Achenbach's observations about anthropology are correct: as a species we're wired for tribalism, but that has always been the case and it always will be. It's our nature, though that tendency like anything instinctual can be mitigated by will and conscience - for which we are also wired.
Tribes can be organized around any number of things - not just race or religion - we deem essential to surviving or improving our lives. We do it at work all the time, and while people usually refer to tribalism as something dark in human nature, it is also what makes us social creatures and allows us to collaborate to engineer and build.
We are also wired with a fight v flight response to threats, and when possible we flee. Anthropology documents that, too. When flight is not possible, things get ugly fast.
I think our polarization has more to do with fight v flight than with our natural instinct to form tribal associations.
The left's statist agenda has threatened the rights of individuals in so many ways, but perhaps none so much as their desire to criminalize speech and thought and create obstacles to personal prosperity. When you pass laws, as they have in California, to take your children because you disagree with a government official's opinion about your child's nascent sexuality, they are threatening your existence.
The pressure upon one's ability to make an honest living and enjoy life (inflation, the cost of housing and now food, the ability to be comfortable in one's home, the freedom of mobility we enjoy through cheap, private transportation, and now even your ability to raise your own children) push us towards conflict and polarize us.
One may not understand the reasons for those pressures, but the pressures are there. You might blame the left, Trump, your neighbors, a racial or religious conspiracy - but the pressure exists. It is real and it activates the fight or flight response.
I believe that pressure is coming almost exclusively from the left, as well as from politically bi-partisan globalism that cheapens the value of labor. Confronting those pressures, as Trump has, is not their cause.
You may move to Idaho or Texas, find a new career, change how you vote.
I can't disagree with a word of this. The left is entirely responsible for the degree of polarization we suffer from today. And I include the media which is a major major reason for it. Obama was the first actual president who was truly of the left and every word out of his mouth once he took office was deeply divisive. He transformed the entire Democratic party to the extent that most of the Democrats I know think he was kind and inclusive, the exact opposite of reality. Trump was a clear and obvious response to what Obama really got going, the treatment of political opponents with total disdain. This can't continue, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, we've got to find our way, if not back to the garden then at least to where we used to be.
Achenbach's observations about anthropology are correct: as a species we're wired for tribalism, but that has always been the case and it always will be. It's our nature, though that tendency like anything instinctual can be mitigated by will and conscience - for which we are also wired.
Tribes can be organized around any number of things - not just race or religion - we deem essential to surviving or improving our lives. We do it at work all the time, and while people usually refer to tribalism as something dark in human nature, it is also what makes us social creatures and allows us to collaborate to engineer and build.
We are also wired with a fight v flight response to threats, and when possible we flee. Anthropology documents that, too. When flight is not possible, things get ugly fast.
I think our polarization has more to do with fight v flight than with our natural instinct to form tribal associations.
The left's statist agenda has threatened the rights of individuals in so many ways, but perhaps none so much as their desire to criminalize speech and thought and create obstacles to personal prosperity. When you pass laws, as they have in California, to take your children because you disagree with a government official's opinion about your child's nascent sexuality, they are threatening your existence.
The pressure upon one's ability to make an honest living and enjoy life (inflation, the cost of housing and now food, the ability to be comfortable in one's home, the freedom of mobility we enjoy through cheap, private transportation, and now even your ability to raise your own children) push us towards conflict and polarize us.
One may not understand the reasons for those pressures, but the pressures are there. You might blame the left, Trump, your neighbors, a racial or religious conspiracy - but the pressure exists. It is real and it activates the fight or flight response.
I believe that pressure is coming almost exclusively from the left, as well as from politically bi-partisan globalism that cheapens the value of labor. Confronting those pressures, as Trump has, is not their cause.
You may move to Idaho or Texas, find a new career, change how you vote.
I can't disagree with a word of this. The left is entirely responsible for the degree of polarization we suffer from today. And I include the media which is a major major reason for it. Obama was the first actual president who was truly of the left and every word out of his mouth once he took office was deeply divisive. He transformed the entire Democratic party to the extent that most of the Democrats I know think he was kind and inclusive, the exact opposite of reality. Trump was a clear and obvious response to what Obama really got going, the treatment of political opponents with total disdain. This can't continue, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, we've got to find our way, if not back to the garden then at least to where we used to be.