Tribal Instincts: The Core of Our Humanity, Cause of Our Worst Problems, and Best Hope For Our Future

“Tribalism,” says cultural psychologist Dr. Michael Morris, “has been named the culprit behind everything that’s wrong with the world today, from political polarization to failure to combat climate change.”

There is certainly a lot wrong with our world today, but the problem is not that we have become tribal. In his groundbreaking book, Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, Dr. Morris goes on to say,

“Tribal needn’t be a dirty word. Tribalism is as necessary to the human condition as breathing.”

In fact, tribalism is what makes us human. In his book, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, historian Daniel Quinn reminds us that “the tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to humanity. It is to humanity what pack life is to wolves, pod life is to whales, and hive life is to bees. After three or four million years of human evolution, it alone emerged as the social organization that works for people.”

            Quinn goes on to say,

“If you note that hive life works well for bees, that troop life works well for baboons, or that pack like works well for wolves, you won’t be challenged, but if you not that tribal life works well for humans, don’t be surprised if you’re attacked with almost hysterical ferocity.”

Why do we have such a difficult time accepting that tribal life is the life we are meant to be living? I believe that one reason for our denial of our tribal roots is that we have been living under the mistaken belief that the emergence of what we have called “civilization” ten thousand years ago was what saved humanity from a way of life that English philosopher Thomas Hobbs saw as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

            The truth is that what we call “civilization” which began as our tribal way of life was supplanted by the advent of agriculture may better be characterized as the worst mistake ever. In a 1987 article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” world-famous evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond said,

“Recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.”

“The tribal life wasn’t something humans sat down and figured out,”

says Quinn.

“It was the gift of natural selection, a proven success—not perfection but hard to improve on.”

What has been called “civilization,” but is better characterized by systems scientist, Riane Eisler, as the “domination” system, is one that is collapsing. Trying to dominate the Earth, rather than learning to live in true partnership, is a recipe for disaster.

            The cause of our current conflict is not because humans are tribal, it is because a way of life that has worked for more than two million years has been replaced by a system that has caused humans to become disconnected from the Earth, from ourselves, and from the other creatures of the Earth as well as the ecosystem that allows us to live without disrupting the climate to a degree that all humanity is at risk.

            Thomas Berry was a priest, a “geologian,” and a historian of religions. He spoke eloquently to our connection to the Earth and the consequences of our failure to remember we are one member in the community of life.

“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”

Back to the Future: Reclaiming Our Tribal Heritage and Reconnecting with the Community of Life

            In reviewing the book Tribal by Michael Morris, Harvard University professor of psychology Daniel Gilbert says,

“This original book lays bare the facts about our tribal natures and shows how the deeply human tendencies that have brought us to the precipice of disaster might still be used to save us.”

“Early humans became wired by evolution to share knowledge in groups and draw on this shared knowledge to collaborate with each other,”

says Morris.

“Language, literature, law–everything great we have attained emerged from these capacities to look at the world through the lens of shared knowledge or culture. When cultural codes operate unchecked and ripple out of control they can draw us into dysfunctional conflicts, but understanding tribal instincts enables you to break these cycles and harness them for collective action and even for social change. They can be our ‘worst instincts,’ but they can also be our best instincts, our greatest hope for rising to the challenges of cooperation ahead.”

            One of my favorite public intellectuals Scott Galloway says,

“There is no future, good or bad, without tribalism. This eye-opening book will change the way you think about why we behave the way we do.”

            For at least two million years, the tribal way of life was all we knew. The tribal system worked well for all human beings, both males and females, in the past and it will work well for all of us when we reclaim our tribal wisdom.

            Although some blame men and believe patriarchy is the cause of our problems, I don’t believe that is true. Systems scientist and historian Riane Eisler wrote a paradigm-changing book, The Chalice & The Blade: Our History Our Future in 1987 in which she described two very different ways of being in the world:

            “The first, which I call the dominator model, is what is popularly termed either patriarchy or matriarchy—the ranking of one half of humanity over the other. The second, in which social relations are primary based on the principle of linking, rather than ranking, may best be described as the partnership model. In this model—beginning with the most fundamental difference in our species, between male and female—diversity is not equated with either inferiority or superiority.”

            Eisler has written numerous subsequent books describing the two systems, including her most recent, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, written with anthropologist, Douglas P. Fry. In it she describes the tribal cultures that have lived in balance with the land for more than two million years, as “the  original partnership societies.”

            They show that as tribal societies based on partnership principles began to be supplanted by hierarchical societies based on domination, there was increasing level of violence.

            Eisler and Fry say,

“Various archeological examples show the birth of war in association with hierarchical systems. For instance, in the Near East between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, nomadic foraging gave way to plant and animal domestication. In this region there is not evidence of war or hierarchical social organizations in the archaeological record at 12,000 years before the present, sparse evidence for war by about 9,500 years ago, and then clear evidence of spreading and intensifying warfare after that.”

            The trauma resulting from the loss of our tribal roots impacts both men and women, but in different ways. The comedian Elayne Boosler captures this difference when she said,

“When women get depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”

            Best-selling author Sebastian Junger offers us an insight into the mentality of men in his book, War.

“Combat was a game that the United States had asked Second Platoon to become very good at,”

says Junger,

“and once they had, the United States had put them on a hilltop without women, hot food, running water, communications with the outside world, or any kind of entertainment for over a year. Not that the men were complaining, but that sort of thing has consequences. Society can give its young men almost any job and they’ll figure out how to do it. They’ll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for.”

            It should also be careful what kind of society we want for our young men to live within. In his book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Junger makes a case for creating a future based on our tribal past.

“Perhaps the single most startling fact about America is that, alone among the modern nations that have become world powers, it did so while butted up against three thousand miles of howling wilderness populated by Stone-Age tribes.”

“We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding–Tribes”

says Junger.

“This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival.”

            In the final chapter of Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, Michael Morris says,

“For our predecessors struggling to survive in the Stone Age, tribal interaction was a way to expand the bounds of social cohesion, to work in coordination as a united force, to cooperate in ways that were not immediately rewarded, and to sustain and build upon the wisdom of the past.”

            He goes on to way,

“Our evolutionary blessing of ‘Us’ does not fate us to violence against ‘Them,’ but we need awareness of our tribal psychology to guard against this possibility…One thing is certain: we will not overcome the present challenges as individuals. As even our earliest ancestors know, we can thrive only together—in tribes.”

            If you like appreciate articles like these I invite you to come visit me at www.MenAlive.com and check out our free weekly newsletter with information that can help you improve your mental, emotional, and relational health.