Quotes About Tribalism

Humans aren't just a little tribal. We're very tribal, and it distorts the way we think and feel. But not all group identities are equally potent. Some have a much stronger grip than others and are more politically galvanizing. Very few people have ever given their lives for the American Podiatry Association. One of the most powerful forms of group identity—and the focal point of political tribalism and violence all over the world today—is ethnicity.

If we want to get our foreign policy right - if we don't want to be perpetually caught off guard, fighting unwinnable wars, and stuck having to choose between third- and fourth-best options - the United States has to come to grips with political tribalism abroad. And if we want to save our nation, we need to come to grips with its growing power at home.

My family and I were welcomed to Canada more than 40 years ago. We sought and obtained refuge in a liberal, modern, and secular society, and put the ugliness of genocidal religious hate and associated tribalism behind us - or so we thought.

We are more and more defined not by our friends but our political enemies - collecting them like badges of honor.

Aggressivität und Ablehnung kommen wie die anderen harten, rauen und bitteren Stammespraktiken in der Maske des Schutzgewährens und Abschirmens der "Gemeinschaft" daher.

There are signs—the acceptance of Becker's work being one—that some individuals are awakening from the long, dark night of tribalism and nationalism and developing what Tillich called a transmoral conscience, an ethic that is universal rather than ethnic.

Religion is often just tribalism: pride in a group one was born into, a group that is often believed to have 'God' on its side.

The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.

Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other 'isms' grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.

So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.

I watched as social media made us more connected than ever—but also more tribal than ever—and saw political parties continue to go at each other's throats like never before. I watched as the anger and hysteria grew, stoked by politicians looking to push their followers to the polls.

We always look on the dark side, are suckers for the crisis of the day, and quickly separate into groups.

People have an innate tendency to almost instantly form discrete groups. And almost instantly become biased against anyone in a different group.

Mainly due to social media," replied Brad. "It's the most divisive technology the world has ever seen. It's polarizing and promotes our worst tendencies. Mistrust, tribalism, zealotry. And it fosters and aids in the mobilization of those intent on violence.

over the past fifty of your years, you've improved your health, longevity, literacy, quality of life, prosperity, and everything else. Dramatically. Yet almost all of you believe the opposite is true. Why? Because your news and social media is almost all negative. All alarming. All divisive. You've become more pessimistic, more tribal, than ever before. Your politicians ever more corrupt, manipulative, and self-serving.

I'm fed up with the top-down style of politics, where discussion in our party is stifled because of sectarianism and tribalism.

Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy.

Here's an embarrassing irony: nothing so arouses tribalistic animosities in me as people who support policies that, in my view, tend to arouse tribalistic animosities.

I consider this tribalism the biggest problem of our time. I think it could undo millennia of movement toward global integration, unravel the social web just when technology has brought the prospect of a cohesive planetary community within reach. Given that the world is still loaded with nuclear weapons and that biotechnology is opening a Pandora's box of new weaponry, you can imagine our tribalistic impulses ushering in a truly dark age.

we live in an age in which we are urged to define ourselves more and more narrowly, to crush our own multidimensionality into the straitjacket of a one-dimensional national, ethnic, tribal, or religious identity. This, I have come to think, may be the evil from which flow all the other evils of our time.

Because most religions offer no valid mechanism by which their core beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors.

Religion raises the stakes of human conflict much higher than tribalism, racism, or politics ever can, as it is the only form of in-group/out-group thinking that casts the differences between people in terms of eternal rewards and punishments.

If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of having dispensed with the dogma of faith. If our tribalism is ever to give way to an extended moral identity, our religious beliefs can no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine criticism. It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil.

There's no style of contempt like the stuff one kind of savage has for another,