Tribal Tendencies and What to do About Them

As often happens these days, what has long been known to most people has now been proven by science. This time around it's the fact that tribal affiliations of all kinds are detrimental to our ability to think. Thus it has been proven that my strategy for a free society is good for our brains.

Central in my strategy is the refusal to attach any authoritative importance to party politics, patriotism, and other such team sports. We don't submit to this kind of authority. We don't send our boys to war, we don't pay taxes if at all possible, we don't drink the cool aid, we don't take the vaccine. We keep away from these things. However, we don't do this blindly or unthinkingly. We keep a watchful eye on all developments. We know that we're vastly outnumbered by the unthinking masses, so we have to be smart about what we do, which explains why independent minded people are smarter than the herd. Our constant vigilance trains our brains. We don't do things just because everybody else in our team are doing it, we do things because they make us better off.

This focus on what's good for us, rather than what's good for team leaders, protects us from doing stupid things, not only in politics but also in finance. We don't jump on trends and fads just because all the cool kids are doing it. We don't invest in things that we haven't first thought through. If something is doomed, we don't put any money into it just because it looks like it can go higher in the short term.

A further advantage is that we can change our minds as often as we like. We are currently home schooling our boy, but we plan to put him back in a private school this fall. Then we'll see what we do after that. It all depends on the general state of society and our mood. We have only one goal in our endeavours, and that is to be better off while sticking to the golden rule. That goal is best attained through careful navigation, and navigation requires flexibility of thought rather than mindless submission to authority.

Navigating through a storm

By maybe Allan C. Green or George Schutze or maybe Alexander Harper Turner - This image is available from the Our Collections of the State Library of Victoria under the Accession Number:, Public Domain, Link