Comment by JKCalhoun

My thought is that if someone aligns exactly with X political ideology, they aren’t really thinking for themselves and are just adopting whatever their tribal group believes about X subject. I see this all the time - collections of beliefs that otherwise have nothing to do with each other, but are adopted by the same people because “that’s what X group thinks about it.” This is very rarely a conscious thing.

This becomes even more obvious when you look at how these collections of beliefs have changed over time, which to me just shows how they aren’t based on any fundamental intrinsic personality traits but are trendy and groupthink-based. Ditto for geographic differences.

So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.

In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.

I once read an interesting article that said in multipolar political systems, coalitions between opinion groups happen after the election; whereas in two-party systems, the coalition forms before the election.

So you get people who think taxation is theft allied with people who Back The Blue. You get people who think life is so sacred abortion should be banned allied with people who'd like to see an AR-15 under every pillow. You get people who think nazi flags and the N word are free speech, allied with people who think books with gay and trans characters should be banned.

And personally I'm pro-environment and think nuclear power has a part to play; I think we should help the homeless by increasing the housing supply and letting builders do their thing; that the police should exist but need substantial reform to stamp out corruption and brutality; and that women's issues like abortion and trans women in abuse shelters should be decided by women, not men like me. But I'm in a political coalition with people who think nuclear power is bad, that we need rent control, that we should defund the police, and so on.

In an electoral system with proportional representation, largely unrelated views would all be different parties, no party would have a majority, and after the election they'd form alliances to build a ruling coalition.

But because of America's electoral system, someone has to take all those views, duct-tape them together and call it a consistent political ideology.

The graph in the article of "what the political spectrum actually is" where independent thought was only found in the middle was so funny to me that I had to do a double take. Maybe this is a joke or April Fool's prank or something?

I read the article quickly so maybe I'm misreading it but if that graph is serious it really undermines his position as a thoughtful moderate to me. But maybe he really does believe that everyone on the left and the right only has groupthink. I agree with you that it's definitely not all tribalism

One quality of “tribal” that I think gets overlooked is that those that are part of a “tribe” are not willing to be wrong.

I feel like those that are more in the middle - in addition to be “accidentally in the middle” as pg says — they’re open to hearing the other side, and even open to being wrong.

Those that I know that I might define as “tribal” — and that goes for either side — are certainly not open to being wrong, and not even really open to listening to the other side — even a rational discussion.

Some may pretend to listen and maybe even engage in a discussion, but only out of being polite, not out of genuine, open curiosity.

The most visible example of tribalism is when groups fail to update their ideas and beliefs as facts start to come in. You can't escape the religious parallel.

This occurs clear across the political spectrum, but a standout example is record-breaking levels of immigration in European countries like Sweden and Germany. Instead of realizing the policy failure and acting to fix it, the line becomes "it was the right thing to do, it was just done poorly."

It's natural to internalise the groups we belong to. In other words they become me. Or my identity is formed by the group.

When social scientists say something is socially constructed that's approaching this.

It's hard to see oneself apart from the group one belongs to. In fact to separate oneself causes real pain. In the article it says that people don't want to look outside their tribe; I would say that people shouldn't even think about looking outside as it will cause trauma. It would literally cause psychological identity wounds.

One aspect of politics is this pain avoidance.

By definition, reason can only take you so far in politics, as it’s the arena in which decisions must be made without complete information. No matter how well reasoned your arguments, no matter how well informed you are, you’re still going to resist switching allegiances. So, imo, politics is just about 99% loyalty.

Looking at it from a left-right one-dimensional space, the middle would be the non-tribal choice. The political spectrum is however not a one-dimensional space, and countries with multiple political parties, with center parties, can demonstrate that well in polls and self tests. It is perfectly possible for a single individual to be in 50% agreement with every single political party, from left, center and right, agreeing to the individual policies from each party that they find to be correct and disagreeing with policies they disagree with.

As it happens, if I personally looks to what is important to me, I find that from the extremest left to the extremest right, the best political party get 60% support and the worst get 40% support. They all have some policies that I strongly support, and some policies that are terrible, and the middle of the gang is exactly the same.

To take an example. I am in strong support of the green party when it comes to train and bike infrastructure, fishing policies, eliminating lead in hunting ammunition, getting rid of invasive species, and banning heavy fuel oil in shipping. I strongly disagree with their support of using natural gas as a transactional fuel in the energy grid in hopes of green hydrogen (a pipe dream), and their dismantling of nuclear power. I also strongly disagree with their political attempts to mix in the war in Gaza with environmentalism, as if taking up the flag for either side in that war has any relevance in nation/local politics on what is almost the other side of the world. That is one political party out of 8 that my country has, and the story is similar with all the rest.

Is it really likely that an intelligent person like yourself could hold 95% intellectual alignment with one of the two lowest common denominators (largest pluralities) in a country on complex political topics? Consider how much each party's platform has changed in the last 20 years, and how much more they will change in the next 20. I would say it's more likely that someone like yourself is quite intelligent and creative and is instead unaware of those deeply ingrained tribal instincts.

Media in the US, especially now via incessant social media feeds, fuels this. It showers us with information showing how the "other side" is bad. So you can have a correct opinion that the other tribe is bad without any quantitative metrics to compare how bad it is compared to your tribe, which is also very bad.

Btw, regarding the basic personality traits thing. I found this paper very interesting [0]. Sort of refutes the "conservatives lack empathy and fear change" angle. On average, I suspect most liberals and conservatives have very similar averages across most personality traits and are mostly just a product of their environment.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34429211/#:~:text=Our%20meta...

I think there sadly exists an overlay in a lot of politics, basically tribalism, but I think the better phrasing is "teams" as in "team sports".

You don't like a team for an ideological reason, usually physical closeness or some other arbitrary connection.

For many, the team is the extent at which they analyze politics. You see this when conservatives will reference historical events in terms of the name of the political party. For example, it's relatively common to see someone say "Oh the Democrats are bad because during the Civil war they were on the side of slavery". Their analysis doesn't include the actual policy or ideology at hand, it's simply the team "Democrats". It doesn't matter to them if the flavor of policies that the early 20th century dems supported are similar or even the same as the policies modern Republicans support. Only the team.

I think there exists multiple layers of "tribalism" or "team sports" in politics that effects people differently. The bottom layer is sadly "<Name of party> good, <name of other party> bad". I think at some point we must acknowledge that some people are simply stupid. If they think making an argument based on the politics of a party 100 years ago is convincing, they might just not have the facilities for critical thinking.

A lot of those people are now @-ing grok on twitter to explain even the simplest of jokes.

I think the claim is that a lot of people stick with the tribe regardless of how closely it matches their world views. It might be dismissive but it resonates. I've seen people keep voting for the same parties even when the policies have shifted very significantly.

Since you are left leaning, presumably American, a good example is the Republicans. The current policies and values of the Republicans seem to be very different than let's say those of 20 years ago. But you don't see a lot of movement, i.e. you don't really see people saying because your actions of policies changed I'm going to re-evaluate my support for you. Maybe the other team is now closer to my world views. It's a lot more common that people just keep voting for their camp or team. I'm sure there are studies, this is very anecdotal. There are also many e.g. single issue voters, they only care about a single issue and nothing else.

Independent thinkers, who dive deep into issues, who challenge beliefs, who weigh multiple issues and considerations, who potentially shift their position when the goal posts have moved or they've evaluated new information, are rare. It's much easier to stay in an echo chamber/team/tribe. We see this all the time, another example is the pandemic. It's lack of nuance.

You see this in the political discourse. Instead of debating things of substance it's more of a rally around the team approach. You're never going to see in-depth discussion/analysis on tax policies, or security policies. Anything that doesn't meet your world view is automatically discredited whether it has merit or not, It's going to be they bad we good/polarizing/conspiracies etc. This pushes people farther apart and I think it also pushes policies farther apart. Maybe sometimes it is that simple but plenty of times it's not.

> one group actually reflects everything I believe

If you swap “group” for “religion,” this is how I feel about Catholicism. Make of that what you will.

> align with a progressive, left-leaning ideology.

Cooperation and scalability are two objectively good principles that our species can apply effectively... if and only if there is a genuine desire for cooperative, scalable, positive outcomes.

If social/political discourse has degraded to the point that cooperative, scalable, positive outcomes are off the table, look to those who have taken control of the discourse. Propaganda undermines language itself.

The difference between destructive behavior and constructive behaviour... has a bias.

I think it refers to people, who I have run into quite a lot, who when faced with a new fact about politics or the behaviour of politicians, back the team over the idea.

Like if you were to say consider yourself a progressive. I would consider you a progressive, unless you for instance, supported something incredibly conservative that was performed by a "Good Guy" politician on your team.

For instance, we used to have this chap Daniel Andrews. Who was for better or worse, a mild progressive. He took a very hard stance on Covid related issues. Progressives, backed the man regardless. Conservatives criticised his every move. However, his own human rights review, found that he had violated the human rights of citizens in certain circumstances.

If you mention this to his critics, it reinforces their team. But if you mention this (incredibly obvious good faith criticism) to his supporters, not only does it reinforce their team, but they immediately seek to identify you as someone on the other team. A "crazy anti lockdown conservative" or similar. - That for me is the essence of tribalism.

To be fair I think this is a symptom of social media rather than just political awareness.

Always remember that internet conversations are carried by a small group of antisocial losers, and a most of media articles complaining about society are specifically targeting that small but loud group.

An average person has a lot more in common with you than with the imaginary protagonist of this blogpost, who is really smart and wants to show that everyone else is really dumb.

Like other normal people, I discuss politics with friends; both with the ones I mostly agree with and the ones I mostly disagree with. We need to understand game theory and military strategy to have a useful conversation.

> I'm not just glomming on to everything one "tribe" or another stands for ... one group actually reflects everything I believe.

I don't think that's unreasonable, but if you're in the US, you should really re-evaluate if this is true just because there are several significant issues over which the parties have flipped over the past few decades (and more if you go back further).

Obviously you didn't specify a party, but as one example: In the 1990s, the left wing party was where the free speech absolutists were. If you were a big "free speech" enthusiast back then and you still are now, then great! If your views have changed, that's fine, too, but there should be alarm bells going off in your head that your views changed along with the tribe.

>By this reasoning it naturally follows that those of a certain "personality" will also share common beliefs, ideologies

Is this not borne out in your own life experience? Because it sure is in mine.

In the US, you vote for one party or the other. It reduces to tribalism, so why do the extra work to get to the reductive result?

How do you avoid being "tribal" if you are not centerish?

Tribalism is part metaphor, part euphemism. What it’s really getting at is cult behavior. Agreeing with someone on a lot of things isn’t tribal and isn’t cult.

The actual problems of “tribalism” are exactly those of cults: worship of a leader or ideology, zero tolerance for criticism, cutting you off from other support networks, conspiracies, narratives of doom, promises of salvation, framing enemies as degenerates and deplorables, claiming exclusive ownership of truth and morality…

Red and blue alike have cult wings.

If you think these beleifs are inherent in the temperament of people, that doesnt explain the change of these beliefs over time. Progressive, left leaning ideology had different stances 20 years ago, let alone 50 years or in China or India.

Sometimes this is easier to see from the outside. For example, if the conservative right all independently arrived at the same conclusion based on personality, isnt it strange how the consensus all moves together and changes over time

>Others, smarter than me, have gone into great detail about the underpinnings of left-leaning or right-leaning world views in people.

People also change. Until 25 maybe 30,I was left leaning in many issues.

Now I am mostly right aligned.

Martin Luther King was pretty clear what he thought of "the middle":

> I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice

> The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels dismissive.

It's not about where you are on the spectrum. I know neoliberal moderate Democrats, people who would have voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988, who are more tribal about current U.S. politics than any socialist I've met. What makes it unpleasant to talk politics with them is a combination of two things: the narrow set of answers they're willing to accept on every topic, and the anger and suspicion they broadcast at anyone who says anything else. For example, they have an acceptable set of answers for why Trump won in 2024 (racism and sexism) and if you suggest any other contributing factors (like arrogance, elitism, and various screw-ups in the Democratic party) then you must be on the other side, blaming the victims and making excuses for Trump supporters. You can say a dozen things morally condemning Trump and the Republican Party and then make one strategic criticism of the Democrats, and they'll look at you like maybe they can't ever trust you anymore. They'll parade their emotional distress and look at you sideways if you don't have the energy to mirror it. All this without being especially politically informed, politically engaged, or politically radical, or caring if anybody else is informed, engaged, or radical -- they judge themselves and others purely by fervor and narrowness.

You are right that you don't take part in tribalism, because you first have a value structure and then you looked critically at the political landscape and found where you have the largest overlap.

But tribalism is absolutely an issue in the modern age with huge swathes of population falling into social media echo chambers. People first find their tribe, and then they define their own personality by the views of that tribe, not the other way around.

Just look at all the people spewing "own the libs" or "maga fucktards". A significant portion of the population doesn't vote based on rational analysis, but by being part of a crowd. They don't even care or know what they vote for, as long as they are sticking it to people they perceive as enemies.

I think this is basically the terminal/minimum of the modern social network algo optimization. Everything is maximally polarized, nobody is willing to engage in good faith discussion with people who hold different views. Everyone has a known enemy and known allies and they can be fed what they like to hear and thus continue being addicted.

I don't know how to get out of this :(

The United States especially is having a face to face with tribalism - if you live here and you don't see it you are basically blind.

We have parents posting that they are glad their child is dead instead of getting the measles vaccine, an entire pandemic that was ignored and downplayed, an election denied.

These are all simple examples of tribalism - choosing the tribe over ones own self interest and well being. Most sane people don't offer their children up to Baal.

I think tribalism is being thought of as a pejorative when it isn’t. It merely is a phenomenon. What you describe above about yourself is pure tribalism of how you identify with the liberal tribe and could never even picture yourself as a member of other tribe. This is no different to me than a rabbi or priest talking about the tenets of their faith and how that leaves them no option but to be a member of that religion due to the moral underpinnings of those tenets that they believe in.

Tribal politics happen when we take these various tribes in our society and essentially blind them to their biases to the point where they can’t imagine at all why someone would even be in that other tribe. A complete loss of critical thinking ability emerges once it becomes us and them and not some of us and others of us, one species, no tribes, many ideas.

Do you actually believe all liberals are good and can do no evil? Do you actually believe all conservatives are cartoonishly evil idiots? I’d hope you could see the nuance but your description makes it seem like there is one way but the highway. And the reflexive counter argument from the liberals is “but racism” but then again, explain the phenomenon of the black or latino Trump supporter? Clearly there is more nuance going on in what is sensible to people than what we can gleam out of the black and white painted descriptions from the thought leaders in our tribe.

Just in the last election cycle, we saw tribal Democratic voters try and silence those protesting the Biden administration and then immediately go "we have always been at war with Eurasia" and do the exact same thing for Kamala.

And MAGA goes beyond being tribal: by any objective measure, it's a cult.

Plus you see an awful lot of people who will criticize one side for doing one thing while supporting the other side for doing the exact same thing. Obama, for example, was the Deporter-in-Chief (~3 million deported), Biden continued the Trump policy of using Title 42 to deny asylum claims and Kamala proposed building the very same border wall that all Democrats protested when Trump proposed it in 2020.

I'm a leftist and any leftist will have seen so many liberals who love progressive aesthetics but turn into a jack-booted fascist the second you want to address any of the underlying economic issues. For example, tell people "house prices need to come down" to solve any number of issues such as homelessness and see how they react.

> The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels dismissive.

On this, I 100% agree. There are several reasons why:

1. Intellectual laziness. People think they're "above the fray" by bothsidesing everything;

2. Ignorance. This is particularly an issue for Democratic voters in the US. Both Democrats and Republicans are neoliberals. US foreign policy is bipartisan. Full-throated support for capitalism is bipartisan. But a large segment of Democrats tell themselves they're good people for wearing a pride pin while at the same time thinking homeless people should die in the stree; or

3. Deception. This is particularly the case for Republicans who will try and center their positions by appealing to "common sense" and label Democrats, who are a center-right party, as "the far Left" or "the radical Left".

So, yes, people do use "tribalism" as an epithet to silence legitimate criticisim but there is also tribalism.