[The_Victor]

The west still has it’s practitioners of tribal behavior, they’re called “gangs.”

[Carbonado]

Excellent article.

Who makes breaking us all into ever smaller tribes but Libs/Socialists/Communists?

Breaking humanity into ever smaller tribes (groups) is their number one tactic and it is the one upon which their fundamental philosophy is based - envy and jealousy as sacraments.

[Jibaholic]

The issue is not tribalism versus individualism. Tribalism an clanishness flourish in low-trust societies that lack social capital. Individualism can flouish in societies with a high degree of trust and social capital. Why? Because you can’t go it alone in societies where strangers cannot be trusted. You have to stick with your clan/extended family/tribe.

So where do trust and social capital come from? Religion, particularly protestant Christianity. By fostering the attitudes of trust, reciprocity, and fairness the Calvinist/Protestant world made it safe for large groups of strangers to coordinate their actions and do things like form corporations and democratic institutions.

[Rick.Donaldson]

Democracy requires consensus-building and shared values. But in tribal societies, politics is viewed as a battle of all-against-all, in which the strongest tribe openly appropriates the state apparatus to enrich itself at everyone else's expense.

WHAT? A TRIBE is a socio-political organization of families, clans or groups of people sharing a common ancestry. Tribal societies don't necessarily go all-against-all, and in fact many of the South American Indian tribes that still exist, CO-EXIST peacefully as long as one does not raid the other, or commit some "sin" against the other. Then the tribes call for action and generally both the offending tribe and the one the offense was committed against AGREE on the method of punishment......

[Jeff Head]

But it does come back to our view of God and what He wants for us.

In our society, in our form of government, the underlying principle is that God has created us all equal and endowed us with unalienable rights that give us precisely the freedom you talk about. In Chrstendom, the principle is one of free will.

The radical Islamics believe in no such thing. They believe that God hjas instructed them to use force and compulsion. Adhere, conform, or die (or be enslaved).

These diverging fundamental, foundational principles to the two societies and how God is viewed being behind those principles is what leads to the plural, free society we have, and what maintains the tribal, tyranical, leader-oriented societies that they try to maintain.

But that is just my opinion.

[SlowBoat407]

I have been preaching this for a long time. Tribalism is the ultimate bigotry, claiming a superior position for a small band of people who must constantly oppress, bully, and posture to maintain that position.

[G8 Diplomat]

An intractably tribal outlook also makes Western-style democracy impossible

Yeah, so quit nagging Pakistan to adopt democracy overnight, all you State Dept hags. And don't dump an Iranian monarch because his nation isn't democratic, Jimmy Carter. Shoving democracy on some countries can be disastrous.

Arabs often have "tribal names", i.e. al-somethingrather after their first and middle name. A common tribal name in the former Iraqi regime was al-Tikriti. That was Saddam's tribal name, but many mistake his last name to be Hussein, because in the early 90s the Iraqi gov't declared that officials weren't to use their tribal names. Either that or they use bin xxx, like bin Laden; bin = son of in Arabic. They don't have true last names, rather names that indicate which tribe or clan they come from.

[tx_eggman]

If you instead see a woman primarily as a low-status breeding agent of her patriarch's clan, everything changes.

... and, CAIR would have us believe, for the better.

What a steaming pile of crap ..

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Ping for tribalism, must read.

[ZeitgeistSurfer]

I highly recommend Lee Harris book The Suicide of Reason. He makes a convincing case why tribalism, which encompases fanaticism and a willingness to die for the tribe and its beliefs, may have a long term survival advantage compared to the individualistic societies of the West.

[G8 Diplomat]

Is there something about Islam that serves to lock in mankind's inherently tribal instincts? Perhaps.

That would explain why they're still trapped in the 7th century while the rest of the world has progressed. Islam holds the Middle East captive. Get rid of it, and they can move forward.

[rawcatslyentist]

>"The reason Iraq and Afghanistan remain unsettled battlefields isn't that our two civilizations can't agree on the nature of God."

IF that's what you believe, then you wont mind me telling you to go to hell!

Right is right, wrong is wrong. Good is good, evil is evil. Truth is truth, lies are lies.

IF you cant/wont distinguish the difference between them you are either a clueless idiot, or a tool of evil.

[hellbender]

Is there something about Islam that serves to lock in mankind's inherently tribal instincts? Perhaps.

No "perhaps" about it. Islam is just a cult which sanctifies all the ugly tendencies of tribal patriarchal pastoral-nomadic culture by cloaking them in a sham "religion." It's Jim Jones' People's Temple on an immense scale. Polygamy, genital mutilation (to keep the young subjected to the chieftains), slavery, brigandage, etc. All ancient traditions among pastoral nomads of the Arabian region.

[G8 Diplomat]

It's not just the Arabs, lots of languages have special endings or prefixes on last names that mean "son of" (in Icelandic, they put either -sonur or -dottir on the end of the father's first name and that becomes their child's last name). In Russian it's -ov/-ev, in Irish it's -fitz (i.e. Fitzgerlad), in German it's -sohn, in English it's -son, in Swedish it's -sson, in Norwegian it's -sen, in Finnish it's -nen, in Armenian it's -ian/yan. There's an element of this Farsi too....take Ahmadinejad's name for instance. My Farsi dictionaries list jad as meaning either "grandfather" or "ancestor," and then there's the Ahmed, which is a first name. Also many Iranian names end with -i (Pahlavi, Khomeini, etc). Russians do a special thing with their middle name...it's the father's first name + -ovich/evich for boys, and -ovna/evna for girls. Just about every culture originally had some sort of name indicating what family they came from, but here in the West we've moved on from the concept of tribalism and family clans, but in the Middle East and Africa they still have that ancient mentality.

[Billthedrill]

If in fact tribalism is inextricably etched into the human organism one wonders at the feasibility of standing outside it enough to debate the matter. I don't think that it is, frankly. It does certainly describe a form of default to which the stressed social behavior of humans often devolves in the absence or the breakdown of alternate constructions. That is because it is a highly successful survival strategy. It does not preclude individualism but it can be used to suppress it.

It is important to differentiate between anthropological/sociological descriptions of human behavior and their philosophical sources. Indeed, one of the great philosophical failures of the 20th century has been an overemphasis on sociological models as normative instead of merely descriptive. That sort of mistaken emphasis is what has given rise to class analysis and the attempt to deal with human intercourse purely on the basis of power relationships between collectives. That is how an outsider might suspect we behave by appearance and in the absence of better information, but (1) there are no outsiders (short of God) and (2) there is better information.

That the source of political rights resides within the individual and not within a collective is one of the deep truths of the Enlightenment that was the inevitable consequence of that individual's relationship with his or her God, whatever form the latter might take. It is one of the foundational characteristics of what we term Western civilization. The challenge to that composed of the denial of God and the supremacy of the collective has led us down the pathway of tribalism largely because in the absence of the structure of Western civilization the survival mechanisms kick in. It is not a superior set of cultural behaviors, it is a primitivism that is clear evidence of the failure of those alternate behaviors that pretended to be superior.

Tribalism may be transcended by such structures in that way, and in fact only in a healthy society is this possible. Where, for example, a member of an ethnic group may consider himself or herself primarily an American and still maintain that ethnic identity, this is not a sign of a misplaced loyalty but a sign that where the repository of political rights is in the individual, that individual is free to apportion those loyalties as he or she chooses and not at the behest of the demands of the collective. This is not simply a transference of subordination to a larger collective. What is significant is the individual's ability to decide.

Excessive tribalism in American politics is, ultimately, un-American. It strikes at the very foundations of the overall social structure and imposes the claims of the collective. It is useful for those who who wish to control individuals through the demands of the collective. These are chains.

All IMHO, of course.

[yldstrk]

It’s the desert that Moses led the Jews out of............some get some never will.

[the invisib1e hand]

human beings are built for community.

in a fallen world, their communities are fallen, in some proportion to their lack of submission to the Church.

[EverOnward]

I"f you instead see a woman primarily as a low-status breeding agent of her patriarch's clan, everything changes. By taking up with an unapproved male, she is nullifying whatever value she once had as a human. In fact, her life has negative value in the sense that her shameful lifestyle is an ongoing humiliation to the men expected to enforce discipline within the clan's ranks."

Are there animals in the wild with this deranged mentality?

[William Terrell]

If you instead see a woman primarily as a low-status breeding agent of her patriarch's clan, everything changes.

She still experiences the mind numbing terror and exquisite pain of her "punishment" that the "tribe" or "family" doesn't feel, and the one administering it would not want to feel the same himself or herself.

The notion fails at first principles.