Tribalism: Is It Just Too Deep Seeded?

Tessio: I understand thirty thousand men enlisted this morning.
Sonny: Yeah, bunch of saps.
Michael: Why are they saps?
Connie: Sonny, come on. We don't have to talk about the war.
Sonny: Hey, beat it--you go talk to Carlo, alright? (Leaning menacingly toward Michael) They're saps because they risk their lives for strangers.
Michael: Now that's Pop talking.
Sonny: You're fucking right that's Pop talking.
Michael: They risk their lives for their country.
Sonny: Your country ain't your blood--you remember that.
MIchael: I don't feel that way.
Sonny (taunting): "I dont' feel that way." Well, if you don't feel like that why don't you just quit college and go into the Army?
Michael: I did--I enlisted in the Marines.
--"The Godfather"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=435mkg6_eGQ


And I gladly stand up
Next to you and defend her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land
God Bless the USA.
And I'm proud to be an American 
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died 
Who gave that right to me.
--"Proud To Be An American"

The Sunday Times carried an article about two brothers who opened a restaurant in Sri Lanka where a Facebook posting claimed Muslims were plotting to sterilize Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority. A Singhalese patron found something in his plate he thought was a sterilization pill and the brothers were beaten and their restaurant set  aflame and a riot ensued. One of the subtitles of the piece was "The Thrill of Tribalism."  Various authors and academics have made hay on this concept, that tribalism is deeply rooted in human nature.

When I was an undergraduate, one of the most popular events on campus were the "anthro flicks" put on by the Department of Anthropology. This was before the National Geographic channel and youtube and even before computers, so the novelty of seeing how other people lived in cultures far away and vastly different drew pre medical students, engineers, math majors, philosophy majors, a wide swath of students from all over the campus. 

One of the favorites--they showed it every year--was "Dead Birds" about two warring villages  in New Guinea. Periodically, a war party consistenting of all the men (and some boys) from each village marched out onto a field between the villages with spears and shields and they shouted threats at each other and launched spears and arrows and battle ensued until the first villager was killed. Then, the villagers gathered up the dead, in this case a ten year old boy, and carried him back to the village and the fighting ended. The villagers staged a ritualistic funeral, and the dead boy was seated in a chair and carried about before being immolated. 

After a time, the villagers would go at it again. Usually, the next fatality was suffered by the village who had not lost the last time. In this way, the war could continue, because neither village lost too much and balance remained.

The moral of the story, as I got it then, was that human beings are tribal, and they must have conflict. It's in our DNA.

When we see the Republicans appealing to all this, when President Trump tells us some of those Neo Nazis in Charlottesville are "fine people," we see an appeal to that sort of butt naked tribalism. 

The wonder to me has been, how you ever get a population as diverse as ours, with so many "tribes" to coalesce into a nation. How do you get mothers willing to give up their sons for this idea of country?
One way, of course, is if those mothers do not have much to lose. If you are a family like the one depicted in "Hillbilly Elegy," which is to say, a failing family, barely able to meet the rent, barely scraping by, well then the Army seems like the best deal out there. And if you are an ambitious young man from a wealthier family, fighting might be one way to created a story for yourself. 

When you watch that scene from "The Godfather" where Sonny explodes at his brother for placing country above family, you see the force of the idea of family, which is really nothing more than tribe. 

That the Lee Greenwood anthem, "Proud to be an American" resonates with the least wealthy, mostly white population, says something too. The people who tear up listening to this song are very much what Sonny had in mind: Saps. Trump chumps. But for them, what else do they have? They live paycheck to paycheck. They are often fighting with their own family. They are isolated, alienated, and then there is this sappy song, calling them to a higher purpose, enobling them. They can't make enough money to take their family out to dinner; their parents and grandparents are living with them in the same rental; they are one payment away from having their cars repossessed. But at least they are free. Freedom's, indeed, just another word for nothing left to lose. "Stronger Together" has no appeal for them.