In my blog yesterday, I asked the question – who benefits from a tribal society? A society that is becoming increasingly polarised as the tribes become more and more opposed to each other? This is a subject I am going to explore in this second part.
In the modern day, we are much more fluid in moving from place to place during our lifetime. It wasn’t always so, hundreds of years ago it was a big thing to move from one village to another let alone move to different countries. It rarely, if ever, happened so the village in which people lived became their tribe. It became a way in which they identified themselves, and they looked to the church, the landowner, or a dignitary for their leadership. They weren’t a herd necessarily, they were more of a pack (see yesterday’s blog for a more detailed breakdown of this). In the larger towns and cities, even hundreds of years ago, local areas became the way in which you defined yourself and became the home of your tribe. It was rare to move around much, and the bonds of kinship were strong. I remember as a child hearing about how you could live down a street in London (my family predominantly comes from the East End of London) and have half your family members live either on the same street or in the next street along. My grandmother definitely resonated with growing up in Stratford, as my grandfather resonated with growing up in Bermondsey. In fact, my grandmother’s mother was appalled her daughter was ‘courting’ a man from Bermondsey because even to the East End, that was a rough and poor area. But World War II created a fluidity that meant my grandparents met in the first place, and they were shining examples of movement not only geographically but also between the classes. Very definitely lower working class as children, they ended their days very definitely middle class. And partly that was facilitated by a major exogenous shock of World War II upending norms.
The same happened in the Middle Ages with the advent of the Black Death. To call that a major exogenous shock seems almost an understatement given it is estimated that in the 1300’s around 50% of the population was killed. Seismic doesn’t even come close. It’s practically unimaginable that so many people can have been killed and the impact on the psyche of the population beyond comprehension. It’s probably Covid times 1,000 at the very least. What did come out of it was a change in how people identified themselves. The creation of the middle class, a recognition that farm labourers had a value and suddenly they were not afraid to voice it. So, it created a fluidity in the class system and a fluidity in where and how people lived. Tribalism, therefore, does shift and change but only very fundamentally when there has been something that has overturned the norms of society.
We have not had anything similar happen, really, since World War II. But tribalism has shifted a lot because there are those who have realised just how it can be manipulated. Because the geographical fluidity created by World War II never stopped, the form of tribalism that had existed before disappeared. That kinship went, replaced by the nuclear household and the sense that people didn’t really know their neighbours anymore. But tribalism is part of our survival instinct, and so we have gone about creating different tribes. Take football (or soccer). While it’s been around in some form or another for 2,000 years, starting in China, it’s formalisation happened in England in the nineteenth century with the creation of the Football Association and its accompanying rules and regulations in 1863. The hooliganism associated with it was around in the nineteenth century, potentially earlier, but the tribalism around football really started to gain traction in the 1960s and 1970s. Take, for example, the Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal rivalry. The reason for this rivalry goes back to 1913 when Arsenal decided to move from Woolwich (South East London) to Highbury in North London, suddenly making it direct competition for Tottenham Hotspur which originated in North London. To say the two sides loathe each other is an understatement, it’s on a par with Manchester United and…well, most teams to be fair but particularly Manchester City and Liverpool FC. But the violence that this rivalry caused has certainly ramped up over the years and become much better coordinated and organised amongst ‘fans’ or the section of the tribe (that is the fandom) that is so inclined.
In 1984, George Orwell included football as one of the pastimes that The Party in Oceania uses to keep the Proles distracted from what was being done to them. The Proles were the majority of people in the state, but as Orwell wrote:
“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds”
The Party encouraged all of this behaviour amongst the Proles because it meant their minds were occupied with a myriad of issues that weren’t what The Party was doing to them, which was eroding their individuality and freedom incrementally until it added up to a sudden shift. In ‘real life’ the creation of tribes amongst people centred around supporting specific football clubs (which can be conveniently forgotten when the national team is playing it seems), is a way of distracting people from what is happening around them. Classic distraction techniques are often deployed that keep people consumed with something which, fundamentally, has relatively little meaning to the outcome of their life. People can become consumed by the results of the team they support, which arguably has no impact on their day-to-day life, yet not notice when the government passes legislation that will have a huge impact on their life. They will be concerned with who their team purchases in transfer windows, expending a huge amount of time and effort reading and discussing it, something again that has no impact on their day-to-day lives at all, and yet they will never go to vote. People who will read fan websites or the back of the newspapers rather than the headlines (not that that is always informed information or unbiased and often has its own vested interest in keeping people distracted). Maybe they feel that they can have little or no impact on what the government does, when the reality is they can have more impact on that than they ever can with what happens on the pitch. Yes, they can boo a manager until they’re sacked, but generally the manager is only sacked when the club is facing losing too much money, regardless of what the fans think. Whereas with our votes, if we went out and cast them in significant numbers, we can make significant difference. If we made our voices heard as to what we do and do not want, based on informed choices, we could make a significant difference. I know this sounds as though I’m judging, and perhaps I am a bit. More than that, though, I am pointing out the behaviours that are encouraged amongst people because it is suiting someone somewhere, and by that I do not mean the fans.
Another form of tribalism is through religion. People associating themselves to one religion or another, and at its most extreme being prepared to kill others over something they have no empirical evidence to support their argument for. That I do not understand. I don’t understand the football violence either, but to murder people over something you have no proof you are categorically right in is just an anathema to me. Religion has been called the opiate of the masses, and is another distraction technique in certain areas. In the US, I was shocked at how big a thing religion is. I remember visiting my friend who had moved to Georgia, and being amazed at the number of very active churches there – with new ones being built, something pretty much unheard of in the UK. My friend’s father was a local vicar in Wales, and she said at the time that she had encouraged her parents to move to the US because they were ‘guaranteed a congregation’. What completely stymies me is this sense in religion that the Bible or the Quran can tell us the minutiae of how to live in the 21st century when it is really all about interpretation to suit what people want the religious texts to say, to support their own tribalism. And their own prejudices. The sense, for example, that the Bible openly states that homosexuality is a sin when the majority of societies in the time it was written had very open attitudes towards homosexuality, is frankly laughable. Nowhere in the Ten Commandments does it say ‘thou shalt not be homosexual’. The Commandments do, however, state ‘thou shalt not kill’ but somehow that apparently doesn’t count when it comes to homosexual people. Equally, the Quran does not explicitly condemn homosexuality, while it does condemn murder and yet homosexuality is punishable by death in some Muslim countries. Someone, somewhere, please help me make that make sense. Again, though, while we are focused on these things we are not focused on things that actually matter in our daily life. Because unless you are yourself homosexual, whether someone is or isn’t has no bearing on your life whatsoever. So, what does it matter to you? The short answer is, it doesn’t, including if that person is your child. I am judging people who are homophobic and use religious texts in a bastardised way to prove their position, but again I am also pointing out that people get very agitated about things which are none of their business and do not, generally, affect their daily lives. And yet these people do not seemingly notice when this behaviour is manipulated to suit the greed and whims of others, they don’t question it or what they are told. And the outcome of that impacts their daily life.
The most tribal thing now, though, is politics itself. When Ricky Gervais was asked which side of politics he thought was the biggest threat to freedom of speech today, he said it best when he said ‘there’s no such thing as a side anymore, it’s all ridiculous because it goes left and right and then extreme left and extreme right and extreme left and extreme right and they meet now, it’s extremism is the problem’. And this is so true, especially when he said that Twitter/X amplifies that so that if you’re slightly right wing, you’re Hitler and if you’re slightly left wing, you’re Trotsky. If you’re a centrist, everyone hates you. No longer can there be a reasonable debate about politics, you’re either one or the other. You’re either in the tribe of the left, or you are the tribe of the right and in both you are deemed to be extreme by the other. Which suits the actual politicians because it switches off the majority of people who are in no way extreme. They just want to feel safe in their homes and on the streets, earn enough money to live a nice life, and have systems such as healthcare and transport that work. They don’t want to become embroiled in echo chambers on X where the professional agitators come on to stir up trouble and hatred which spills out into the media. But all this achieves is pushing people ever more into the extreme or ensuring that the majority are disconnected from politics.
To be successful, all tribes rely on the herd and pack mentality that is inherent in the human species. In both the herd and the pack mentality, most people don’t want to lead. They are perfectly happy to follow. And that works, because in order to have a harmonious society, not everyone can be the leader. By definition, there can only be one. Yes, the leader has their deputies who help with the leadership, but the reality is there can only effectively be one leader. The majority of people want to, in the perfect way of a pack, be fed first and work for the leader in the provision of that sustenance so they have the security of said sustenance without having to worry too much about where it’s coming from. That’s the leader’s job for which they are rewarded with slightly more spoils and protection when the going gets tough. Being the leader may look great and all, but when you’re the last to be fed metaphorically speaking (in a business sense, when you have to pay everyone else’s salaries before you can take your own) it’s not an easy position to be in when times are lean. We don’t, however, seem to be operating in the perfect pack system anymore.
John D. Rockefeller said “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers” and the US school system followed his command. In fact, so did most other school systems in spirit if not exactly. Because what he wanted was a majority of worker ants – which works in the pack mentality – but not because that was the best way of doing things. No. It was so he could hoard his wealth and not have to share the spoils too much. It was based on greed, something which the so-called Titans of Industry have perpetuated. That is not pack mentality, that is not the social contract between the leader and the pack, that is simply greed. The curriculum is not geared towards creating future Rockefellers, those are created at home within the Rockefeller family to make sure the fortune continues to be hoarded. The curriculum for the worker ants is designed to stamp all traits of creative, entrepreneurial and innovative thought out, to get children into the classroom and churn out automatons to suit the big businesses. To get them to remember the information being given to them so it can be regurgitated at exams the promptly forgotten. No questioning, no alternative thinking, just head down and get on with it. So we can churn out the industrial cannon fodder of the future, the people who will work 9-5 unthinkingly rather than becoming a rival for the so-called Titans of Industry.
So, who does tribalism benefit? Well the way it is now working out, it benefits those who seek to profit most from it. Who are aware of its existence and who seek to manipulate it for their own benefit. And politicians – sometimes, they are one and the same thing, and increasingly are co-dependent for their own purposes. Many people have been conveniently distracted by things that have no impact on their daily lives – immigration included within this – and have formed themselves into tribes over it. It distracts them so much they don’t see that the social contract that is supposed to be formed through the pack/herd mentality has completely broken down. That the leaders are no longer content to feed last, they are now feeding first and not really providing enough for the pack to thrive on, only enough to just about survive on. And yet they are still requiring their return on the social contract, in full.
But, there is another way…
Louisa Simpson 