A tribe in the context of humans is often a social group which consists of a common culture, it’s prevalent all over the world and embedded in almost every aspect of our society. We have a desire to fit in as we all know, sometimes beyond rationality. Especially when organized in teams, tribes often compete with each other over ideals, power, land, objects (like food), or the ability to get points in an artificial system. It’s what causes us to create clubs, sports teams, the harmful concepts of racial and biological supremacy, and oftentimes the want to be above others. We have organized ourselves in groups for thousands of years, this being necessary for survival then and now. Though this aspect of ourselves emerged in a very different and less-documented world, we as animals have not changed so drastically in all that time. Evolution (as we believe) is caused by the randomness of certain mutations being beneficial in the context of our environment, and the process takes hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to make a major change.
The reason I have decided to write about tribalism is partially because (from my perspective) humans tend to think they are above other species and even nature due to their complexity. I feel that we forget we are just very complex animals, and I’d even deem the belief we are the highest species in aspect of our primitive traits. Humans are not the main characters of the world and in the history of our planet’s life we will likely just leave a small dent in the environment left by our pollution. We don’t understand what it feels like to be a plant or an insect, or how the minds and senses of any other organism perceives the world. We are not masters of Earth and the amount of things in our very planet that are alien to us are drastically large and very unknown. We don’t even know how or why we are ourselves, but we can understand what it’s like to be ourselves. I find it important to remind ourselves of this, so we’ll stay humble and just focus on what’s good for everyone. The author Kurt Vonnegut in the novel Hocus Pocus wrote a line which reads “Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to conquer the universe.”
An aspect of tribalism is seen in this very school, through school spirit and the strong emphasis on sports. These are two things that are connected in part and I’m going to give my general thoughts since it seems no one else here expresses the same outlook I have. If you know me personally you’re safe to assume I have no care for school spirit or which sports team wins what game, but if you’re one to enjoy such things I don’t think there’s inherently anything wrong with it. What I find problematic is how mindlessly our world tends to handle it, and how high sports as a concept are held in general. Sports can be wonderful games of people competing in skill while those affiliated with them personally watch and cheer them on, extra curricular aspects in general are wonderful. What isn’t wonderful to me is how people getting lost in them can be manipulated, people get deep into the topic of who’s winning what and their emotions get swayed to the point that the team’s efforts become of high importance to the viewer just because. They stop being a game and become just important without a real reason why. When they’re just having fun I have no problems, but sports are a genuine distraction from what really matters in our society. I once talked with a student here about why they were so passionate about sports, and their answer was along the lines of “I like it when the ball goes in.” Simple, easy to digest things are emphasized and advertised and appeal to the human mind. I know it well that the world can make the most sense when we aren’t thinking about things deeply, we’ve barely begun to understand how we can understand anything. Capitalism thrives off of consumers who don’t think, and when something triggers an evolutionary aspect in our minds as strong as tribalism, like sports, it’s easy to trap people in a state of little thinking and mass selling. Think of all the sponsorships involved in big sports, many companies pay lots of money to put advertisements on something as big as the Superbowl, it’s largely an outlet for commercialism. No matter what team you cheer for, you are all on the same mass of potential customers when it comes to mainstream sports games. We see this everywhere and I get more and more confused as to why people get so embedded into something that doesn’t really affect them. What I’m not confused about is why that makes it so embraced in this corporate-driven country we live in: It makes a LOT of money. Of course we can’t judge people for being into sports the way I have described, but it’s important to ask why sometimes and have people think.
An even greater and weirder part of tribalism to me is a certain kind of nationalism, I see it everywhere in America. The belief that your country is the greatest on Earth, or at least is something greater than it really is. The colors of the American flag are red white and blue, the stars represent the amount of states we have and the stripes represent the colonies we established. All of this land was stolen from people already living here, and the United States eventually took control of much of the continent. Colonialism was everywhere. Only white men had most human rights as women were seen as objects and a lot of people were forced into slavery. America certainly was not a free country for decades after it was established, it was a hierarchy of race and gender. We still have many problems today, too many to list for this article, but oppression and injustice and inequality and a lack of independent thinking are high. Our country has improved but we still have problems, and one of the greatest problems I see is the unwillingness to admit our problems. We still stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in the mornings, I deem this to be anti-individual indoctrination. We say “with liberty and justice for all” while currently police violence is beyond unacceptable, reproductive rights are banned in many states, people of the LGBTQ are challenged by others who won’t even go so far to know them, and the kinds of ways people are getting into political positions is laughable and terrifying. These issues are spread out all throughout our nation, it’s hard to ignore if you consume any political media and it is enough proof to me that this nation is too problematic to hold at any high acclaim. That saying which we recite in the mornings completely throws out the possibility of any kind of issue and presses hard against critical thinking, therefore it is anti-learning in a so-called educational environment in my opinion. I find it highly tribalistic to be so loyal to a country, loyalty is often a word cited in the definition. Some are patriots who want what’s good for all and appreciate the freedoms that we are still allowed to have, others just want to believe they are a part of something great regardless of reality, regardless of the truth. They look at their feelings more than their world.
This is most of what I have to say, wanting to fit in somewhere is completely normal but I draw the line when it leads to manipulation (or self-manipulation). Teenagers especially conform to their social groups and do absurd things all the time. My main message here is that we should be mindful of what we’re doing, step outside of your bias and reality every once and a while and see what you should value and stay with. Become one with something with a purpose and understand what you stand for in the process, even if that’s just having fun. Just don’t lose yourselves.
