Tribalism

People naturally form tribes, myself included.  The tribes pretty much universally have some quality in common, beliefs, location.  The thing that am interested here is not whether we should stop tribes from happening (impossible) but what being in a tribe means with regard to how people behave and think.

If you want the clearest example of tribalism spend some time observing English (or other) soccer.  Originally started by local groups of working class people, often employees from the same factory, soccer clubs quickly solidified a collective idea around which people, often from a variety of rural areas, could coalesce.  Once a collective had been formed it was natural that other collectives would be in opposition, after all a sport without a winner and loser isn't really sport.  Each team has its colours, its flag, its crest.  It is without doubt a tribe.

There are good things about tribes.  We like to feel part of something, we require social contact, and we like our beliefs to be supported.  It is fun to be part of a group all cheering for the same thing.  There are bad things about tribes in that other tribes are demonized, sometimes to the extent that physical violence can take place.  In the 1980's in England these different soccer tribes demonized each other to the point that severe violence was common.  However, without distinguishing colours or remarks most of these members of the tribes would be quite comfortable walking down the street or having conversations in the pub.  It is the very fact that these people identified with a tribe that enabled them to think of other people in a different way. 

This severe change in behavior is easy to see for yourself in a simple experiment.  Pick any group with a set of ideas (say a church or a political group) and go be a part of it.  At the start try to say the least amount possible about what brings the group together.  I bet you are treated pleasantly.  Then, express a differing opinion and see what happens, it will be substantially less pleasant with little relationship to how directly a difference of opinion changes their lives.  In-group good, out group bad.  There's a wonderful commercial on the soccer channel here in the USA.  It shows two different people from the same town talking about how awful it would be to support the other team in town.  They look the same, live in the same sort of area, have the same sort of job, girlfriend, etc..  It finishes with "It's not crazy, it's sport."

While I think questioning group think and mentality is important when it starts to cross over to the point of demonizing other people that is not the area I am most interested in today.  I am interested in that belonging to a tribe literally changes your idea of reality.  Have a conversation with someone of a different political view and try to show the other person the support for your position.  The chances of them dismissing that support is very high, regardless of the source.  In a health care debate I have stated the simple facts that in Europe and Japan people live longer that those in the USA, everyone gets healthcare, and their healthcare costs about half the amount per capita as in the USA.  These are facts that can be easily checked.  I have had responses ranging from these numbers being lies, to terrible care as a result, to socialized medicine being an attempt to control the population.  Tell liberals that the middle class average income has increased since the introduction of Reaganomics and they will find every way they can to make this untrue.  I am certain that I do this sort of stuff too.

Why am I writing about this today? I am a Liverpool football club fan.  I want that team to win more than other teams based on pretty arbitrary reasons.  I put money and time and emotional capital into hoping I can watch them win.  A a result I go to an internet site of fellow fans, my sporting tribe.  This week there was an incident in which a Liverpool player scored a goal that was allowed to stand by the referee, which involved a contact between ball and hand.  The rules are that if you deliberately touch the ball it is not allowed, but if the ball just hits your hand it is allowed.  Here is the video of the incident., about one minute of your time.

It looks like to me (and the announcer) as if it was deliberate. It isn't a clear cut situation, but I would suggest that an independent viewer would at least grant that thinking it was deliberate is a reasonable position to have.  I expressed my opinion that deliberately breaking the rules is cheating, he cheated, and that the morally right thing to do would be to try and make it up to the opposition (the consequences of which would be Liverpool play another game against the team and the other team gets money enough to run their near amateur team for several years and has the most memorable soccer memory of their life.)

The response from those on the forum was not only near universal dismay, but also anger, contempt, and the removal of the post.  The reason given?  Because it was completely, unequivocally wrong to think that it was deliberate.  The words used were "brainless, ignorant, wrong, 99% disagree, worse from one of our own." I believe they actually saw what they thought they saw, but what you see is not necessarily what actually happened.  We change the truth and believe we haven't, and this is much stronger and more likely when it is done as part of a group.