Sociality Rules (Tribalism)

First watch this video.

Politics and polarization have obviously gotten very bad and are getting worse by the day, not only in the United States but also in the rest of what has historically been called "western civilization." Tribal behaviors are primitive in the sense that they are entirely instinctually driven, so those engaging in these behaviors are never aware that they are doing so. These unconscious behaviors can be overridden over time, but only with great effort and only rarely. The rules below are for non-tribal observers who want to understand what they're looking at.

It is always alleged that new technologies will create a better world. Social media was sold the same way. But the more primitive tribal behaviors we see all around us today were enabled by social media. These tribal instincts were always there of course, but their expression became far more pronounced when it became possible, for example, to denounce and stigmatize somebody in a matter of hours, and often for no reason (rumors, bullshit, information taken out of context or motivated humans making shit up, aka., lies, total fabrications).

Of course nobody actually needs a legitimate reason to publicly denounce and condemn others as morally inferior because expressing moral outrage and one's own self-righteousness feel so damn good. There's nothing to be done about this. That's just how the brain works in these cases (Molly Crockett's video above). Social media is designed to create and reinforce tribal behaviors. Those designs keep people coming back for more feel-good stuff, for more dopamine hits, which is very good for business. I was not kidding when I said that human beings are self-defeating fuck-ups in the good old days on DOTE. All this primitive tribal behavior is a case in point.

Jordan Peterson has his twelve rules to live by, but here are thirteen rules you've got to live with 

1. in large, complex modern societies, there exist various sociopolitical groups, each with some associated belief system (ideology)
2. politics is intra-group conflict — in-groups (Us) versus (Them) out-groups
3. all such belief systems necessarily have some grounding in reality but are delusional when looked at as a whole (the belief systems are utopian in some way which conflicts with human nature)
4. such belief systems form the scaffolding upon which the group coheres — it is therefore easy to spot who is and who is not in the group (virtue signaling, dog whistling)
5. for bonafide members of sociopolitical groups, being in good standing and remaining that way within the group are always paramount concerns; otherwise one becomes a stigmatized outcast (a pariah)
6. there is inevitably the flatland sincerity problem — these belief systems are always motivated, though not for the reasons given (the usual post-hoc rationalizations)
7. the actual (unconscious) motivation for those who are or feel dispossessed is the attainment of reinstatement of social power & status; for those in power, the motivation is the maintenance of that power
8. those in out-groups will be (on a scale) viewed unfavorably, stigmatized, despised or, in the most extreme case, dehumanized
9. the straw man argument is common — out-group beliefs are invariably misrepresented by in-groups (those beliefs are distorted, simplified, taken out of context, etc.), with the perceived worst case of out-group moral depravity often taken to stand for the entire ideology
10. there is always guilt by association — for in-groups, mere association with those in out-groups signals, fairly or not, membership in those out-groups or sympathy with them
11. there is over-generalization and contagion — although ideologies necessarily  have some grounding in reality to maintain the appearance of plausibility, in-groups reject all the beliefs of the out-group, and so the baby is often thrown out with the bathwater
12. tribalism obliterates true individuality, nuance and complexity, case by case reasoning and practical solutions to real on-the-ground problems — overgeneralized black & white thinking is always the rule;
13. anything contradicting in-group ideologies must be filtered (see the list of filtering modes in the 4th Flatland essay); concomitantly, in-groups seek out stories or events which reinforce favored narratives (confirmation bias) 

Comments

[Mike Roberts]

Thanks for this, Dave. Though I haven't read Jordan Peterson's book, I suspect your rules to live with render his suggestions pointless, since we can't really fight against this primitive behaviour. (Apart from in rare cases.)