Asklemmy

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

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

One thing I read in Sapiens that has stuck with me is that a natural group/tribe size is only 40 or so. Anything above that needs a common belief/god or a common enemy. God/religion served that purpose for a long while, then philosophies like communism/capitalism/marxism/liberalism/conservatism, etc. took over. Hitler/nazism is an example of a common enemy uniting people. More recently, and more relatable, you can see how lemmy itself grew exponentially because of the common enemy reddit. All this to say, tribalistic behavior can never be overcome as far as homo sapiens are concerned, because that is what defines us as a species.

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

But it's their fault!

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.

No, and it shouldn't. Not all people are good, not all are working in your best interests and it's high time the rest of you grow up and realize that fact.

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

Outside perspective. Only when we meet another other.

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

when aliens arrive

No. That is human nature. In order to overcome that, we would have to evolve into a different species, which I would argue is less appealing than it might sound on the surface.

Instead of trying to overcome it, it makes more sense to build a society that directs that energy in a positive direction.