Tribalism as result of mass subjectivity
We tend to agree on what fits our judgement, then forming group with similar people.
With the nature of multiple individual that exists on a close vicinity between each other, it would be an inevitability for them to form a group. With similar (if not almost wholly equal) factors to affect their individualities, occurrence of similarities between them would be natural, and thus creates a gravity that binds their existence. Unconsciously, it would help them to create a common ground to form an agreement that resulted into a customary to their daily interactions. Getting bigger, they would empower themselves in a systematic measure to repel external harms. Preparing both defensive and offensive measure, cohesiveness would be a key part on this tribe of men to flourish.
On the book of Genesis by Edward O. Wilson, you may found out the definition of this occurrence of tribal activities found in human’s society. To make it simple, a tribe is a tightly knit individual that organizes themselves to be joined by a particular story and the value it follows. They’d believe and goes as far as upholding everything that attached with it, no matter how bizarre it goes. Considering it as an absolute truth, challenging them with empirical means would be tough as the value itself formed as an axiom that capable to defend its content. Breaking such an existence that became the core of many civilizations would surely brought up a resistance.
If we look back again to the age before renaissance, those so-called fantasy in a form of faith spell the order of many societies. Challenging those dogmas would result to create a disorder inside them, doubts would stimulate the seed of separatism due to difference that now replace their reason for unity. Therefore, many that challenges the “common knowledge” that is spread by the one in power such as church and governing institution would face harsh backlash. No matter how beneficial it might have brought in the future, challenging political will of power that moved people due to the loyalty of their belief on the unifying story would be equal to a challenge to the foundation of society itself.
Society held based on mutual agreement of value upheld by its member, it set the standard of how things operated and fixate their views. What is considered as normal for the masses of majority would be etched into a norm, nothing out of ordinary to disturb the flow. This sort of view would define the identity, and on the same time creating a status quo of stagnation in the middle of the stream of progress. So the questions we need to ask to ourselves, is it right to keep dwelling on to the same routines while aspiring to be different for a growth? It would be insane for one to hope a radical result upon a thing that has been done the same way over and over again, yet that was what the majority has done for ages.
The woke of society forms something on the shape of mass subjectivism that united in a common cause and ideas that they uphold. For many, it then forms a social group and society that causing a sense of identity that formed a tribe of themselves. With their own views legitimized by power and in return, legitimizes the power that protects them. Tribalism kept hold and stabilize those in power, strengthening status quo from disturbances of modernism. Values has pertained over millennia, and unsurprisingly remains unchallenged until the rise of radical skeptics that break the dogma of faith for the past two centuries where the foundation of order created by a belief were shaken to its core.
The rise of technology and human minds has eroded the well-established structures of many classic institutions that has formed for the past millennia. Quoting what has been said by Paul Rulkens on his example on Einstein giving the same test question from the past year, Einstein said the answer has changed. Explaining that in this world that might asking the same question from what has been asked before, the answers might have changed considerably that what has taken you to this point in the past would be no longer take you now. The value of what considered as true fluctuates, and yet society stays firm to their value on the wake of information that challenges those.
Systems created to be rigid as to pertain the certainty of values, because doubt would create disorder that might spark chaos. People would demand that they would get the justice as it is, which then would require a standard. A standard that might be dead, as the adage goes that the law is dead when it is set in stone, as rigid as it is certain that its life taken. Yet justice of certainty creates a sense of security that kept everyone on their safe zone, the cycle of repetition starts from this point onward without considering the change that happened. As the other adage goes, the most of what the justice of law could brought to one is in itself an injustice in form.
The agreement that form the constitution of those tribe that took shape in many form is not without troubles that always accompany their path. A law that does not change and applicable to every problem would be optimal, therefore stone-etched certainty that is not as volatile as the mood of a monarch would be necessary. Something that would bind the value to a proportion is important to set the order of things, reducing their freedom and objectify themselves for the benefit of many. Something that would be set as majority’s version of objective value on their proportion, the mass subjectivity of norm.
So, norm is the tool used to reduce the possibility of chaos that ensues uncertainty and the setback it may brought. With that, we glorify those particular set of value embedded to a story as a standard of society. Yet even if we often speak of the importance of certainty and the safety it brought, we should never forget that the stricter it gets the more injustice it’d spark. Compromising between each aspect of justice, from its certainty, usefulness, and its equality would be the dream that virtually impossible for human to attain with all of its limitation. Balancing each aspect of justice would always create a disproportional result that resulted in a dissatisfaction from the opposing party that brews turmoil.
Among the egoism that tunnels the vision of many individual, the dream of an order that might hold out the will of everyone would be an impossible subject to attain. Compromise should be made, and therefore a very specific set of value would be a poor choice to be promoted as the center of a tribe’s idea. Idealism would hold out and pertain for much longer and utilized in every political manner due to the manner of improbability that follows such set of value. No things born and made ideal, weakness would follow, but that would be excused in the most bizarre dream everyone believed in.
In the end, which one that will hold out would be the will of super majority that able to hold out the gauntlet and society’s progression. The ones who adapt and overcome might survive as the newly-crowned majority that hold out the power with their ideals. Ideas that is well-maintained to solve the ails of society and grow into its own steady progress would strive the process of natural’s selection. This majority would then knit groups of people into their own tribe, and thus continue the cycle on the race that life has laid.
Bibliography:
Jung, Carl, 2014, Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche 2nd ed., Translated by Gerhard Adler and R.F.C. Hull, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Wilson, Edward, 2019, Genesis: the deep origin of societies, New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation.
