There are many evolutionary tendencies
that do not cause discomfort. It's uncontroversial that we like
eating and sex, and seek to avoid pain, snakes, spiders and heights.
An example with ambiguous implications
is tribal loyalty. One example is rooting for the local sports
franchise. The story I heard is that in some Texas towns, the high
school football rivalry is a source of intense interest, and most
adults in a given community will be delighted for weeks if their team
wins the big game, and dejected for weeks if it loses. Pro football
engages far more people in a national pattern. Here is a map of <NFL loyalties>.
I don't hear many people being especially troubled by these
loyalties. If forced to think about it, they recognize that the
coaches and players are hired help with no geographic ties to the
area who may be traded away at any time. One stark perspective is
that fans are actually rooting for the uniform -- for laundry. I am
susceptible myself, but also not comfortable with it. Maybe it's just
a harmless diversion, but along with rooting for the local team goes
rooting against the rivals. "Yankees suck!" is not a
sentiment in line with the values most of us would like to live by.
Origins? In our hunter-gatherer
environment of evolution, raids back and forth were sometimes
violent. It was in everyone's interest to be strongly committed to
the success of their own "people" (perhaps encompassing
multiple bands) and merciless to the enemy. Sometimes women were
stolen, but we can speculate that when such a woman started bearing
children, it was in her genetic interest to switch loyalty to the new
band.
Another manifestation of this tendency
is our commitment to people of our own race, ethnicity, social class,
religion and nationality. Today people of good will are motivated to
accept others who are different as part of our emerging multicultural
world. We can just dismiss commitment to "our own" as
bigotry with no redeeming qualities, but it deserves more respect
than that. In this case our goals might be better served if we
recognize and honor this tendency within ourselves and then set it
aside to accept those who are not like us and treat them with
respect. If the tribal tendency itself is shamed and derided, it will
fester uneasily.
It is worth a long pause to appreciate
that a world with a single culture is an especially rewarding one. It
is especially comfortable when everyone speaks the same language, has
the same religion, looks the same, and shares a host of values down
to the level of what is polite and impolite. At its best, it does not
involve putting down others; they are simply absent and irrelevant.
In today's world we have to give that up as groups mix more and more,
but we are giving up something that was properly experienced as
positive.
I argued that with no objective
morality, we must choose what is important to us and <make it our own>.
To the extent a person lives in a homogeneous society, what's
important is decided without any need for questioning or even
awareness that things could be different. The illusion of meaning is
intact.
The ease with which our loyalty to our
band was extended to our city, region, or nation is remarkable. We
haven't had time to separately evolve a commitment to a nation of
millions of people, but people feel it strongly and easily.
Overcoming it to become a citizen of the world in our gut as well as
with our mind is no small thing.
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