Quotes About Tribalism

Politics should be about politics, not tribal ties

the only thing necessary to trigger tribal behaviour in humans is the creation of two completely arbitrary groups. Leave them alone in a room and watch it all begin:

We reject the charge of tribalism, particularly from those whose theologies serve to buttress the most nefarious brand of tribalism of all—the omnipotent state. The church is the one political entity in our culture that is global, transnational, transcultural. Tribalism is not the church determined to serve God rather than Caesar. Tribalism is the United States of America, which sets up artificial boundaries and defends them with murderous intensity.

Facts and logical arguments no longer matter; people decide what to believe based on tribal alliances, on what they want to believe, or what they feel is true.

It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.

You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.

The idiot willingness to choose sides is what feeds the abattoir of history.

This diminishment of the ego gives rise to empathy and compassion beyond tribal, racial, national, or religious affiliations.

You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.

Whatever the evolutionary basis of religion, the xenophobia it now generates is clearly maladaptive.

Tribalism reflects strong ethnic or cultural identities that separate members of one group from another, making them loyal to people like them and suspicious of outsiders, which undermines efforts to forge common cause across groups.

Moving around limits tribal affiliations that are detrimental to democracy, communication, and innovation.

His Kingship, precisely because it is so broad, so total, is doomed to be rejected by anybody who is still into tribalism, or small belonging systems. We don't really like the big Kingdom if it gets in the way of our smaller kingdoms, and it always does.

It really works very well, but the trouble is that it feels so godly that much, if not most, religion is a belonging system more than a search for intimacy with God. Jesus was not into tribal religion, groupthink, and loyalty tests. Much of the institutional church is into them, however, and always has been. It works too well to call it into question. It holds us together and that feels like salvation, even if it is a very deteriorated form.

Christianity, for some, is neither faith nor reason—just reactive tribalism hiding behind the skirts of Mother Church.

I was not a tribalist when I had a long-standing and intimate relationship with Miss Bianca Onoh, an Igbo lady.

At the bottom of all the political pontificating is a simple question: Will we be the city upon the hill or a nation of tribalistic assholes?

The natives used to tie their enemies to the tree. The ants would eat them alive.

As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism.

in practical terms there are surprisingly few differences between Shiite Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, and Jewish Israel. All are bureaucratic nation-states, all pursue more or less capitalist policies, all vaccinate kids against polio, and all rely on chemists and physicists to make bombs. There is no such thing as Shiite bureaucracy, Sunni capitalism, or Jewish physics. So how do we make people feel loyal to one human tribe and hostile to another?

Commerce tends toward rewarding inclusion, broadness, and liberality. Tribal loyalties, ethnic and religious bigotries, and irrational prejudices are bad for business. The merchant class has been conventionally distrusted by tribalist leaders -- from the ancient to the modern world -- precisely because merchantcraft tends to break down barriers between groups.

comment persuader nos contemporains qu'en demeurant prisonniers des conceptions tribales de l'identité, de la nation ou de la religion, et en continuant à glorifier l'égoïsme sacré, ils préparent à leurs propres enfants un avenir apocalyptique ?

The great Enlightenment principles of modernity—liberalism, secularism, rationality, equality, free markets—do not provide the kind of tribal group identity that human beings crave and have always craved. They have strengthened individual rights and individual liberty, created unprecedented opportunity and prosperity, transformed human consciousness, but they speak to people as individuals and as members of the human race, whereas the tribal instinct occupies the realm in between.