Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 7. februar 2013 / Time Line February 7, 2013
Version 3.56. Februar 2013, 8. Februar 2013
02/07/2013
Tribalism And Agreed-Upon Lies
By John Scales Avery
”History is a set of lies agreed upon”, Napoleon Bonaparte, quoting Fontanelle
“The human mind was not designed by evolutionary forces for finding truth. It was designed for finding advantage” Albert Szent-Györgyi
It seems to be a part of human nature to behave with great
kindness towards members of our own group. By contrast we often
exhibit terrible aggression towards other groups that are perceived
to be competing with or threatening our own. This profile of
intra-tribal altruism and inter-tribal aggression is easy to
understand if we remember that our remote ancestors belonged to
small, genetically homogeneous tribes, competing for territory on
the grasslands of Africa. Because all the members of a particular
primitive tribe had closely similar genes through intermarriage,
the tribe as a whole was the unit upon which evolutionary forces
acted. The tribe as a whole either survived or perished, and those
groups with the strongest “team spirit” survived
best.
Later in history, the invention of agriculture made it possible for
humans to live in larger groups, and ethical rules were invented to
overwrite raw human nature so that genetically inhomogeneous
cities, nations and even empires could exist with social cohesion
and without internal strife.
Because of ethics, cooperation became possible over larger and
larger areas. Human culture was able to blossom, and the vast
accumulation of knowledge upon which modern civilization depends
began to accumulate. Nevertheless, narrow tribalism remains today
in the form of religious bigotry and fanatical nationalism. We
urgently need a global ethic, which will unite all humans.
Members of tribelike groups throughout history have marked their
identity by adhering to irrational systems of belief. Like the
ritual scarification which is sometimes used by primitive tribes as
a mark of identity, irrational systems of belief are also a mark of
tribal identity. We parade these beliefs to demonstrate that we
belong a special group and that we are proud of it. The more
irrational the belief is, the better it serves this purpose. When
you and I tell each other that we believe the same nonsense, a bond
is forged between us. The worse the nonsense is, the stronger the
bond.
Sometimes motives of advantage are mixed in. As the Nobel Laureate
biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi observed, evolution designed
the human mind, not for finding truth, but for finding advantage.
Within the Orwellian framework of many modern nations, it is
extremely disadvantageous to hold the wrong opinions. The
wiretappers know what you are thinking.
Also, people often believe what will make them happy. How else can
we explain the denial of climate change in the face of massive
evidence to the contrary?
But truth has the great virtue that it allows us to accurately
predict the future. If we ignore truth because it is unfashionable,
or painful, or heretical, the future will catch us unprepared.
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