this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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I certainly dislike people who have neat little boxes to put other people in. I know it's a human thing, still think it's detrimental.
It's not a human thing. Humans are natural empathizers. It's a capitalism "you're your job and your khakis" thing.
Theres some tendency towards tribalism that is probably a human thing though right? Wasn't that the main social unit for humans through prehistory?
Social units existing in the first place requires some level of empathy. Tribalism is just selective empathy, not the absence of it.
Yes. Humans definitely aren't altruistic or empathetic, as a whole.
That's because we're just animals. I would say it this way: humans are not instinctually altruistic but are capable of being rational.
Which isn't any better and may actually be worse: we can be rational, but we can also rationalize our instincts.
Yeah communism famously doesn't allow for punishing people for intrinsic traits
Empathy is a learned behaviour.
Lol, humans are inherently tribalistic.
Capitalism is actually normal human behavior. There's a reason it has to be regulated.
Tribalism is based on empathy towards other tribe members. Capitalism, ironically, goes against this: tribal bonds take a back seat to economic interest.
Humans are, in fact naturally empathetic. It's why we pack-bond with anything with a name.
They're naturally empathetic to their tribe, but not to others. Tribalism isn't a good thing.
Tribalism is the root of the entire GOP platform of hate. Racism, anti-LGBT, etc. are all because humans are tribalistic.
Tribalism is bad, but the tribe existing at all is empathy in action. Once the tribe is there, it's just a matter of expanding it.
It's not a matter of expanding it. Humans developed to have tribes of 2-300 people, and as a species we haven't done well past that. Look how society started turning to shit once we could communicate globally with millions of people.
We didn't learn to love and accept everyone, we just formed echo chambers (tribes) and turned the dial up on the hate.
What you're looking for is something like globalism, which goes against human nature.
Dunbar's number is 150, I believe. But that's the limit for ""real"" people, with names and addresses and birthdays. The magic is, however, they don't need to all be real: a nation is a tribe, and nations can hold millions. You just need a few real people that you take as a stand in for all the others, and then keep doing it untill it encompasses the whole of humanity.
I say "just", it's not like it's that easy, but it's doable.
Capitalism really couldn't happen to this degree until industrialism became a thing.
I mean, all you have to do is look at all of recorded human history to see that we're not an altruistic or compassionate species. A person might be altruistic or compassionate, but people aren't. If people were, communism would actually work.
Regardless, tribalism isn't a good thing because you end up with 'that persons skin color is different from mine and that's bad.'
Communism works for small communities, like 2-300 people (which incidentally is the size of the tribes we developed to be part of).
And while altruistim and compassion have existed, they're by no means traits in the majority of humans. Humans are selfish, greedy animals. Some of us might realize this and work to be better, but that means we're fighting our natural tendencies.