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by colordrops 3209 days ago
It's more nuanced than that though. The question is where to draw the line about which behaviors are bad and which ones aren't. Things like murder are obviously bad in most cases and should be suppressed, but social structures are not so clear cut. If there aren't any clear consequences to a instinctual behavior then it's probably better to not suppress it.
1 comments
emodendroket 3209 days ago
There are lots of clear consequences to "tribalist" behavior, especially if we mean the obvious example of racism.
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freeflight 3209 days ago
Depends on the behavior and even the consequences are not as "clear" as you make it sound because reactions to behavior can be rather subjective. Context actually matters even tho it's too often ignored these days in favor of generating drama.

It's a factor way too often ignored with this issue: If "hurting people's feelings" will become a crime, then we will see no end of regulating "undesired behaviors" because people get their feelings hurt in the most subjective and unintended ways [0].

So much about "obvious examples of racism".

[0] http://thedmonline.com/greek-life-retreat-ends-abruptly-bias...

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emodendroket 3209 days ago
Redlining. School segregation. Unequal economic opportunity. Disproportionate use of force in encounters with police. You get the picture. These are all negative effects of racism.
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colordrops 3209 days ago
there are countless facets to tribalism, and racism doesn't have to be one of them. But in any case my point is more general in nature and not about tribalism.
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emodendroket 3209 days ago
It's really hard for me to see how you can treat "genetically similar tribes" and races as unrelated concepts.
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colordrops 3209 days ago
The concept of races and racism are completely orthogonal.
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emodendroket 3209 days ago
Well, that isn't really true, since the conception of what races exist and who belongs to which shows wide cultural variation.

More to the point, though, racism is an obvious manifestation of the kind of tribalism I think we are talking about and I don't think it's really controversial to argue that it is harmful at least to the marginalized groups. I'd personally even go further and say it harms all parties involved.

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