Actitud tribal

El otro día discutíamos acerca de cuadrarse ante una licencia, o ser capaces de observar la realidad que hay más allá de determinadas normas. Muy al hilo poco después me crucé con esta entrevista a Aaron Swartz, dónde comentaba lo siguiente:

We’re naturally designed to associate ourself with our “tribe” of ancient days. Now we don’t live so much in tribes, but we still feel some urge to be part of a community, and to have friends whose honor we defend and whose common ideas we fight for, right or wrong. As part of the tribe, we want to evangelize and get people to join us, but we also want to attack anyone who would insult us and stop anyone who would leave us. We don’t think of it in the same rational way as a common item, it’s no longer an issue of reason, it’s an affront to the tribe, and you can’t let that stand. I think this is probably worst in politics, for whatever reason, where once people associate with a tribe, they’ll defend it even if it’s completely corrupt and acting against almost all their interests — even normally highly intelligent rational people. This is not to say I’m immune, I find myself doing it all the time — it’s a very tough habit to break.

You see a member of your tribe doing X and you find a way to rationalize it, but if your tribe’s enemy does the exact same X, it becomes the worst, most awful thing. And you can’t just say “well, the truth is in the middle” because it rarely is. Often one side or another is right, or both sides are wrong. You’re always finding a way to score points for your tribe, so even pointing out this tribal inconsistency is a way to score points. (“Joe says he’s pro-X, but when one of his guys didn’t do X he didn’t have any problem with it!”) It can seem inescapable at times — escalating rhetoric with biases on each side.

So people try to break away from the tribe system, saying they’re for rationality, but then they only become an anti-tribe tribe.

Y sigue (a mitad de la entrevista, que es bastante larga).