The High Price We Pay for Tribalism

Israel versus Palestine. Liberals versus conservatives.  The Mets versus the Yankees. Whichever we favor, we’ve come to believe that our unwavering, religious-like allegiance is not only normal and unavoidable, but advantageous: stemming from an evolutionary adaptation that allowed our species to survive over time. 

The accepted wisdom goes something like this: since the dawn of our species, human communities have been stitched together by the belonging impulse. Without it, the cooperation-driven advantage would not have been possible. Humans, therefore, are assumed to be inherently tribal because of our prehistoric ancestors. Membership in a group or tribe increased an individual’s chances of survival.

While there is merit to this theory, it is only one part of a more nuanced and complex story.

Our communal society has instilled the belief that each of us arrives in the world with an innate urge to belong. We have an innate need to attach to caregivers. However, most considerations of the attachment impulse conflate it with the desire to belong. And while that initial impulse to attach is innate—evolution’s way of ensuring our affinity to parents and other important providers—anything beyond it must be taught.

We are born unaffiliated. No newborn has a religion, nationality, or ethnicity. Babies do not naturally feel attachment to a group of strangers. They don’t know anything about the relationships among the adults surrounding them, and they certainly know nothing about the many complex concepts that govern social life. They don’t exhibit any recognition of a group or their place within it.

But each infant does know themself. Babies can call attention to their needs: however, at this young age their notions of social behavior are rudimentary, and they communicate basic needs vaguely and inefficiently. Then, at about age three, as the acquisition of language starts to inform their understanding of the needs and opinions of others, small children are taught that they belong to certain groups and not others.

Up to this point, need-gratification was provided on an unconditional basis. But now, the child begins to learn that the approval of their caregivers may be contingent on the social appropriateness of their behavior.

Socially harmonious concepts, such as “share,” “let the others go first,” are drilled into children, with no explanation as to why. We say, “This is how you make friends,” or “go play with your sister or brother of neighbor,” and as a result, we reward children for communal behavior with smiles of encouragement, hugs, high fives, and various other forms of praise.

Meanwhile, at the urging of caregivers, the parallel play that characterizes toddlerhood—when children in the same space are happily occupied with different things, oblivious to their peers—is gradually replaced by more interactive forms of play that require responding to others’ reactions and actions. Thus, the once self-centered toddler is directed (at times railroaded) into a life of communality.

As children get older, they are presented with endless opportunities to forge affiliations with peers: carpools, summer camps, team sports, after-school clubs, and so forth. Classrooms are often segmented into teams or cohorts, each assigned labels to reinforce group identity and belonging (for example, red and blue teams). The ability to assimilate into these groups is seen as a prerequisite for healthy social and emotional development, and opting out is rarely an option.

The motivation to “fit in” ramps up in early adolescence, which is when children discover (often the hard way) that disregard for the group leads to unhappiness and rejection, whereas conformity confers social rewards. The desire for popularity and social approval becomes all-encompassing, just as the criteria for inclusion into peer groups become stricter and popular cliques close ranks.

No other cognitive behavioral conditioning occurs on this universal a scale.

Read More: The Power of Changing Your Mind

This well-intentioned training shapes the overall upbringing of most children. We learn that becoming a functioning adult involves forging identities—political, cultural, regional, and so on—based on group belonging. Our culture places immense importance on communality, leading to the perception that a different stance is a sign of pathology.

I disagree. 

It is true that, for a society, communality can be especially valuable in the face of shared hardship. It is also true that for many individuals, belonging to a group, whether it’s a formal organization, like a religious congregation, or informal, like a circle of friends, provides the social support needed to ward off discomfort with the futility of life we all encounter at moments in adulthood.

But in the modern world, the communal impulse that evolution has supposedly equipped us with does not make us feel safer, less alienated, or more content with our lives. One need only look at our polarized politics to realize that, in fact, it does the opposite. From systemic racism and exclusion to authoritarian politics to war, the urge to “belong” doesn’t bring us together—it alienates us from each other.

Cruelty is far too high a price to pay for the privilege of belonging. You need no permission to be kind and to let go of the cruel. At a time when the Trumpian collective’s demands for exclusion and aggression grow louder and more insistent than ever, we don’t need more belonging—more tribes and groups. Rather, we need individual empathy, compassion, and kindness. As Norwegian playwright and poet Henrick Ibsen wrote in An Enemy of the People, “When society’s values are corrupted, it is the duty of the individual to uphold true morality.”