There are religions, there are ideologies, and there are tribalisms. Tribalism is the underlying cause of most of humanity's bad behavior. And unfortunately, it creeps into religions and ideologies more often than not.
In other words, as the article states, rationality is not going to increase as religion decreases. Tribalism is a fundamental human tendency, and few religions / ideologies address it correctly – if at all.
I have a theory that tribalism is simultaneously the most important condition for civilisations and also often their undoing. The great filter[0] argues that it’s unlikely for a civilisation to reach the stage where it can visit other star systems and this is why earth hasn’t been visited by aliens.
Tribalism is a fundamental component in starting on the road to a modern civilisation, without it there is not capacity to innovate as all individuals are occupied with gathering food and finding shelter. Only when humans settled down in groups did we have the ability for some individuals to be freed from the toil of daily life to invent things.
In any case, if you assume this tribalism is crucial for civilisations to get started, then all alien civilisations would have had the same component. However, while tribalism is crucial in the earliest life of a civilisation I think it’s detrimental later. In particular, it makes tackling global challenges like climate change difficult and in the presence of word ending weapons it makes total destruction likely.
We’ve already seen examples of this e.g. inaction on climate change because China won’t do their part and with the mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons.
So in essence I agree with you and because tribalism is an evolutionary trait I expect it will also be our undoing long term.
I know at least in Christianity tribalism is addressed.
One instance where Jesus says love your neighbour, then the listeners ask him who should be considered a neighbour. He responds with a story about a Samaritan who goes out of his way to help a Jew robbed and left for dead, as an example of a good neighbour.
Jews and Samaritans at the time despised each other.
> There are religions, there are ideologies, and there are tribalisms. Tribalism is the underlying cause of most of humanity's bad behavior. And unfortunately, it creeps into religions and ideologies more often than not.
I think one needs to go a bit deeper. Tribalism is ~~the~~ an underlying cause, but I believe an even deeper cause lies at the root (or a deeper root at least), one that enables tribalism and all other things higher in the stack: the nature of human consciousness. Consciousness presents us with an illusion (estimation, simulation, perspective, opinion, etc) of reality, and we mistake this for reality itself. What's even stranger about the situation is that we already know this. And yet despite this, we continue on living our lives (our real time behavior) as if this is not actually true.
Worse, I believe that this illusion has been encoded/embedded within portions of the ~fabric of reality. As just one example, look at our language (very simplistic compared to the reality we use it to describe), but more so how we use it (on a real time, day to day basis). Take the word "is", which means "to be". "1 + 1 is 2" is (almost certainly) an objectively and comprehensively true statement. But then take "Tribalism is the underlying cause of most of humanity's bad behavior"...is this almost certainly an objectively and comprehensively true statement? I suspect not. And yet, we use the very same word. And this is an extremely simple, fairly innocuous statement compared to many other examples (say, journalism) where we use this word in a way that implies (is perceived as) being of the "1+1=2" variety, but is actually of the estimation/opinion type (in turn, increasing the magnitude of illusion further, creating an even more powerful coordinated/synchronized illusion).
Now, I'm quite confident that you were speaking casually and can understand the complex nuance in play if you put your mind to it...but what of third parties who ingest information in threads like this, adding portions of it to their model of reality, perhaps even repeating the "truths" they have learned to others? While it's true that many people are able to switch their mind into extreme pedantry mode (for short periods of time with some degree of skill) and pick nits along with me, what is actually happening (in the real world as it is) when they are not in this mode, and are interacting in a complex system with billions of other people who are also not in this mode the vast majority of the time, if ever?
Imagine you have a giant computing cluster with 7 billion nodes, and the software running on every single node is utterly riddled with bugs, a complete mess of continuous errors in computation - might the output of this cluster be suboptimal relative to one that has less bugs?
I don't think it's useful to blame consciousness in the context of this thread. Why not keep going and blame the big bang for the mass shooting in Austin yesterday morning? Technically true, but not useful to point out.
Additionally, you're assuming there is such a thing as objective reality. Your 1+1=2 example is based on manmade axioms. It's not an objectively true statement, it's a conclusion based on an approximated system of logic that humans have invented for convenience. How much is "one" apple, for example? If "1" in your equation represents an apple, can you swap one apple for another and have an equivalent result?
I think of it much as you might when debugging a systems problem: it seems to me that the nature of consciousness is likely the least distant and most impactful entity that we are able to exert influence upon.
I do indeed assume there is an objective reality, as it seems you do (or did) as well. Something I find very interesting about this theory is that it regularly invokes a solipsism response when someone is exposed to it, even though it is a very simple idea that is fairly consistent with mainstream psychology and neuroscience.
The reason I point out the problem of objective reality is your comment of "is this almost certainly an objectively and comprehensively true statement? I suspect not". Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying. In fact I don't think I understood the point you were trying to make at all. Not being snarky, I'm just now confused.
I was being extremely precise (because I believe the problem is extremely important).
So, my interpretation of "Tribalism is the underlying cause of most of humanity's bad behavior", focuses on the words "the" and "most", as well as the general idea of what ails humanity. I would say that this aspect is extremely truthy and extremely important, but I believe it is even more true that the particulars of consciousness itself is THE root cause of all the world's problems...and not just in a "well duh, no shit" sense, but in a this is where humanity should be focusing its very best minds sense. I believe the problem is blatantly obvious and well known, but for some reason we seem unable to take it seriously.
In other words, as the article states, rationality is not going to increase as religion decreases. Tribalism is a fundamental human tendency, and few religions / ideologies address it correctly – if at all.