(01-15-2021, 09:16 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 15-Jan-2021 World View: Tribal Thinking
Butler re-posted my last message in his "Polyticks" thread on the
GD forum. He replied with his offensive screed about Tribal Thinking.
Here is the response that I posted there.
I can see your point about Tribal Thinking. There are a lot of really
smart people who post in this forum. Almost all of them are much
smarter than you are.
Most really-smart people recognize that they engender resentment and distrust. They often do better than not-so-smart people. They typically do better in verbal skills, which means that they can better formulate ideas into challenges to people in leadership who aren't so brilliant or are terribly amoral. If men (unless homosexual or autistic), they end up with the more desirable women because... well, the most effective tool of romance is good communication, something that the stupid as a rule do badly.
Dumb people must often make ethical compromises for survival. They often make horrible decisions. If you look at the patterns for "executed offenders" or "persons awaiting execution" in Texas (the largest state with capital punishment) and look at the patterns of offenders, you find almost as a strict rule people of far-below-average education. Few complete K-12 education, which is far below the national or Texas average. Many have learning disabilities or problems with legitimate authority. K-12 education has its bureaucracy, but one that is more likely to cajole than to make ultimatums. If one cannot cope with the relatively mild bureaucracy of K-12 education, then just think of how difficult getting along with an employer is. Employers are far more demanding of conformity.
It is not surprising that stupid people become the crooks. Smart people know that dealing drugs or doing robberies are poor ways to get what one wants, and that it is better to adjust one's desires to what is available. Even not-so-smart people recognize that high-stress jobs whose pay implies a certainty of poverty in a culture of dog-eat-dog competition in the workplace is a vacation from hunger and homelessness.
America is a plutocratic society above all else. Most of us expect to suffer for people who act irresponsibly because they have power, and in many cases the power comes from inheritance, cronyism, or nepotism. American life has been less-crudely plutocratic in the past, which shows in economic results. Competition has faded between giant enterprises but intensified among workers. The only institutions (labor unions) that can look out for working people and reduce the competition (collective bargaining alone is well worth the cost of union dues) have been weakened under an anti-worker ethos which began with Reagan and culminates in Donald Trump. Big Business has been able to foist "Right-to-Work" laws upon more and more state governments.
Yes, yes, yes... you can say "Clinton" or "Obama" who represent some mitigation in the pattern... but if they do too much to mitigate things, then out comes the Moral Majority and the Tea Party, the latter morphing easily into MAGA. Over about forty years America has been in the neoliberal era in the Skowronek Cycle. Two of those cycles typically fit a saeculum in Howe and Strauss theory. The first President in such a cycle is able to achieve much in the intended direction and get away with it because changes come at relatively low cost, and unintended consequences are yet to develop. At the end of the cycle unintended consequences are the bulk of the results. Leadership at the end of the Skowronek Cycle typically loses badly in politics because little goes well. Economic dogma after about forty years no longer works. Foreign policy fails. Social cohesion weakens, and new political coalitions (which, if one connects those to the generational theory, can be generational change. Obviously the Millennial generation was never asked whether it wanted the "Reagan Revolution"; it has been handed the reality as something that might as well be from a Founding Father.
Some Boomers could wax enthusiastic about the Reagan Revolution and in turn the Tea Party and MAGA. If one's culture fits, and if one does not find any problems with the economic reality of mass poverty for others, such may be fine. After all, there is the pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die promise that would be perfectly acceptable in return for any earthly hardship and suffering so long as one believes it. Some people believe it. I don't, and people who offer something that isn't theirs to give and don't have The Authority (as in "the Almighty") don't seem legitimate and straightforward in offering it. The people who offer "pie in the sky" in return for poverty and harsh treatment typically do not make the deal for themselves. Maybe I would make exceptions for medical missionaries and the like, but there are too few of those, and they are rarely the obnoxious, demanding "anal sphincters" who profiteer from offering "pie in the sky" and earthly suffering on behalf of their profit, power, and privilege. X largely accepted the "trickle-down" theory of economics on the assumption that a free-wheeling economy would itself create enough opportunity for anyone who did not want to be an ill-treated working stiff. On the other hand, monopoly and vertical integration, along with further bureaucratization of Big Business, made rugged individualism moot.
Trump is a failure as President, but he almost succeeded as Van Buren, Buchanan, Hoover, and Carter because he is more unscrupulous, more ruthless, and more dictatorial. Unlike the technical failures he could set things up so that anyone who crossed him, either through opposition or backsliding, would experience retribution. Van Buren, Buchanan, Hoover, and Carter all recognized that things were going wrong even if they couldn't fully understand why. Trump's most militant supporters did the equivalent of storming the Winter Palace.
Quote:So to cope with this, you turn to Tribal Thinking. They're all
smarter than you, and they all have different views that you can't
cope with, so you just treat them all like they're all part of a
Tribe. So in your Tribal Thinking, you're the Enlightened God, and
all the other members are a Tribe that you look down on. So you're
the Hutu and they're the tribe of Tutsis. Or you're the Chinese, and
they're the tribe of Uighurs. Or you're the Nazi, and they're the
tribe of Jews -- all more intelligent than you, but by Tribalizing
them, you can cope with them.
The "tribal thinkers" are white, at least nominal Christians ... not all of them. By now you will surely have noticed that the people in the January 6 insurrection are remarkably monochromatic unless they painted their faces. Defense of privilege, identity and self esteem are all essential to tribal identity. Converting to a different religious tradition or marrying out is unthinkable because such is a break from the ethos of tribalism. When there are three distinct groups, a small and successful minority can play both sides, as did German Jews. The Jews did few bad things and were often able to mitigate disputes between German Protestants and Catholics without joining either side explicitly (which would have been conversion). But once Hitler unified the Volk against anything that he considered foreign (like the Jews) the Jews were in deep trouble in Germany. An FDR-like leader in Germany would have decide that German Jews really were Germans. It was not Karl Adenauer who became the leader of Germany during its Crisis of 1940.
German Jews were the very model of a model minority. They knew that their religion was too difficult for practically anyone not born into it to join it. They were by most accounts better defined by competence than by deviousness and ruthlessness. The difference between America in 2021 and Germany in 1933, and this saves the system, is that America has multiple "model minorities". A demagogue who starts vilifying Chinese-Americans is going to experience consternation from the Anti-Defamation League, LULAC, and the NAACP... and don't let me start talking about Japanese-Americans and Korean-Americans who could easily see that they are "next".
Part of being a Model Minority is to not be tribal. One can have positive esteem about one's own group and say that it is not for everyone even if one is moral and capable.
Quote:So finally I understand what you (Bob Butler) mean by Tribal Thinking. You mean
that you're the Enlightened God, with the Mandate from Heaven, and the
rest of are are a Tribe of Barbarians. Or, you're the farmer, and the
rest of us are a Tribe of Donkeys.
Part of Enlightenment thinking is to recognize that tribal thinking is unproductive. Identity is real... well, not even becoming President of the United States makes one "white", even if one is one of the better ones. (I know what you think of Barack Obama). The most tribal people in America are white people, especially from the Mountain and Deep South, especially those who have no connection to any high and noble culture. They see anything exotic as a menace to their identity.
Quote:It's good that you're using this thread. How about explaining more
about Tribal Thinking, and how you're superior to all the other
members of this forum? Just keep it all inside this thread, though,
so you won't get "censored." I'm sure we'll all look forward to
coming over here to this thread and read more about how inferior we
all are.
People are not inhuman or subhuman because they become losers in a merciless economic order such as the one that America now has. American plutocracy requires that the vast majority of people be losers even if they have the ability to not be losers.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
