My Tribe, Our Tribe

I was just reading an old post from The Disgruntled Chemist about a meeting by a young republicans college group. It was from the time of the infamous danish cartoons that sparked the violent reaction from muslims. The event quickly spiraled into outright racism, they broke Godwins Law and even had a statement about the KKK. Cops needed to remove a couple of people from the meeting. All the while the college muslim group had a protest outside because the group inside was going to be showing the danish cartoons. None of this sounds like fun to me but the Chemist stuck it out so he could report it to us all. I bring this up because it made me think of something. In the comments there was mention of tribalism.

Humans are social creatures. In the past, which is very very recent from an evolutionary view, our community would have included many relatives, possibly being related to every other member to varying degrees. Therefore you defended your community as you would your home. Today we still have these tribal impulses which where we want to defend our tribe against outsiders. Many consider xenophobia an evil, and it is, but it needs to be understood if we wish to overcome it. It also needs to be said that it is going to take a great many generations to remove xenophobia and until then we will need to consciously work against it. My thoughts on the matter are fairly simple. We used to be small communities because we could only communicate within very limited range, with a little outside contact. Now its just as easy to talk to someone on the other side of the globe as it is to talk to your sibling who's down the street. Our tribe is no longer just those contained within the imaginary boundaries of our Granfalloon. Today we live in a global community, wither we like it or not we live in the global community, there are certainly those who would prefer to stay huddled in the safety of the known, they're scared of those with strange customs. To those people, I'm sorry but thats no longer an option, the world has changed, here we are their's no going back. what I'm saying is that tribalism is not going to leave our sub-conscious anytime soon so lets embrace it, just remember that your tribe is the Human Tribe, we are all part of the same community and when anyone threatens a member of that tribe we must all stand up to the attacker for no matter where in the world they are fighting they are fighting my brother. Be kind to your tribe. Peace.