[logicchop]

"If objective ethical values exist, we'll have to give up tribalism to realize them."

I didn't see a definition of "tribalism" in the article. I see references to the "January insurrection" and vague references to other "far-right" things.

If you go back to Plato's Euthyphro, you see the character Euthyphro on his way to testify against his own father for mistreating a criminal. This is a very early "moral" moment in our intellectual history; it was practically inconceivable that a son would take such a position against his own father. I'd feel comfortable calling it "anti-tribalist," and it isn't so obvious whether Euthyphro is pursuing the right course.

If you look at the laws of practically every developed country, there is no "tribalism." Given the vagueness of the authors target, I suspect what he'd rather say is that we have to give up things like nations, borders, ethnic identities, sex-based sport leagues, and so on. If he bothered to spell out in detail what he means by "tribalism," and not simply let the reader's imagination carry the burden of supplying the target, I suspect his proposal wouldn't have made it out of his own mouth.

[thomascgalvin]

> If you look at the laws of practically every developed country, there is no "tribalism."

The laws may not be tribalistic, but their enforcement certainly is.

Take, for example, drugs. This report from the U.S. Department of Justice[1] indicates that arrests for the selling of drugs disproportionately targets black people by 33%, and arrests for possession of drugs disproportionately targets black people by 26%.

The same is true of voter suppression laws. For example, the closure of voting places in minority communities, which lead to people of color waiting, on average, 29% longer to vote than white people[2].

The January insurrection is also a perfectly valid example of tribalism. A majority of Republicans falsely believe that this crime was perpetrated by Democrats, Antifa, or even the Capitol Police themselves[3]. We cannot have a serious discussion about the morality of armed insurrection when tribalism causes such a large number of people to reject reality wholesale.

[1]: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rdusda.pdf [2]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.00024.pdf [3]: https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/republicans-blame-d...

[logicchop]

Just commenting about your first point (disproportionate arrests of black people for drugs). I looked at your link. I read it. Did you read it? The end summarizes its own alternative (non-prejudicial) explanation for the gap.

In a post about an article wanting to secure a "universal morality" I would be wary relying on statistical data that has an abundance of plausible explanations, especially when it's meant to be deployed against something on the scale of 'our very moral existence.' If the issue were "tribalism" you would expect minority groups to be persecuted to some extent greater than the non-minority group. But in the US, there are other minority groups besides blacks, and they tend to have a lower incarceration rate than whites. I'm not sure how to square that with "tribalism."

[danShumway]

> The laws may not be tribalistic

I get what you're saying overall, and I agree with most of it, but you're giving too much credit with this statement. Some laws are tribalistic in America. It's not just that drug laws disproportionately target Black Americans in their enforcement, they were in their original forms designed to do so. The whole history of segregation and voter suppression is laws that were designed to hurt others, largely in the pursuit of tribal power. Voting suppression is inherently tribal, the whole point of voter suppression is to limit the voting power of other demographics or tribes.

The current push for anti-trans legislation in multiple states is also being driven by tribalism. Keeping trans people out of bathrooms and sports didn't suddenly become an emergency to anyone because of any brand new risk or development or scientific discovery. There's no reason why this would be more pressing to Republicans now than it would have been 4 years ago.

The major increase in legislation now is because it's a culture war, because it makes Democrats mad, because it's a backlash to the progress trans communities have made in securing rights, because it hurts people who are different who are symbolic in people's minds of power shifts and changing demographics.

On an individual level, things get more complicated. You can't use tribalism to explain everything. But on a broad, society-wide level, it just seems absurd to me to say that tribalism has no impact at all on American laws. I mean, heck, forget about America: if people don't think that classism, party-loyalty, all of these tribal instincts affected how Britain has approached Brexit and what debates people had about Brexit, then they really aren't paying much attention to how laws get made and policies determined.

Culture, in-groups, and out-groups all influence law.

[mam3]

> The current push for anti-trans legislation in multiple states is also being driven by tribalism. Keeping trans people out of bathrooms and sports didn't suddenly become an emergency to anyone because of any brand new risk or development or scientific discovery. There's no reason why this would be more pressing to Republicans now than it would have been 4 years ago.

No one was talking about that 4 years ago. Its like saying its tribalisme to care about the environment compared to a century ago.

For the trans its just we have move higher in the scale of 1st world problems.

[danShumway]

This doesn't match the experience I have when I try talking to people who are anti-trans. They don't argue that people using the wrong bathroom was always a threat and that they're more aware of it now. They argue as if it's a new problem. So in my opinion awareness is not a good enough explanation on its own to describe why they're talking about the issue now.

Boy and girl sports leagues reinforce this conclusion for me. I'm watching people who I know have never once argued about the integrity of girls' sports in any capacity suddenly tell me that this is a pressing issue that is reducing safe spaces for women. It's hard to explain that shift without tribalism. Maybe it's just ignorance of what's going on, maybe they don't actually realize that trans athletes aren't a brand new thing, maybe they believe this is a novel situation. Or maybe some of this is fueled by reactionary rhetoric from leaders and new sources, both of which really shouldn't be able to believably claim ignorance as an excuse.

It's not universal, I don't claim that tribalism explains everything. But you can at least in theory point to environmental issues and argue about them using actual data in the real world. We can point to statistics about, say, incarceration and show that it was a problem before awareness went up. We can point to environmental issues and believably say, "species were always going extinct and we would like it to stop." In contrast, there's no objective reason to argue that transgender athletes are more dangerous today than they would have been in the past. And importantly, there's very little to point to as evidence that anybody was getting hurt because of transgender athletes in the past. It's not just a 1st-world problem that people suddenly have bandwidth to argue about, it's a debate that's almost entirely defined by opposition to a social trend rather any kind of data or visible problem.

I do think at some point it makes sense to call that a reactionary movement.

And of course, this isn't necessarily Republican-exclusive, I do also see Democrats who call themselves allies but have done very little research about what problems trans people face or how trans communities talk about these issues. And I do think there's a little bit of tribalism there where a subset of the Democratic party has picked a side in this debate based pretty much entirely on their party identity, not because they understand what's going on or because they've done any research. However, in my opinion there's comparatively very little real-world harm from clueless allies, so I spend more time focusing on the Republican side because laws that restrict medical care for children are just obviously a more harmful, dangerous result for the trans community than a tone-deaf message from a company or a poorly phrased Facebook post is.

[mam3]

> They argue as if it's a new problem

Independently of how i feel about it, It IS new to care about the feelings of minority groups that much.. we moved up the "maslow" scale of problems to adress as a society.

[danShumway]

> It IS new to care about the feelings of minority groups that much..

I think you're making the mistake of conflating the motivations behind people who are fighting for trans rights and the motivations behind people who are fighting against trans rights. But the motivations between those two groups are not going to be identical.

I buy that Maslow's hierarchy of needs might maybe offer some explanation why we're finally getting around to addressing problems affecting the trans community, but is not sufficient to explain why it would be a brand new priority for Republicans to regress trans rights.

Tribalism/reactionism however does go a long way towards explaining why the GOP would not just oppose new legislation helping trans communities, but actually go so far as to pass new laws restricting their rights, as if trans people were never using bathrooms before 2018 or if there's some kind of brand new problem that requires blocking medical care for them. It makes a lot more sense to look at the opposition through the lenses of reactionary politics and polarization -- that the GOP is lashing out against trans people in anger over the progress they have made and because their rights have become a polarizing issue.

[Grim-444]

If anything your comment is as tribalistic as one could get. Black and white viewpoints on topics, presenting your picture of reality as the correct one, with no alternative explanations allowed, cherry picking data and examples that help confirm your ideology while conveniently ignoring those that don't. You'll never admit that anything your side does could be seen as similarly "bad", just as tribal, etc. If anything, you're the one defining sides, pronouncing that either people believe the same thing as you or they're just evil people that have rejected reality wholesale, which completely eliminates all shades of grey in the issues, all discussion, all discourse.

[bena]

You're not going to get anywhere with him. Look at the language. It's an obvious tell. He doesn't talk about black people or people of color, no he talks about "blacks" and "whites".

He'll never admit that the insurrection on 1/6 was a result of tribalism because it reflects poorly on the tribe he's chosen to be a member of.

People expose themselves through language.

[mantas]

> If you look at the laws of practically every developed country, there is no "tribalism."

There may be no tribalism inside of developed countries. But there's lots of tribalism between groups of developed countries and the rest of the world. Forcing all sorts of laws and customs on what they see as lesser countries. Sort of colonialism 2.0.

[nanagojo]

There is actually tribalism in the form of economic equality. Rich people only hang out with rich people. Poor only with the poor, etc.

What does a rich person need to do to be segregated from society? Simply go to a expensive restaurant or country club.

[bumby]

There’s a distinction in the article, I think, in that tribalism is rooted in anti-egalitarianism that your comment doesn’t address. You can go to different restaurants without thinking less of another person.

Differing tastes/hobbies/actions is not enough to meet the criteria of tribalism, less we fracture into “pineapple on pizza vs no pineapple” tribes.

[mantas]

Eventually it is different tastes in expressions, different hobbies as customs and different political actions.

[mariusor]

> If he bothered to spell out in detail what he means by "tribalism,"

He did though:

> Under conditions of real or perceived out-group threats involving competition for scarce resources, for example, the disposition for tribalist and exclusivist responses is triggered [...]

I suspect that the existence of country borders and ethnic identities is safe as long as they don't support themselves on the fear of the "outside world" and the "other".