Monday, January 30, 2017

Tribalism & Bubbles

Human beings are, by nature, tribalistic. We evolved over tens of thousands of years in a very 'us v. them' mentality. Play a MMO with PVP and a faction/guild system and you can see how quickly we revert to this. How do some of us get out of this and empathize beyond 'us'?
We don't. We get out of our bubble and expand what 'us' means.
Hearing or reading reports about how jihadists are a small sector of Muslims that have perverted the beliefs of hundreds of millions of peace-loving people probably doesn't mean much to someone that's never known a Muslim before. Someone that sees terrible terror attacks on the news that are linked to Islamic extremists. Someone with no exposure to the rest of a culture that claims a huge portion of the world population.
Then we limit Muslim entry onto the country. Who are we blocking really? Even if we do end up blocking some potential terrorists, the vast majority of people we are blocking are students, workers, and tourists. Those very people that give us the opportunity to expand our version of 'us' to include good natured people of other ethnicities, nationalities, and religions. And the 'them' we are naturally against becomes even more faceless and ominous.
Get out of your bubble. One thing writers say a lot is that everyone is the hero of their own story. There are seven billion or so other stories than yours going on on this planet and, guess what, most of them star a decent person.
Or if you can't get out of your own bubble, try a quick mental exercise. The US is 320 million out of 7 billion people in the world: over 21 of 'them' for every one of 'us'. Now imagine they can't see the good parts of us that don't make the news, just like you can't see the good parts of them. They can't see you eating pie and laughing together at a family reunion, can't see you cheering your kid on at whatever your kid does, can't see you put money in the basket at church, or any of those good things you do.
What they can see is us electing a man that spews hatred for 'them', that wants to build a wall to keep them out; they see us murder our own at a rate higher than anywhere else; they see us armed to the teeth far more than any other country on the planet; they see the KKK and Westboro, scandals of molestation by priests, scandals of evangelists extorting money; they see all our high profile serial killers and our glorification of them on TV and in movies; they see us invading parts of the world over and over that want nothing to do with us; they see us as the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon against other human beings; etc., etc.
Justify any of those things whatever way you want, that's not the point. The point is what they see. And that there's far more of them. On the world stage, we're the minority. If you want to keep it 'us' v. 'them', that's terrible odds. If you think a majority makes something right, we're REALLY wrong.
Get out of your cave and realize they're just like us. Realize the distinctions that create 'us' and 'them' in the first place are pretty much arbitrary. Realize that those distinctions are underlined and kept in place by a tiny elite pushing their own agenda of personal gain, not your gain.
Wars used to be squabbles among nobles that took the ultimate cost from a peasantry that would see little change in life no matter which noble prevailed. What's more likely? That our modern nobles are now vested in the common man's life to the point of setting aside their own interests for what's good for us all, or that they're just like they used to be, stoking the flames of our tribal natures to motivate an army to fight for their own interests.
Or in other words, do you really think a billionaire playboy gives a shit about little ol' you, or is he just reinforcing your own bubble to further his own agenda?