Asklemmy

Many of us have already overcome it! All of them are holding us back though.

As long as power hungry people exist. It is basically easiest thing to implement in your politics and get people behind you.

All the Great Apes (probably, definitely), including us, have an instinct and built in skill at identifying snakes.

Researchers did experiments with both humans and other apes where they were shown progressively less obscured images of different predators and without fault we and our relatives were able to identify the snakes faster than any other creature.

This means that the instinct to find, and kill snakes goes back millions of years. Yet now when I encounter a snake my instinct is to move it to a safer spot so it doesn't get hurt or hurt me.

I think that if we can get over such a deep rooted instinct, we can get over the 'Us Vs Them' instinct too.

Looking at any kind of politics and how it changed over the last 10 or so years, it's a clear no from me.

Humans are reactionary and emotionally driven. Thats why empty hot button issues are such a trigger for people. We need to learn to ignore those things and work together, but the pessimist in me doesn’t see it happening. Thats a massive shift and based on what I’ve observed in the US, that divide is doing nothing but widening.

All we can do is be aware of it, not get roped into manufactured propaganda, and unionize.

“Ape alone.. weak. Apes together…. strong”

So no, it’s baked-in the DNA of how we survive. We group to fight threats. Early days, that threat is protection from hostile wildlife like bears.

You scale that to a modern civilization - and you have groups of people fighting for resources, food, money, opportunities, land, etc. Sometimes they’re gangs. Sometimes they’re entire countries. Sometimes they’re groups of allied countries.

And heck, you see it in stupidly small scales too. “Coke v Pepsi”, “N64 v PlayStation”, “Rock Fans v Disco Fans”.

Sunni and Shia believe 98% of the same stuff. But the bit they don’t agree on pushes fringe lunatics to terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing, etc.

Same deal with Protestants and Catholics.

The only thing could make us drop “us versus them” mentality is a giant alien force more violent and sick than anything you can imagine.

Then maybe, humanity will be the “us” finally.

Hey man, we’ll quit fighting when they do.

In my opinion, the result of our tribalism tendency that we are currently discussing has very little to do with "instinct", and it is rather the result of generational social conditioning we are exposed to since the day we are born; values and biases adopted unquestioningly from our caretakers, educators, and the culture and political reality that we grew up and associate with.

If a child without preexisting established knowledge or exposure can naturally make friendly associations toward an abstract-looking plushie that has one big eye and 10 legs, which has nothing similar to the appearance of a human, then the reason they would fear or hate people of different skin color or cultures is apparent.

I'll get more basic than everyone else here:

Unless the human brain collectively evolves in a very short period to function differently than it has since we first started throwing shit at other hominids, no. We, collectively, as a society, can aspire to be better than our animal nature but that hardware is still there and it will never, ever, stop pushing people to tribalism, selfishness, and aggression.

We can't fix us. We can only do the best with what we have and keep moving.

Remove? No. Overcome? We're already doing it.

Our society is far more accomodating than it has ever been. Different sexes, ethnicities, skin colors, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities and whatnot enjoy more acceptance and equality now than ever before. Something like the EU - a voluntary alliance of this size - would have been unthinkable probably just 100-200 years ago. And for all its flaws the participating nations have grown closer through it.

We still got ways to go particularly internationally and we must be ever vigilat against those that want to drag us backward but the progress is undeniable.

Human behavior and development is shaped by their Material Conditions.

When material needs are met, the human instinct of cooperation shines.

We will not evolve out of our petty differences until we have UtopiaTech like Star Trek Replicators that can satisfy every basic need, and allow people to pursue dreams, ideas, and hopes, free of the burden of having to run the orphan crushing machine just to desperately survive another day.

But it's their fault!

Arguably we're doing a decent job right now. I'd say a majority of people in the West think genocide is bad, no exceptions made for any particular case. We'll never move past the tendency, transhumanism aside, but with enough education we can learn to identify it in ourselves and recognise it's wrong and bad.

Ever is a long, long time. We won't live to see it, but I'm not confident that it will never happen.

I don't think so. I think the universe is too harsh for a complex, truly altruistic species to survive. But it is possible for us to get to a point where socially we're better than our base instincts. We're partway there, although we've been backsliding lately.

Not entirely, but we can control it. I would absolutely argue that we live in some of the least tribalistic times in history (though I will say that I worry that it's now on the rise.)

No because there is no natural selection happening for that trait. But in once case aliens. If there where aliens discovered and they where hostile maybe even not I could see humans banding together as a group but it would still be an us vs them situation.

Only if we were forced to and had our free will taken away.

One thing I read in Sapiens that has stuck with me is that a natural group/tribe size is only 40 or so. Anything above that needs a common belief/god or a common enemy. God/religion served that purpose for a long while, then philosophies like communism/capitalism/marxism/liberalism/conservatism, etc. took over. Hitler/nazism is an example of a common enemy uniting people. More recently, and more relatable, you can see how lemmy itself grew exponentially because of the common enemy reddit. All this to say, tribalistic behavior can never be overcome as far as homo sapiens are concerned, because that is what defines us as a species.

Doubtful. Climate change and our own ignorant stupidity will wipe us out long before we’ll ever evolve past idiocracy.

We get tribal over everything. Countries, gangs, skin color, sexuality, religion, even bloody brand of smartphone makes us bicker or call the other person dumb. And the budding optimistic globalism that was happening have totally reversed in the last few years, it was an illusion.

I've stopped watching/reading news. I can't take it anymore. I lost hope.

Maybe in the extreme future but right now we've just barely started as a species, will we exist long enough to grow up?

No, not if we existed for another million years. It seems pretty fundamental to how we work, and how animals work in general. We basically discriminate along most possible lines. Few enough people even aspire to anything else.

it's what kept us alive during our early days as a specie. I think is it baked into our essence as a human. but if it can be controlled or diverted then yeah. fund us an alien and we'll be an earth tribe against aliens.

Ozymandias was correct

There's a book I read a few years ago named "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" that delvs into this a bit and why humans are so tribal instinctively. Would highly recommend.

https://www.amazon.com/Tribe-Homecoming-Belonging-Sebastian-Junger/dp/1455566381?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=2999a0a3-f1d3-4c19-b97a-6215a1e3c695

I don't think it's an instinct, because it can absolutely be taught.

I encourage my kids to get along with everyone, but at the same time I can see how some of their peers are taught to be racists and other clique behaviours from home by parents who are just like that and don't even think about it when they pass it on.

But by default, nobody is like that from birth. Babies aren't racists or afraid of different kinds of people. The fear of others is taught.

It will take many generations to change.