Reddit reviews Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations

There's a good book on this called Political Tribes. I don't think that the Left's rhetoric fuels the Right, in that it drives people toward bigotry. What the left does is make people that would be on their side turn neutral and disengaged, it takes people on the fence and pushes them towards the Right by making Right propaganda easier to swallow.

The Left should have already won this culure war, so to speak, facts and demographics are on their side more often than not. But these days the Left turns on everyone, itself included.

Wow maybe you are the reasonable one; your post is a measured and thoughtful response. I was expecting a defensive attack. I consider myself a Marxist but I do agree that there is a mono intellectualism in the social sciences right now. I can't imagine being conservative (not that you are) and trying to have an honest debate with most of my colleagues without being labeled or personally attacked.

Amy Chua has a great book on political tribalism which talks about her similar experience to yours in academia at Yale. It might be something that resonates with you.

I'd be interested to hear what you think the solution to this issue is, or even what I can do to make my colleagues feel like they can voice their views more.

>I want to know your ideal politics for the world.

A world of ethno countries (Not in the racist way, but in the anthropological one which is based around culture and language, unlike the racist that's around skin color that's meaningless) banded together in something akin to the UN , for example, Mindanao could very well be its own little island country, SriLanka has suffered horrendously at the hands of ethnic strife, of different ethnic groups fighting each other for the full control of the country, or of ethnic groups wanting to achieve independence, africa itself is choke filled of this.

Remember that the borders of most of the countries of the planet, meaning the entirety of africa, middle east, south east asia, and degrees of latin america came to be with their current borders because the colonial states wanted said countries to be unstable, they pitted different ethnic groups against each other. If half of Italy were mixed with chunks of Germany and piece of France into a single country, do you honestly believe that would be an stable country?... Because that's exactly what British, French, Belgian did to the entire African continent, and they did it, because that way any person that gets in power on those mish mashes of countries would not be able to retain power without the help of colonial masters.


This is the Murdock Map Of African Ethnic Groups, and is the most precise ethnolinguisic map of the african groups, and it showcases simply how different people on individual countries are, those groups might not even speak the same language, let alone share a common history or past beyond their hatred of their colonial masters, and the fact that Africa or the Middle east as continents have devolved into raw violence is exactly because they were designed to be violent by the colonial masters.

In the map you can clearly see how entire groups, entire people's whom if they so desired could have made their own little countries akin to Switzerland, Rwanda (Sort of) or Japan. And I stress that I don't say this from a racist perspective, but from an anti-imperialist one and a one that understands that people whom don't share a common past or not even a language can't on a macro scale realistically be expected to always get along.

Here are a couple things that expand on it:

The Power of Tribalism, with Amy Chua & Walter Russell Mead <- Podcast

Invented Communities in Africa and America

A Continent Carved Up Ignoring Who Lives Where

Tribal World Foreign Affairs

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Tribes-Group-Instinct-Nations/dp/0399562850

But yeah, beyond that, you need to keep in mind that that's just a very rough sketch, what you want is people voting and expressing themselves if they want to move away and become their own country, or if they want to stay and just have bigger control of their own affairs like a semi-independent republic within the bigger country, all of that needs to be done by the people themselves in a very local fashion and in an honest way, so you avoid problems with racists taking over the discussion

Thing is, that this won't "fix" things, it will just generally assure a higher degree of stability for the regions and countries themselves, remember, Europe is the way it is because of the huge amount of wars they have had in their past, which allowed the current borders to settle and people to identify with the bigger group, meaning that, it is only thanks to said wars and violence, that now things have settled to a degree where entire countries have become the iconographic of the ethnic group. In the past it used to be village, the town, then the city, now is the state, region and later the country, Ethnicity morphs and changes as groups identity comes and goes, ethnic groups are like the sea, the waves come and go over time, I'm sure you don't identify as Kampagan or Bikol anymore but as Philippino, your ethnic group became your nationality, and that's a process that takes national stability and a long, long time, only now days we are seeing african countries and ethnic groups there shift to identify as "Angolan" or "Botswanian" instead of their local origin group. This also has got a lot to do with social atomization and other things that sprout from the economic systems countries use, but that's another discussion altogether.

Anyhow, to short it up, the ethnic groups thing wont correct bigger groups bullying smaller ones, such as could be Han bullying Korean or Uighur, but them working a framework such as the UN helps alleviate tensions which otherwise would flare in usage of military force. It is very easy for people whom take the UN for granted to say it doesn't work, or doesn't do anything, but the UN as a system wasn't designed to stop all kinds of violence such as the Rohinga ethnic cleansing, but to stop wars, and given that we currently are living in the most peaceful period of human history, id say that it has done its original purpose well enough

Anyhow, if you liked the video, that was a segment of a movie/documentary about the book written by the Greek Historian Thucydides, here's the full doc

If you are interested in current International Relations, id recommend you to subscribe (paid) to the Foreign Exchanges newsletter, and if you don't want and just want an overview, check the podcast of Carnegie Council For International Affairs
or NakedCapitalism Blog, for very current International Relations, read MoonOfAlabama tho they can get too conspiratorial for my taste, but that's just something of the trade. And all that's holy don't go into r/geopolitics it used to be good, 4 years ago, but now it is just brigaded to hell and of lowers common denominator information, visit r/irstudies r/PoliticalScience/, o yeah, and be sure to read up the Schiller institute pieces, they are lengthy, but of the utmost highest quality

So, to sum up everything, ideally what we want is World Federalism


And when it comes to China, please be careful of what you read, because there is real manufacture of consent out there: Link

Now I'm certain the Chinese are seriously mishandling Uighurs, but we can be certain that we won't get accurate information from Western sources that have serious money to earn from obfuscating the matter

Anyhow, this will be my last post for the day, as I need to get back to work, take care duder

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to add this one: An Insider’s View of the China-Africa “Debt Trap” Debate

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Tribes-Group-Instinct-Nations/dp/0399562850

Because tribalism, as is the case with the vast majority of conflicts in human history.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399562850/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_Aas3Ab5ASWK3M