Leaving the Tribe

So to sum up: It seems that people make their choices and in those choices are blind to the consequences, since no one can see the future. But the consequences are latent in the choice. A person’s own character makes one choice congenial over another, one tribe congenial over another.

Because the choice to be is intertwined with the choice of tribe. Perry Smith chose to be a murderer and sought a tribe to join that would reflect and further his choice—and ended up with Richard Hickock. Robert Mueller chose to be an upright lawman and joined a tribe that would help him do so. We are social beings and work out our destiny in concert with others.

(Sixth in a series that starts here.)

But the tribe has its own dynamic, driven by the shared values that brought the tribe together in the first place. There’s always a tug of war over the values of the tribe and there are powerful forces that favor the most extreme, the people who pull the tribe furthest in the direction of its values.

So a concern for the handicapped and marginalized turns eventually into purging songs of ableist language, and we no longer can “stand up” and fight. The goal of letting rich people keep more of their money turns into a war on the environment, on the poor, and eventually on the planet itself. And the individuals involved, unless of very strong character, get swept along with the tide.

It’s odd how attitudes change. They stand apparently firm as a rock, all while their foundations are being undermined. Then one day they fall all at once. We grow like lobsters, within the confines of our shell, until one day it all becomes unacceptable and we split the shell open so we can grow some more.

My pattern for understanding this is trivial: For a while my family lived 15 minutes from the town where most of our life activities happened. But my job was an hour in the other direction. I was adamant that making my commute that 15 minutes longer was unacceptable. And then, one day, I decided different. My excuse was that I added up all the trips to town and decided that I would actually spend less time in the car if the commute was longer and the trips to town shorter. But that argument had been available right along. What changed was that suddenly that argument convinced me—and I went instantly from “we can’t do this” to “let’s do it already”. And I was instantly impatient to get it over with.

Or George Wallace. He got shot and it instigated a complete life transformation. True, getting shot and crippled is a major wake-up call, but he didn’t have to take it that way. There was still plenty of money and power to be had on the race-baiting side of politics.

Or, most classic example of all, Paul on the road to Damascus. The most fire-breathing of the Christian persecutors becomes in an instant their strongest champion.

Yet it’s hard to deliver a sufficient shock within the context of membership in a tribe that’s going astray. It’s far easier to go along with the tribe, living within the epistemic bubble the tribe creates and not worrying too much about whether it’s right. It’s only when the disconnect between my own values and the requirements for membership in the tribe become too great that I notice there’s a problem and, not necessarily right away, decide to act on it.

I wonder if that’s what’s happening with all the Republican retirements from Congress that we’re seeing now. If they’ve recognized the disconnect but haven’t yet brought themselves to make a break—so a retirement for a while is a good half-way house. Perhaps this president is so extreme that he’s delivered the shock they need.

We can hope that it’s a sign of a return to rationality. But there are strong forces pushing the other way, including especially the right-wing noise machine. I am not hopeful.