For me, one of the biggest challenges today is how everybody lives in their own little prison cell, echo chamber, whatever... incels vs feminists, men vs women, white vs non-white, etc.
I loathe this kind of groupthink.
But of course, I understand that there are actual grievances, actual double-standards and power imbalances, which need to be addressed.
Then again, on the other hand, I don't believe that these will ever go away completely, and what's more, I don't believe that this tribalistic mindset, in which my group is always the victim and society, "the system", "everybody else" has it in for us, is very helpful.
If the issue is based on putting one's own group above all others, then I don't see another, diametrically opposed group-based approach overcoming the problem.
IOW, I think that group identities are a necessary evil, a construct that we pragmatically need for political achievement, but that can also be a huge mental trap and ultimately don't achieve their goal.
How can we get past this? (Or am I simply wrong in my assessment?)
(The simple answer that comes to mind, is, of course, empathy and compassion, plus rationality. Sure, but that seems a bit shallow and too abstract, and it begs the question of how we can further those in today's world.)
I think this topic cuts to the core of a lot of problems facing society today, which also can manifest in two other large tribes: The Democrats and the Republicans.
Tribalism, along with its more modern cousins of nationalism and racism, has been around for as long as recorded history - in one form or another.
I think what we're seeing today is the result of identity politics ostensibly taking a very wrong turn somewhere around the late 1980s and 1990s. I'm not sure how or why, but that's when I started to notice a change in direction and different kinds of rhetoric which were incongruent with the narratives which were formulated in the 1960s and 70s. What was once a message of love, peace, and togetherness turned into something else which is hard to define, except that it's more divided.
I still remember when they started allowing women to attend the Service Academies, and there were also major news stories following attempts by women trying to enter other all-male schools and other bastions where women were previously disallowed. I remember there was a big media story when a judge ordered the New York Yankees to open up their players' locker rooms to female reporters. Now, it seems to be pretty commonplace, but back then, it was unheard of. But that was progress, and the message was clear: There would be no more all-male bastions or exclusionary schools or societies like that. The central idea was that no one should be excluded for reasons of gender, race, religion, nationality, or whatever it may be.
A good way to thwart tribalism is to let everyone become part of the "tribe." If you exclude anyone, then they'll just go off and form their own tribe. So, that made sense, to allow equal access for all. But then, a few years later, I remember some women's college in California announced that they were going to start allowing men to attend, and the students had this big protest and walk out. They didn't want any men attending their school, which seemed unnecessarily exclusionary. There were women who went through great struggles to try to get into all-male schools, but then these women didn't want any men at all attending their school. I thought that was kind of strange.
I saw similar phenomena crop up among other group identities, where they have become invested in it to the point where anyone not part of the group can be treated as some kind of unwelcome outsider.
Even recently, I read about some controversy in Boston where the mayor, an Asian-American woman, held a dinner which was exclusively for city council members of color. No white city council members were allowed. There was a good deal of criticism over that, although others seemed to think it was no big deal and that it was only fair that whites be excluded due to centuries of historical oppression by whites against people of color. That's a reason that white liberals might relate to and be able to understand.
However, there is another downside which seems to often get missed when it comes to the actual nuts and bolts of how identity politics and the group (aka "tribal") mentality can manifest itself. For example, the controversy about TERFs would be an indication of two historically oppressed group identities finding themselves at odds with each other and in opposition.
Another example which has come up sometimes relates to tensions between African-Americans and Hispanic Americans, two other historically oppressed groups which have developed their own parallel group identities, although many seem to drift towards a more quasi-nationalistic way of thinking where anyone outside of their identity group is not welcome. Both groups have been long-term historical victims of white supremacist regimes and oppression, but in response to and in defiance of that malignant ideology, they have asserted their own cultural and racial pride, but this can result in other kinds of friction and divisiveness among identity groups.
It's almost as if there might have been some kind of active intention to set things up in such a way as to have disparate identity groups at odds with each other and divided. The old "divide-and-conquer" technique which has been so effective at managing the masses. I think all that talk of love, peace, and togetherness back in the 60s probably scared enough people in high places that they had to figure out some way to get people to hate each other again while making it look like it's somewhat "progressive," sort of (but not really). And the main thing is, the rich get even richer, while the poor get poorer.
My impression is that there are far too many entrenched forces and vested interests with a very large stake in tribalism, in one form or another. They seem to want to get the cattle all riled up and fighting each other, but there's no telling where they can lead. It can go awry and get out of control.
