses me is not the ignorance - we know about that - but the hostility.  Why do so many people have the attitude "you think differently to me, therefore you are my enemy ...
> 
> Tribalism.
> 
> A central feature of tribalism is the us/them dichotomy. "Us"
> truthful and good, "them" untruthful and evil. The human genes of
> tribe A compete with the human genes of tribe B. How does one tribe
> distinguish itself from an "other"?
> 
> Tribe A has an identity meme set, composed of identity markers such as
> culture, belief system, and narrative. Whenever one tribal human
> (which is to say any and all humans) encounters an "other" (as in "an
> other tribe") human, the difference in identity markers will provoke
> suspicion, caution, and defensiveness. When the "other" speaks,
> memetic conflicts provoke cognitive dissonance. This mental "pain"
> signals a challenge, ie an "attack" by a rival meme set. Naturally --
> here, literally, as in evolved over billions of generations in a
> pre-cognitive state of nature -- there will follow an impulse to
> strike back, to defend one's own meme set.
> 
> That's where the hostility comes from. A foreign meme set -- cryonics
> and its new-paradigm attack on death -- is just too much of an assault
> on all the stabilizing and reassuring verities of the old-paradigm
> meme set.
> 
> The instinct for tribalism is inbuilt and exceedingly powerful. I see
> it as the explanation for examples of astonishingly nonsensical group
> think, ie trutherism (on the left) and birtherism (on the right).
> 
> That's my take on it. YMMV.
> 
> Best, Jeff Davis
> 
> "The whole problem with the world is that fools
> and fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
> and wiser people so full of doubts."
> Bertrand Russell
> 
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