Asklemmy

It will never happen as long as there is injustice in the world. Also, there isn't a perfect world where justice is 100% served. A good book to read about that (political book, but goes through the us vs them) is "why we are polarized" by Ezra Klein.

The "Us vs. Them" mentality is also called the "in-group bias", in which you tend to align with other members of a perceived group (with little to no logical reason, it can be as simple as belts vs. suspenders). Like many other fallacies or biases, it is a built-in feature of our caveman-brains that no longer benefits us. When used in propaganda, it is often paired with the "strawman fallacy" to build the perception of an enemy that is barely even human.

You can learn to recognize these biases in yourself and in others - This is called critical thinking. I recommend the podcast "You Are Not So Smart" to everyone to get more insight on this subject.

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.

There's a book I read a few years ago named "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" that delvs into this a bit and why humans are so tribal instinctively. Would highly recommend.

https://www.amazon.com/Tribe-Homecoming-Belonging-Sebastian-Junger/dp/1455566381?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=2999a0a3-f1d3-4c19-b97a-6215a1e3c695

Not unless the fundamentals of human psychology change. Forever is a long time to say that won’t happen but certainly not in the foreseeable future.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be worked on or mitigated. But it’s not going away completely.

We get tribal over everything. Countries, gangs, skin color, sexuality, religion, even bloody brand of smartphone makes us bicker or call the other person dumb. And the budding optimistic globalism that was happening have totally reversed in the last few years, it was an illusion.

I've stopped watching/reading news. I can't take it anymore. I lost hope.

Maybe in the extreme future but right now we've just barely started as a species, will we exist long enough to grow up?

This current version of humans? No. But could it ever happen? Absolutely, if we assume our future evolutionary human descendants survive and provided we can supply everyone's needs.

No. There will always be another “them”. That’s what makes humans so great, but also so destructive. We never settle, and will always look for division, even if we need to create it.

No

I think we could if enough effort was put forth into making it happen. The problem is that very same "instinct," or rather the plethora of different experiences and ideals held by individuals seems to make it harder if not impossible to ever come to a global united consensus on anything.

I hope so. Knowledge and curiousity feed intelligence feed knowledge feed curiousity. A highly educated society with healthy education sytem and good working socioeconomy (concurency in news coverage) can theoretically get over "us vs. them". Until we someday maybe lose it as evolutionary trait.

The way I see it that instinct is the cause behind so much suffering and injustice in the world.

That's just what they want you to think.

Hey man, we’ll quit fighting when they do.

We will not evolve out of our petty differences until we have UtopiaTech like Star Trek Replicators that can satisfy every basic need, and allow people to pursue dreams, ideas, and hopes, free of the burden of having to run the orphan crushing machine just to desperately survive another day.

Arguably we're doing a decent job right now. I'd say a majority of people in the West think genocide is bad, no exceptions made for any particular case. We'll never move past the tendency, transhumanism aside, but with enough education we can learn to identify it in ourselves and recognise it's wrong and bad.

Yes, because it has for thousands of years. Sure, it draws new lines, but then it overcomes them. It's almost like human history is the history of social and political progress.

The news feeding propaganda over and over isn't helping.

Not as long as capitalist nationalism is the dominant economic system. It's just tribalism on a global scale.

Bold to assume that it's an instinct and not a taught and learned behavior.

Never. We will even discriminate against people with different ear length if it get that's far. Conflict is inevitable, it's in our genes, our memes.

The late rapper, "Eyedea" of Eyedea & Abilities had a really memorable verse in a song that always comes to mind when I hear this discussed.

Grinding my teeth as I’m peddling uphill / The fight against ape-hood is fate versus free will / We think we've advanced but there's nowhere to go / Mammals stay captive to animal actions / So slowly we climb up this DNA brick wall / Addicted to emptiness, anger and pitfalls / Desire for space, territory, or lust / We'll eventually turn this whole planet to dust