 So, so let's define tribalism. What do we mean by tribalism? So I agree. I mean, I, you know, as you know, I constantly say the political spectrum is collectivism, individualism, tribalism is a particular form of collectivism. What characterizes tribalism and how does it, how do you differentiate from other forms of collectivism? Yeah, to put it in, let's say, party line language, it's an epistemological choice or to put differently. It's the prism through which you choose the world and you choose to use that prism. So it's not an instinct. It's not unavoidable. It's a choice that you make. And this choice says I will put on my tribalist glasses, my tribalist lenses, and I will see myself, others in the world. And the world, not as individuals, and I will judge them not based on reality. I will judge them based on what is my group interest. So you don't have, as your starting point, and as your arbiter, reality, you have as your arbiter, what is the group interest? And this is, for example, why we see very often double standards, which is, let's give an example. Let's say, remember with Brett Kavanaugh that the left was saying, look, we have to believe women. Here we have a serious allegation and we have to take it very seriously. Maybe there's a merit there. There is a merit there. Let's say, last year, someone said something, an allegation about Biden. The same people who were saying when it came to Kavanaugh believe women and say, come on, that's one allegation, it doesn't look to start. And the same people who, when it came to Kavanaugh, they said, well, they're trying to ruin him, one allegation cannot mean the end of his career. And the same people who say, we need to, we need to very much examine this allegation against Biden, this cannot go. So same situation or similar situations, completely different way of dealing and judging the situations. Why? Because again, your arbiter, the way, the, the, the, your mode of thinking is not what do I see there, what is actually happening in reality. Your mode of thinking is, which group is that person? Oh, is that group? Then I already know what the answer is. So this is in simple terms what, what I see as tribalism. But there seems to be another dimension of this, which is implied by what you say, but it's not. We should make explicit. And that is that by doing that, right, you're implicitly and really explicitly rejecting your own individualism, your own individuality, and yourself identifying yourself, that is, you're, you're, you're making your nature, you're making your, you're giving up your epistemology, not to your thinking. It's not like you're evaluating the groups. You are now a member of the group. And to a large extent as a member of the group, how do you know who the bad guys and who the good guys are, based on what others in the group are telling you, right, based on what's the dogma of the group. Exactly. And this is, this is very important. Most people think that tribalism is bad, because it makes Twitter a toxic place, or because it makes politics annoying. No, the number one problem with traveling is what it does to your mind. Yeah, because in a way you're switching off your mind, you are operating at a level which is way beyond what your mind should operate on. And it's in a way we could say it makes you stupid. And I see this with myself quite often I'm tribalistic and I have a deep path, sorry, passed in tribalism. It's in a way you shut down your mind and you say, I will give up the thinking someone else who is going to do the thinking for me. And for example, this is very clear, particularly in let's say in a communist party. I had an experience with a Greek communist party and part of any Marxist group is that party discipline means that once the party decides something, it is correct. And you could even say that, let's say the five people who take the decision individually, they're not clever, but because they are, let's say the Politburo, somehow they have this common wisdom that it's going to come up with the right decision. And then you have to persuade yourself that, you know, I can see that this is wrong, but I have to follow the line. And actually to persuade yourself that you are wrong and the line is correct. So it's something very destructive to your mind. And that's the number one problem with tribalism is not that it makes politics what they are today, which is bad enough. It's mostly how you damage your own brain and you take away power from your mental strength. Yeah, and given that epistemology integration is so important to epistemology. Even if you do it a little bit, it's only going to get worse. And it's only going to be the destruction will spread the destruction will go into every part of your epistemology and destroy your capacity to really think as an independent being. And I saw that over the last five years we saw people dabbling with a particular tribe not really adopting them but slowly, slowly, slowly. And then within a few years, they're completely mindless followers without any self identity. And you see them on Twitter and you tell yourself has this person has literally become more stupid. How is it possible like this person used to write these very good, clever, well reason things and now this person is stupid. No, it's just that that person has given up their minds. That person is now thinking they're taking their marching orders not from reality but from the group or some from some other people from some authority that represents the group. So, so what do you think? Have we always been tribal is tribalism just kind of the default for human beings is it, you know, so, and then, you know, and if you want to touch on the kind of the evolutionary question. Is this what we evolved to be and and and it's inevitable that we be tribal. So the problem here is that many people confuse tribal tribalism with the idea of it's important to have communities. So when they say tribal gives an evolutionary advantage. You could see two ways you could say it is important to form communities but forming communities and tribal is something which not only is not the same I would say it's almost contradictory the one contradicts the other. Because what do you want from a community when you come together with other people and you have a name, you have a goal, you want to make sure that these people are people who can think who can have independent objective judgments so for example we need to do this, and the higher the stakes the more important this is so let's say you go to war or you go to a revolution. You have two people with this independent judgment, and you have similar values for example you value freedom and you say okay we come together for this goal, but I don't give up my mind, I don't give up my values. We go together to war for a common cause. But we know what this causes and we know why we want to pursue this course. This is one thing that's a community, a tribe is I just happened to be with these people. And because they're my people, I have to go with them. An example that I got from a common friend of ours from Greg Salimieri, he mentioned the example of Robert Lee. And many people say that Lee was someone who didn't really believe in slavery he was a good guy and all the stuff but what did Lee do he said, these are my people therefore I have to fight, these are my community therefore I have to fight for my community good or bad. What a tragedy this is, you recognize that your community is doing something immoral, slavery, so supposedly Lee recognized slavery as immoral and yet he said but it's my community I have to go with the community. And they owe it 600,000 young people who are going to die as a consequence. Yeah, I mean it's real evil. Yeah, it's because it's one thing to say I'm with my community because I understand why we're on the right side, and I will go to my death with them. And it's another thing to say, well, they're my community, I understand they are wrong. But you know what can we do they're there might try so confusing the tribe with a community is not something which it's a mistake. Now the other thing that you mentioned is tribalism and instinct. If tribalism was literally an instinct, this would mean that I don't have free will. If tribalism is an instinct, it means that I cannot switch it off, but we can switch it off. You see for example, people starting as being tribalists, and they're not being tribalist being independent thinkers, although it's super difficult but it happens. You see people going the opposite direction, and you even see societies being poisoned by this poison of tribalism, and then 20 years later and massacre in each other. Rwanda is an obvious example, but not the only one. And you see the same society 20 years later, different culture, different ideas, or they have learned the lessons and they see the world differently. So no, tribalism is not an instinct. It's not a gene. And I think this is what many people who tried to understand tribalists make a mistake. And they also make the mistake they say, we need a little bit of tribalism. Why do you need a little bit of tribalism? Why do you need a little bit of surrendering your mind to someone else? If, let's say, the peak of tribalism is Rwanda and Masetes and massacring other people, merely because they're part of a different group, why would you need a little bit of that? You don't need any of that. And that's how we should see it. Yeah, any bit of poison is good, tribalism is not good. Yes, okay. Yes, I mean any bit of poison, any bit of tribalism is destructive to you. So let's go through a few examples today because if we think about historically, historically tribalism is focused on ethnicity, group affiliation, you know, kin, family, it's focused on who you grew up with. That was the history of tribalism. I mean, we, as a species, we used to live in tribes, tribes of multiple family members and family groups and that was the community in which we live. But something unique I think has happened, I'd say over the last, I don't know how long, maybe you can tell us. Like, tribalism is now moved from the sphere of ethnicity, from the sphere of people who look alike or come from the same background or share the same family genes to a point where tribalism is now ideological and all over the place. So talk a little bit about that and then we'll get into some specific examples of both left and right. Yeah, so the question is why now. And to answer the question why now, we need to understand again, what, what is the need for tribalism, the need for tribalism is that the world doesn't make sense. Therefore, I need to cling to a group to make sense of the world. Well, it's more than it doesn't make sense, right? It doesn't make sense. And I can't trust the tool that's supposed to make sense for me. Exactly. I mean, I've been taught my entire life that I can't trust my reason. All I have is emotion. I feel fear, which means I need to cling to the group to reduce my fear, right? Exactly. And if you if you combine this, let's say from the 60s with this idea of identity politics with this idea that different group, not only they are victims of injustice in which way we should say, yeah, let's get together so that we alleviate this injustice. No, they are victims of injustice, and they have to be victims of injustice because that's how they view the world. And this is how the world is set up. So for example, if you if you hear people who talk about the patriarchy or who talk about white privilege and all that stuff, it's almost as if this is static situation that can never be never really be alleviated. So you have this idea that of group interest identity politics at the same time, more and more and more and more that you cannot trust your reason. And this comes even from people who say there is a black reason, a white reason as a human, I think as as a black person, I think yes, but also from people who you would think they're more on the quotes, our sides of the cultural wars, people who don't like the left would say, who also tell you there is no free will, who also tell you you are determined, who also tell you you can make sense of the world. And this is when the world becomes a very scary place. This is where the world becomes like this painting by means like the screen where you're like, oh my God, what am I going to do. And what are you going to do, you look around, as I said, when we if I cannot trust my region, somehow I have to make sense of the world so I click with people who look like me. All or same skin same gender, or by people who I decide they're my group, because I hate so much the other group. That's what you see today with work and I work and basically whatever the other group says I'm the opposite. And we saw this with the vaccines right I mean how interesting and pathetic that the same people who in October of 2020 they were saying the vaccines is the best thing in the world because God Denver or Trump gave us this vaccine in record time. Within months, they would switch their position all together. That's what I found very interesting they would switch as a group. So we are there looks like in the culture that is urged to cling with some people and form, let's say your existential meaning together with together with them. And you think that's driven by fear, fear, because you can't trust your own thinking you can't and you're, you're told you're determined, you're told your reason is impotent, you're told to align your emotion and that's all it leads you is to fear so you huddle up in a group. And you and you are constantly encouraged to view yourself this way. I mean, think about the university you think about for example the things like diversity training and all that stuff so or that your skin color or your gender is having your life choices in a way. It has a very severe impact on your life choices and then you tend to believe it and you say, oh, turns out yeah, then I am my genes, then I am my genitalia or my skin color. So it makes sense. If you are bombarded with this and you have no intellectual defense to this to say, well yeah turns out. It makes sense of the world and also you are constantly reminded how scary plays the world is environmental disaster the patriarchy capitalism or what are the fears of the right like a great replacement immigration globalization. So scary place and risks and fear everywhere. And this is a very fertile ground for tribalism. So walk us through a little bit of kind of how we got to where we are today in terms of let's start with the left the tribalism and left. How do we go from Marxism, which was supposedly intellectual. But how did we added Marx kind of lead to where we are today. How did the new left in the 60s lead to where we are today what's the story there on the left of the evolution of kind of the woke world in which we live now. There are some germs or some some roots already Marxist because Marx epistemologist is very unclear. He talks about this thing as false consciousness or some this idea that you've got working class consciousness and bourgeois consciousness. Now he never explicitly says that the world cannot make sense but it is somewhere there but at least Marx had this idea of universalism which is at the very end of the day somehow will manage to make sense of the world. Not sure how he doesn't tell you how but at least there is this aspiration of universalism that that with the working classes let's say is is going to encompass the human spirit. Now from the 60s with a new left you don't have this anymore so if you read the Frankfurt school it's this depressing idea that the world doesn't make sense, and the world cannot make sense, because they say utopia. So the Marxist utopia is written out. There's no endgame. There's no endgame. There's no endgame. And I mean, they you could say they are they have the sell sock from the Second World War and Nazis so they said look, you people believed in enlightenment, but look where enlightenment has led us the Holocaust the Gulag and the nuclear bomb, as if the Nazis and the Stalinist were the embodiment of reason and the enlightenment so. But anyway, so the new left sees that since we gave up on enlightenment we have to give up on the idea of these big narratives like freedom reason and all that stuff. Therefore they say the best you can hope is that you deconstruct the current modes of oppression, and then what then blank then we don't know what to do so there's this almost inherent almost nihilism that the best we can do is to fight the powers that be, but we can't really know the truth we can't really know what is right, and then you have other movements who say, well, we can't really know but our reality as this group is different from the reality of this other group. Therefore, the best you can hope is to understand reality based on your group. So this is how we go from something like Marx's universalist to the idea that we can't know the truth to the idea of, well, since we cannot know the truth, the different groups live in their own different truths. And this is how we find ourselves today with this black thinking and white thinking and female thing and all that stuff. And what do you think the, what are the main manifestations of tribalism on the left today? The most obvious one I think is what most people understand as a critical race, critical race thinking or, and why is this though because it's an open admission, it's an open acceptance that yes indeed, the world does make sense through the reason of the group and this idea of lived experiences. Now, because we have to be very careful to not straw man them, you could see that it does make sense that quite often you don't know how bad things are, if you're not in this group. So for example, I've been, I've been reading the biography of Malcolm X. And I thought, oh my God, things were really bad. I did it. I knew that things were bad, but I never imagined they would be that bad. But the critical race theory will take a step further. They will say, even if you possess all the facts, even then you're not in a position to to pass judgment. We see the same discussion for example around the sexual assault and all that stuff where you tell me look the statistics my statistics say it's not about your statistics is about the live experience if you're not a woman, you cannot really understand. And again, on a superficial level, there is something to it. Yeah, I will never be able to understand how scary it is, let's say to walk alone at night. So this doesn't mean that I cannot make the value judgment of this is good and this is bad and this is, you know, or this is how we can try to solve this problem. So in a way, we live in a tower of bubble where communication is important. Sorry, it's impossible. I cannot understand you. You cannot understand me because it's impossible to share live experience. What can we do, we can be in a constant conflict on whose quote truth is going to supersede the other's truth. Well, that's why tribalism has to lead to violence tribalism cannot lead to peace. Rand writes about this and the roots of war. She writes about it in global vulcanization. The more we become tribal, the more we give up on reason as a measure of truth. There's nothing to debate. There's nothing to argue about. If I have a white mind and somebody else has a yellow mind and we each have our own truths and we each have our own reason, then we can never agree. And there's no mechanism by which we can show each other that we're wrong. So the only way to resolve any disputes is to see who's strongest and to, you know, to use warfare. And what I find very shocking is that this was exactly the way of thinking of people in the past that all would agree was horrible and wrong. So for example, you have Carl Smith, like the Nazi, Nazi days where he would say, look, I can understand that someone who is an alien. That's the term he would use an alien would have his views would make, let's say a piece of art and it might even be a good piece of art or he would even make a good piece of argument. But it's alien art or alien argument. And you would, if you tell this to a class today, a class or not, they would all agree, oh my God, that was horrendous. Yeah. And then in the next class, they would be taught the similar mindsets in a different package where we would talk about cultural appropriation and things like that. And we say, yeah, yeah, that that does make sense. So the inability to see how bad these are, what is the bad history of these ideas? I find this very difficult to comprehend. Like it's, it's not, it doesn't even require a very deep analysis to understand the parallels between how these ideas in the past were served by some very, very bad people. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. 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