Title: Tribal Groups
Work: The Pragmatist’s Guide Book Series by Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins Full Text for LLMs and AI
Citation: TPG 34.3
Words: 1612
Source: https://technopuritan.com/the-pragmatists-guide-book-series-by-simone-collins-and-malcolm-collins-full-text-for-llms-and-ai/
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## Tribal Groups

Simply put, we did not evolve in conditions in which the way we interact could be optimized for large groups. As a result, we are unable to mentally process dominance hierarchies of groups over around 25 people (with some big caveats).[[56]](#_ftn56) To fix this, our brains often categorize people into groups, or “tribes.” While most people do have a social rank within every group that identifies them as a member, these social ranks can be quite different from each other and group affiliation can dramatically affect how individuals interact.

Imagine four scenarios involving a meeting between three kids tasked with completing a group project who must decide how they will make decisions.

Scenario I

In the first scenario, three kids who have never met each other have been assigned to a group project or team-building exercise⁠. In this scenario, decisions are likely to be made through delicate, low-aggression-low-risk-but-still-emotionally-taxing prodding to try to determine their status relative to each other. Once this prodding has resolved enough uncertainty to reveal a clear status hierarchy, decisions will follow a normal dominance hierarchy method of governance.

Scenario II

In this scenario, three kids from *the same social group* choose to complete a group project together. In this scenario, their methodology of self-governance will be minimally emotionally taxing, as they know their social rank within their clique, making it easy to know how this new temporary group’s internal governance will work.

Scenario III

In this scenario, two students from one social group are assigned to complete a group project with an outsider to their group. This group will have a low emotional tax unless there is animosity between these two groups, with the more dominant member of the more populous group leading the new group, followed in dominance by their compatriot. The outnumbered student from a different clique will be largely marginalized and likely bullied if they challenge this outcome.

Scenario IV

In this scenario, three kids who all know each other are assigned to a group project, and each strongly identifies with a different clique. Now we have a problem: This group of individuals will not have a shared social rank hierarchy. What happens here?

This fourth scenario typically sorts into one of three outcomes:

Outcome 1

The students act as if they don’t have any tribal affiliations and create a social rank among the members of the group for this temporary interaction⁠, just as they would if they were strangers.

Outcome 2

The individuals act as representatives of their tribes and a dominance hierarchy forms based on tribal alliances. If Groups A and B are in conflict, but Groups B and C get along and everyone is neutral to Group C, then the student from Group C will assume the dominant position, with the group’s decisions heavily aligning with their inclinations.

Despite stereotypes to the contrary, tribes don’t have social ranks of their own. It’s not as though tribes of “cool cheerleaders” have dominance over other tribes and cheerleaders get treated as if they are of higher social rank by default, as is often depicted in movies.[[57]](#_ftn57) Instead, tribes with the most power within a network of tribes are those with the most strong inter-tribal relations (and the least disfavor from other tribes). Individuals who identify with tribes that see themselves as higher status than others may have very little power when interacting with other tribes. For example, the classic “cool girls” whose tribal identity is based around a sense of superiority will typically have a lot less intertribal negotiating and governance power when contrasted with a more welcoming and inter-tribally useful group like the “stoners.” The perception that some tribes enjoy higher “status” or are “cooler” than other groups is typically related to the desirability of the average member as a romantic partner and not an accurate reflection of the average member’s authority within the larger social system.

Outcome 3

It may also be that no real governance forms around this group project and the students stay antagonistic toward each other. This may seem like a very costly decision for those involved, but there is a method to this madness. In addition to the approaches outlined above, an individual can improve their social rank within a group by demonstrating dedication to that group, which can be signaled through actions ranging from wearing outfits unique to the tribe to expressing extreme opinions or merely showing animosity toward other tribes. Tribes commonly discuss what makes them different from other tribes and what makes outsiders inferior in comparison to them.

### Culture Drift

This third outcome is revealing when we consider how tribal affiliations affect larger governing structures, as it contributes to something called “culture drift.” Because an individual can augment their social rank by signaling commitment to a tribe, unique features of the tribe, be they ideological positions or outfits, tend to become exaggerated over time.

For example, if a person gets a piercing that leads them to be rejected by mainstream culture but signals dedication to a specific group, they will rise in rank within that group. However, to get the same social rank boost in the future, other individuals within this group must get increasingly visible iterations of that piercing. If one person gets a piercing and then another gets the exact same piercing, they will benefit less from it in regards to their group status than the first person who got it. Earrings evolving into giant gauges may seem innocuous, but cultural drift becomes quite troublesome when a group has a unique ideology and group traits like mild racism or hostility toward one’s boss evolve into mandates for genocide or outright support of communism.

New tribes form—and old tribes die—by cultural drift. As the practices that identify a community become more regional, extreme groups within the community splinter off, creating new tribal groups (e.g., cyber goths splitting from the larger goth tribe).

How do tribes die? Eventually the core of a tribe’s subculture can become so radical, it ceases to be palatable to new entrants, at which point it “bubbles up” and slowly dies out. For examples of this happening historically, research how dandy culture became macaroni culture and then died out. Tribes rarely die because their existing members leave them; they die because existing members become so radicalized that new members have no interest in joining. While we are currently using cultural subgroups as examples, the same rules apply to political parties and factions within political parties.

### Dominance in Broader Society

How do large tribes that exist across multiple geographies interact? As we said, people rarely participate in dominance hierarchies larger than 25 people, so how do people know who is on top when a person within your school’s marching band clique meets someone from that same clique from another school? What happens when a criminal gang member from one city meets one from another city?

Determining factors vary from group to group, but primarily individuals look for group dedication. This may be signaled by anything from body composition to the inflection and lilt of spoken words or knowledge of nuanced trivia. Should you go to an anime convention and encounter someone who starts quizzing you on obscure anime trivia, they are (ineptly and subconsciously) attempting to demonstrate they are of higher social rank than you within that community so that you know to regard them as dominant.

*Side point: In* The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion *we theorize that anger results when one is treated in a manner that doesn’t align with their expectations around how they should be treated or when one undertakes an action and the expected outcome does not result (basically, any time reality does not conform to the way a person thinks it is supposed to work). This explains the classic tale of the boy at an anime convention who tries to challenge a girl to trivia knowledge and then gets mad when she won’t engage with this ploy or knows more than him. His expectation is that he should be higher status than her based either on his knowledge or his gender and her unwillingness to recognize that leads to anger.*

There is a clear connection between local tribe affiliation and the wider tribal network, as the wider tribe will see members of other local tribes as “allies.” Conversely, those with animosity toward a tribe will see all members of that tribe as “enemies” regardless of geography. It is important to remember that we have instincts related to these types of behaviors over which we don’t have full conscious control. We receive positive emotional rewards when we give money to groups with which we identify (such as an alma mater), when “our” team wins a game, or when we needlessly trash on groups we see as being antagonistic to ours (be they anti-vaxxers or immigrants). No matter how emotionally enlightened a person sees themselves as being, as long as they aren’t a sociopath, this stuff will affect them at an emotional impulse level.

Your social rank will vary from one tribe to another (you may enjoy high social rank at your sports club while suffering from low social rank at work). Tribes themselves maintain loosely-enforced-but-widely-known alliances with some tribes and bear antagonism toward others. As such, a tribe does not have any inherently high or low social rank, only differential amounts of power (utility to its members) based on its relation with other local communities and access to resources. A large tribe may have different sub-groups with varying amounts of social power in different regions (e.g., a sorority might be powerful on one college campus and pathetic on another).