Us vs. Them

12 April 2006The Anthropik NetworkMike Godesky Posted in Thought

In my short time on this little globe I've had the good fortune to meet a wide variety of people. Male and female. Rich and poor. Gay and straight. White, black, and Asian. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, pantheist, and Wiccan. Geeks, jocks, punks, stoners, and pot-smoking hippies. Everyone from the most scholarly intellectuals to the most closed-minded bigots. From the most Communist of liberals to the most fascist of conservatives. And while I have not been what one would call "friends" with all of these people, I have been able to have mostly pleasant interactions with each of them. No matter how much we may have fought or disagreed, they have all, in some way, been my teachers. And probably the most important lesson they had to teach me was to pity the poor fool who thinks he has nothing to learn from any of them.

I bring this up because I spend a great deal of time perusing the internet, looking not so much for specific posts by particular individuals as I do for general trends. In reading through various posts on a number of websites from those who identify themselves with the so-called "New Tribal Revolution," I have noted one particular trend that I find disturbing. One that may, in fact, exist only in my fevered imagination. But I will share it with you nonetheless. Not as an attack on the movement itself, but as someone who wants to see it succeed and is concerned about the direction in which it is going.

There seems to be in many of these posts a distinct "us vs. them" mentality. And this is a mentality that leads to a certain amount of hubris when dealing with individuals who do not whole-heartedly accept their New Tribal philosophy. On certain message boards, I have seen people who work regular jobs, who support particular aspects of civilized society, who merely question the reasoning of other members' arguments referred to as sheep. As cattle. As slaves. They've been accused of being willfully ignorant. Of being solely responsible for the death of the planet. Of being selfish and gluttonous.

And in making such exaggerated claims, these more extreme parts of the community are able to safely shield themselves from any sense of involvement with or responsibility for the goings-on of the rest of civilized society. We're the ones with all the answers. It's not our problem. It's their problem.

I suppose as much is to be expected in any such group. I have mentioned before on this site that any group requires its members to think of themselves as basically similar in some essential way in order to continue being a group. Thus, any group that is based largely around beliefs, as the groups in question tend to be, will have the problem of members who take the defense of those beliefs to unwarranted extremes. It is why the Christians have evangelicals. It is why liberals have Communists. And it is why the New Tribal Revolution has this particular issue.

However, this may be a problem that is even more damaging for our little community. In part, because it discourages potential newcomers from listening to what we have to say. In part, because no one likes people who are smug and think they know it all. But mostly because what we're talking about very much is our problem. All of ours.

One might complain about those evil civilized folks who are destroying the planet. But who are those people really? Isn't "civilization" a category to which the majority, if not the entirety, of us belong? There are not terribly many "tribal" cultures left. And those that do still exist probably are not spending a lot of time on the internet.

And then there is the issue of a potential global collapse. Collapse is not merely a matter of separating the weeds from the wheat. Unlike a religious apocalyptic scenario such as the Rapture, those who profess a New Tribal philosophy will not be spared solely because they've been good. A global collapse would effect everyone. And while those who recognize and prepare for the worst by honing their survival skills give themselves a better chance of success than others, this is no guarantee that they will not also suffer and, quite possibly, die in such an event. There is no golden ticket to salvation.

Finally, solutions to problems are best found when a wide range of voices are heard. As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Those inside the community already know that they are in relative agreement with one another. But it's been my experience in studying various philosophies that the only truth there is to be found is that every philosopher is, in one respect or another, wrong. Keeping an open mind in the face of differing points of view, even those that may be radically divergent from one's own, is the only way to put the theories we have to the test. Or, to quote the short-lived television show Sports Night, "If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you."

Such suggestions may be in vain, however, as the moderates to whom such warnings do not apply are likely to calmly contemplate these thoughts while the more extreme elements of the community will no doubt scoff at me for being a slavemaster and a planet-killer. But I would hope that we could at least consider the possibilities. That by ourselves, we may not have all the answers. That wisdom is often found in the most unlikely places. And that in matters such as these, there is no them. There is only us.

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42 Responses to "Us vs. Them"

Rory says: April 12th, 2006 at 4:51 pm

Great post Mike.

I think that the trend of militant tribalism does indeed exist. Which, to me, is a problem, insomuch as the whole idea is No One Right Way to Live. I have remarked on Ishcon that freedom works both ways, but this usually doesn't go farther than my initial post.

I say, they want to be communist over there, awesome. I'll stay over here and be a gun crazy satanist with my gun crazy satanic friends. but to some that it is not "good" enough that we have solar powered eco-friendly houses and no cars, no, we gotta be communists too.

but you are totally right, every sect (or whatever you want to call a grouping of people) has those members who are so ideologically rigid that they cannot even stand to hear another viewpoint.

Kepp up the good work, Mike

-Sean. says: April 12th, 2006 at 5:16 pm

"solutions to problems are best found when a wide range of voices are heard"

How true. I have gotten more criticism for getting along with just about anyone. There are always surprises, no matter who it is. Something can be learned from the most ignorant and something can be easily missed from the most brilliant. Although it can take patience, it is always worth at least listening. At the same time, persistence is key when nobody is listening to yourself. We hear and speak in our own ways (as if with our own personal language) and it sometimes takes repetition and different perspectives to attain or disseminate knowledge.

Anonymous says: April 12th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

aren't you pulling an us vs. them yourself by writing about us vs. them?

Jase says: April 12th, 2006 at 10:43 pm

"......And that in matters such as these, there is no them. There is only us."

Hear! Hear!A good post i hink also.A similar but not the same saying that i have made is:"There is ultimately really no such thing as leaders, only followers!" - I need not explain why this makes sense.

Jase

Mike Godesky says: April 12th, 2006 at 11:32 pm

aren't you pulling an us vs. them yourself by writing about us vs. them?

Dude. You just blew my mind.

solitaire says: April 13th, 2006 at 6:45 am

I believe that ideologies, and thus ideological fights, are an aspect of Civilization; a sign of alienation from the reality in front of you, and have no place in a tribal context. Tribalism is not an ideology to be preached; you either live it or talk about it.

When we finally are there, we need no abstractions, we sit around the fire and sort things out. If two of us have a fight, noone is deported, it's just a fight and nothing more. Life is much bigger. And if the fight is large, it's not a question of "who is right", it's a question of "the tribe has a problem, it concerns us all". After all, survival is the main thing.

Sorry if I offend anyone, I'm not there either. Just speculating.

solitaire says: April 13th, 2006 at 8:59 am

And if the question being fought over is how to survive in the best way, there is no need to fight, because for everyone it is more important to survive in the best way than to be right.

Steve Thomas says: April 13th, 2006 at 11:06 am

Mike--

Thank you for writing this.

Steve

M says: April 13th, 2006 at 12:39 pm

Everyone from the most scholarly intellectuals to the most closed-minded bigots.

I don't think these two are mutually exclusive.

ov says: April 13th, 2006 at 1:03 pm

I've read a few threads through, not the whole brouhaha, but enough to get the impression that the ultimate sin committed here was the betrayal of loyalty. Loyalty is unconditional obedience and therefore it's understandable that it would hold the highest value in a patriarchal system. I'd hypothesize that the us vs them dichotomy originated with and is a defining characteristic of patriarchy.

With that as a preamble I'd like to ask for opinions on how tribal loyalty compares to ethnic identity, and whether it is inevitable that both of these would prove dysfunctional with respect to the whole.

Janene says: April 13th, 2006 at 2:05 pm

Hey --

I think the question of trust and loyalty is going to become an important theme as Anthropik as well as concerned friends/family/other tribal groups move forward.

In our behemoth civilization, NOTHING is harder to come by than trust. Every systemic property of hierarchal society creates mechanisms that serve to prohibit trust between individuals -- from Prisoner's Dilemma to Capitalism to Familial Structures. How many times have we heard that someone that trusts first and questions later is anything from 'naive' to 'foolish' to 'utterly incompetant.' Very rarely does anyone ever get anything positive out of trusting another individual. Certainly it can happen, but I'm sure every single one of us has been burned at some time -- assuming that we have even taken the first step and not only tried but succeeding in trusting someone.

By comparison, egalitarian, small group structures systemically reward trust between members.

The big question becomes, how do we embrace trust, coming as we do from this culture?

I believe that real trust is a multi-stepped process. First, you choose to trust someone. That is (relatively) easy, a simple effort of will to ignore the whisperings against doing so.

However, that is only the bare beginning. Once you have decided to trust, before you can honestly say that you DO, you must be faced with a crisis. the person whom you have placed your trust in must do something (say somethings, fail to do or say something) that makes you question the faith you have placed in them. At this point, you must AGAIN choose to trust them. And then it is thier turn. At that point, they may validate your trust or they may betray your trust. (A betrayal of trust need not always be intentional, or malicious -- it could be a simple case of honest disagreement and opposing priorities)

Once BOTH participants in a given relationships have had thier trust both TESTED and VALIDATED, then you can honestly say that trust has been achieved. From that point forward (barring mental disorder or damage) trust becomes EASIER than not-trust.

________________

Now, your post, OV, asked about 'tribal loyalty' vs 'ethnic identity'. I, personally, do not think that either of these have much to do with trust. Because trust is always between two people, whereas both tribal loyalty and ethnic identity are between a person and an idea.

Now, in a samll egalitarian 'tribe', loyalty to the group as a whole really IS a question of trust -- between each individual and each other individual. Note, in the proper environment (IE one that supports trusting relationships) it is ENTIRELY possible to not like someone, but yet to totally trust them. You might not 'trust them not to tease me' but you CAN trust them not to bring you harm...

Ethnic Identity, on the other hand, is probably most closely related to Nationalism. And Nationalism is merely a hierarchal replacement for trust. Because you cannot trust every individual in your nation, you instead are asked to trust the IDEA of the group. It is a way to keep large populations moving in the same direction irregardless of thier own best interest (and of course, then FAILS anytime prosperity fails significantly).

______

The last thing (or really the first ) you mentioned was loyalty... and yes, in a nationalistic/ethnic/hierarchal system loyalty is desingated as 'unquestioned obediance (to authority). But again, when there is no authority, loyalty becomes another way to describe 'validating trust'...

______

I have avoided commenting on where and how these things occured within the tribe both in this comment and previously.

There is a very simple reason for this. As an outsider, I have no way of knowing whether trust was broken, validation failed or some other completely different scenario. And I believe that even the participants may not REALLY know at this point. Perhaps they do, but as each person will have a different recollection of the events that have occured, it seems non-sensical to me to try and judge the action of people that I know and trust (on the first level -- we haven't been tested yet) when I KNOW that I cannot KNOW what is 'right'.

Janene

Bubba says: April 13th, 2006 at 2:22 pm

Loved your post Janene, well said (written)!

This trust issue is what sometimes causes 'survivalist' types to spew out bullshit like,

"the only thing I trust is my 870 Remington"I admit there are some impressive individuals out there, but few that would last long (years), especially with any degree of happiness left. Some view collapse preparation in a manner that truly would be horrific, not only for short-term but forever.

Not too many people can be happy (peace of mind etc.) alone, even if they have food & water.

Mike Godesky says: April 13th, 2006 at 2:50 pm

Steve - Glad you liked it.

ov and Janene - Thought provoking stuff. Good posts. So good that it almost pains me to sully them with filthy administrative matters, but it seems like it would be more appropriate to take this discussion over to the thread on group formation.

ov says: April 13th, 2006 at 4:30 pm

Parts of this probably do belong in the group formation topic and I'll try to find a way to incorporate that. However, I think other parts definitely have to do with the us vs them issue.

Janene says that trust is always between two people. If this is the case then I would think that trust is not a concept suited to this topic since us vs them requires association with a group identity. (I suspect that underlying this issue is the fallacy of the rugged individualist that was perpetuated by a public relations coup at the end of WWII, as touched on by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and Stephanie Coontz's The Way We Never Were.) The issue here is not the formation of a group, but the relationship between the group and those that are not in the group, known as "the other."

When trust is limited in affect to two individuals the consequences of violating that trust are limited. However, with a violation of trust within a group the consequences are banishment from the group and the loss of priviledges and benifits that comes with the membership in that group. At the level of the individual the winning position often goes to the person with the best back stabbing abilities, as outlined in John Nash's game theory which warranted him a Nobel prize in economics.

I mentioned that loyalty was unconditional obedience, and you added (to authority), which makes me reconsider the validity of my statement. Perhaps allegience would be a better comparison, but then allegience is also defined in relation to a superior. What's the difference between loyalty, and a pact, except that a pact can occur between peers, a mutual loyalty.

I don't think this is merely semantic quibbling, but an indication of how power relationships are subsumed within our language.

Mike Godesky says: April 13th, 2006 at 4:59 pm

I don't think loyalty necessarily implies hierarchy, though. Nor is it always unconditional. I am loyal to my friends. Not because they're superior to me, but because we both benefit from our loyalties to each other. It doesn't mean that I will blindly obey whatever they tell me. It just means I'll do what I can, when I can. And my loyalty to my friends is given only on the condition that they treat me right in return. If they violate that condition, my loyalty to them can be revoked.

I would say that loyalty is, in fact, a very healthy thing for a group to have.

ov says: April 13th, 2006 at 5:11 pm

Reciprocity has less power connotations, but then it seems to lack the emotional component that loyalty does.

Loyalty may be good for the group, but does it necessarily follow that what is good for the group is good for the whole?

Mike Godesky says: April 13th, 2006 at 7:04 pm

Loyalty may be good for the group, but does it necessarily follow that what is good for the group is good for the whole?

I guess I just don't understand what you mean by "the whole" then. I thought the group is the whole.

ov says: April 13th, 2006 at 7:18 pm

By the "whole" I meant all of society, the total collection of humans living on the planet. What I'm leading up to here is, how do you prevent elites from profiteering by inciting warfare between the tribes? Isn't this the essense of the us them dichotomy?

Mike Godesky says: April 13th, 2006 at 7:38 pm

By the "whole" I meant all of society, the total collection of humans living on the planet.

The "total collection of humans living on the planet" includes many different societies, though.

What I'm leading up to here is, how do you prevent elites from profiteering by inciting warfare between the tribes?

Civilized warfare is a very different game from tribal warfare. Civilized warfare you can make a profit off of because the goal there is conquest. In tribal warfare, the parties involved aren't trying to destroy each other. They're fighting for more practical goals, which is why it's on such a smaller scale. How would you have anything like a modern war profiteer in that situation?

Isn't this the essense of the us them dichotomy?

To be fair, it's not always inappropriate to categorize people as insiders and outsiders. That's something that all groups have, and it's necessary for the group's survival.

The point I wanted to make in the above entry is not that group loyalty is a bad thing, but merely that certain people may be dividing "us" and "them" in ways that don't really make sense.

ov says: April 13th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

I question whether humanity is a single society, or divided up into a number of societies. I know that there are many different cultures on the planet. From my travels in third world countries I've found that there is more of a seperation on a class basis than there is across nation states. And I think Huntington's Clash of Civilizations is little more than an apologetic for social darwinism. I wonder if all of the seperation and division is a natural condition, or artifically imposed for the purpose of social control.

Whenever you have one group that is fighting for conquest you have another group that is fighting to avoid either death or assimilation. (Or, they could keep running away, and perhaps that fits with the philosophy here.) Those that take a stand are forced into whatever it takes to pay for troops, either domestic or mercenaries, and that means borrowing money. If you have trade you will have currency, and with currency the means to profiteer. I see this as the reality of power.

A lot of my thinking on this was influenced by a book I read a few years back (what a general tautology eh The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution: by Andrew Schmookler. Have you read it? Once again I have to question whether it is inherent in the human condition, or an adaption to an imposed social structure.

Sorry if I derailed the discussion by going all macro on you here. I think there is quite a few levels of difference on the Maslow scale between an internet chat room and the reality of survival in a post collapse tribe. I think the fan is going to get dirty within a couple of years and then we will get a chance to find out.

Rick Larson says: April 13th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

Good ideas, could have typed that idea myself, just..not..so..well-worded.

Need to tell you people that I read the book "Earth in the Balance" way back when Gore first had the book published, and the concepts were so difficult for me to understand, dismissed it as fantasy. However, a few years ago, did stumble upon these peak oil calculations on the net, and then, when Congressman Roscoe Bartlett began to speak of these ideas on the floor of Congress, did I begin to take this whole potential collapse scenario seriously.

Now to my point, in this process of learning, had I come upon any of these message boards calling for heads to roll, it well could be I, would, again, had dismissed these ideas. And would have ended this learning curve.

Now, can't hardly imagine logging on and reading this way-over-educated message board and participating (that's not saying I'm adding anything!).

Also, always trying to project to a hunter/gatherer situation, do believe that loyalty will come much easier, as to be otherwise, would lead to being banned from the group and it's protection.

Matt says: April 13th, 2006 at 10:07 pm

I agree that its ridiculous how religious some primitivists have become. You're right that its not as simple as seperating the weeds from the wheat in some rapture-esque episode. Unfortunately, this argument sounds like the introduction to a proclamation that through pluck and community we can survive global warming, peak oil, and the collapse of everything else. I know that's not what you're saying, but staunch doomers (like myself), that think that we're all horribly screwed, might unfortuantely dismiss this as naive optimism.

Mike Godesky says: April 14th, 2006 at 10:04 am

From my travels in third world countries I've found that there is more of a seperation on a class basis than there is across nation states.

I'm not sure you can divide societies according to nation states. I mean, are the United States and Canada really two distinct societies? Even the differences between the United States and an eastern nation like Japan seem, to me, to be largely superficial.

On the other hand, if you compare the United States to, say, the !Kung, these are clearly two very different societies.

Yeah, by my point is that tribal warfare isn't about conquering or destroying the enemy. Without that will for conquest, you don't get the large-scale wars that we have today. And without that, there's not a whole lot of profit to be made off of warfare.

Unfortunately, this argument sounds like the introduction to a proclamation that through pluck and community we can survive global warming, peak oil, and the collapse of everything else. I know that's not what you're saying, but staunch doomers (like myself), that think that we're all horribly screwed, might unfortuantely dismiss this as naive optimism.

Well, I wouldn't want to come across as a naive optimist. The idea here isn't that we'll all be able to overcome any obstacle. That sounds nice, but realistically, we all know it isn't true. The point is simply that we're all in the same boat on this one. If you're in a ship that's going down, you do whatever it takes to survive. And if the navigator comes up with an idea, you don't ignore him just because he's the one who got you into that mess.

Randen says: April 14th, 2006 at 5:22 pm

A clear case of you can take the boy out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy.

You can remove the taker from civilization, but you can't remove civilization out from the taker.

Mike Godesky says: April 14th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

Randen - I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Perhaps you would care to clarify what you mean.

Gündem

Dünyadan