Asklemmy

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Never. We will even discriminate against people with different ear length if it get that's far. Conflict is inevitable, it's in our genes, our memes.

Us ve them is just a convenient cover for me me me, so I doubt it

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.

Yes and no.

The reason why we form societies this to look after one another, make life easier and safer for us, and find mates.

We have successfully gone from the days where not having kids was a literal death sentence in old age, where a small scratch could easily get infected and kill you, and where starving to death was a frequent occurrence (interestingly enough, your body has all sorts of anti-kill-yourself measures built into your BIOS, such as exercise optimization curves so you don't burn up all your calories exercising (hunting), and starving yourself causes your body to do its damndest to keep as much fat as possible to keep you alive through famines, but I digress).

In some ways, we are at the highest peak of not being tribalistic. But people also invent new ways to create us vs them situations, such as worshiping a gourd vs beating up the shoe worshipers for being blasphemous. You see this often and it's the dumbest shit in the world, lol. Though that particular one skewers it well, haha.

Eventually, I think stuff like race and sexuality will be behind us largely, and it will be the latest minor thing.

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.

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!

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.)

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

Follow up question, is it possible to decentralize or balance power so that no one group can cause too much harm?

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

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.

Yes, because it has for thousands of years. Sure, it draws new lines, but then it overcomes them. It's almost like human history is the history of social and political progress.

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.

The late rapper, "Eyedea" of Eyedea & Abilities had a really memorable verse in a song that always comes to mind when I hear this discussed.

Grinding my teeth as I’m peddling uphill / The fight against ape-hood is fate versus free will / We think we've advanced but there's nowhere to go / Mammals stay captive to animal actions / So slowly we climb up this DNA brick wall / Addicted to emptiness, anger and pitfalls / Desire for space, territory, or lust / We'll eventually turn this whole planet to dust

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

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