INDIVIDUALISM AND COOPERATION
This is an idea that seems so simple to me that it must be incorrect. It makes polarized behavior seem perfectly natural. So I’ll try it out anyway. We have evolved into individuals who each has her own individual genetic makeup in her DNA, whose identity is partially formed by her upbringing, whose identity is further determined by the culture she lives within, and then whose identity is formed by her particular and often chance experience. That is what I was coming to the conclusion of last week. If I was mindful of the many groups I have belonged to in my life and how they formed my identity I will realize that I have to make my own choices in life and cannot be managed by the groupthink of tribalism.
But on the other hand, I am a social creature and within my DNA is the need to cooperate with other humans. And to do this we have to work together within a common framework. We are not lone individuals, we need to connect with other humans and to get anything done and to live together we have to cooperate. We do this within groups. And within our group we have to give up some of our identity to form a cooperative group identity. Families do this and so do local communities. To get along we need a common language and common expectations of the way to do most everything. We are guided by social expectations and by laws. But we also need to fit ourselves into a kind of group think, all agreeing on most things. If we each go our own way we won’t be able to cooperate. And the more we feel threatened, the more polarized we are, the more we fit into group think. This is what allows men to put their lives on the line in warfare, when good sense would indicate that they should avoid being killed. They are sacrificing for the group, putting the group ahead of their natural inclinations, because the group and group think are more important than they are.
But groups are also like individuals, through time they change, not only do their physical features change through evolution, but their languages also split into dialects and new languages, and their cultural conventions such as food, clothing, housing all diverge until we have a tower of Babbel. Just as individuals whose identity is very different have trouble getting along together, so do cultures as they diverge from each other. Within the culture we demand conformity and group think but soon we are defending ourselves against other communities who are different, sometimes even slightly different. Particularly cultures who rub up against each other have trouble accepting each other. We aren’t threatened by Eskimos who do whatever they do up in the dark ice in their igloos but we do feel threatened by people who live among us who have different cultural traditions.
So I wonder if we have two sides to us as humans, the drive to go our own way impelled along by our individual identity and on the other hand the drive to cooperate with a group in which case we have to mute our individual identity and merge ourselves into a group identity. If we only have the choice between two group identities we pick one or the other and that is when we get polarization.
Right now, for one confused person, this is what makes sense to me.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 