Hardwired Tribalism

David Friedman shares his thoughts on our instinct to think in terms of being in tribes:

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The only sense I could make out of it was that I was encountering a tribalistic view of the world. There are two sides, everyone who isn't on my side is on the other side, hence anyone who says something negative about the Democrats must be a partisan of the Republicans and any evidence to the contrary is to be ignored as experimental error.

Not long after, I heard a radio report about the French government caving in to the demands of demonstrators that they rescind legislation making it possible for employers to fire young workers. Oddly enough, part of my reaction was a feeling of satisfaction. The news implied a further decline of the wealth, power, and status of France, France is part of Europe, Europe is at the moment the obvious status rival to America, and I am an American. Speaking as an economist, my best guess is that the decline of the French economy makes me worse off, not better off. But to some part of my mind hardwired by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in hunter/gatherer bands, there is only us and them, and anything that is bad for them is good for us.

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My take: Seems to make sense to me. “Tribal Thinking” explains a lot of what we see in the world in terms of human behavior. It’s easy to think of people in terms of groups and there is some regularity we observe in group dynamics. The great thing about markets and impersonal exchange is that they tend to bypass this tribal mentality. The political realm, however, is probably one of the areas where this tendency is the most pronounced.