Them vs Us

Let’s talk about sheep.

Not really interested in the fluffy kind, no matter how adorably docile they may appear. For now,  it’s all about intrinsic sheep. The thing behind our need for uniformity – that tempestuous yen to fit in and appear ‘normal’.  The sort that lives inside us and pulls its wool over our eyes. Alas, the electric pace of innovation egged on by the complications of our time has not created this. Evidence of copycat behaviour is ubiquitous within our society, with telltale signs appearing everywhere from politics to primary school.

This raging thirst to be wanted – it’s been around for a while.

There often comes a time in our lives when we have resisted authority in some way. Broken some rule or code of conduct. If done in school, it can mean a visit to the headteacher’s office. During the subsequent interrogation, you will be encouraged to discuss the misdemeanour(s) in detail. It’s possible that you may be offered immunity as a quid pro quo for incriminating others.

But if the ‘guilty party’ consists of your friends, it becomes that much harder to start talking. If we refuse to cooperate, the authority figures often grow frustrated and attempt to emotionally blackmail us into telling the truth. Going on about how we’re obstructing the inquiry through our incredibly ‘selfish’ decision to not sell out the perpetrator(s). We are made to feel bad we didn’t tell on Max for swearing in class, even though Max is our friend and – had he been in our position – would exert just as much effort to keep his lips sealed. Granted, if the incident is a little more pressing than the use of expletives, perhaps we should consider the pros and cons of coming clean. However, scrutinising our every action and the chain of ethical implications bound to them isn’t an ability we are born with. Sticking up for those we care about, however, might well be.

Belonging is a basic human need, and any sense of righteousness can dissipate when joining the crowd means betraying our congenital sense of morality. It’s why people can be happy making others unhappy. A respectable company can be caught permitting corporate abuses. Soldiers can celebrate the murder of the ‘enemy’. A group of kids could take it upon themselves to target the most ‘vulnerable’ member of the class, and give them hell…

This is us.

Unfortunately, that’s where most people leave it. They seem content enough with the fact that mankind are creatures of mimicry and hardly ever think to probe deeper.

To find out why.

But one such person who has had an in-depth look at this psychological phenomenon of ‘human sheep’ is successful internet writer, Tim Urban. He writes popular, long-form blog posts on his website, Wait, But Why. In one such post, Urban reveals that humanity comes pre-inoculated with a fundamental longing to be accepted. A desire to be desired. To further understand the origins of this particular insanity, we must examine where 21st Century Tribalism really came from:

Evolution.

“Evolution does everything for a reason,” Urban explains. He takes you back to Ethiopia, 50 000 BC, where your Great Ancestor lived as part of a small hunter-gatherer community.

In those days tribes were absolutely critical. They offered a chance for food, shelter and friendship in a time when all 3 were made scarce. For people like your great Ancestor, nothing in the world could be more crucial than fitting in. Whether or not one was trusted – even respected – by their fellow tribe members, could literally mark the difference between life and death. Being a people pleaser was pivotal in cementing one’s social standing. It drastically improved your likelihood of coexisting in harmony. Furthermore, gaining the favour of those in seats of authority meant that your position in the tribe was much less likely to be jeopardized. As long as the populace had nothing but positive remarks to shower, life would pan out swimmingly.

Conversely, the worst-case scenario for an individual all those millennia ago would be if – or when – others got talking behind closed doors. Dark muttering. Ripples, murmurs, rumours in the dark. Initially, if it was just the one person who grumbled about your lack of hygiene, you needn’t lose any sleep over it. However, word spreads fast in a closed community. The ones singing your praises today could be cursing your name tomorrow. Impressionability is a double-edged sword. if enough people disapproved of you, your status within the tribe would plunge. And if it got really bad, you’d be kicked out – an outcast left for dead. Or worse, hunted for sport.

For those of you who have watched Black Mirror, you may find this particular episode to be adjacent to the sinister levels of conformism and social protocol allegedly required to qualify as a ‘well-to-do’ citizen.

Living in such a close-knit bubble meant that there was really no life beyond the village. They couldn’t just drop it all and leave town when relations were souring. Being socially accepted was everything. Because of this, humans evolved an over-the-top obsession with what others thought of them—a dark lust for social approval, coupled with a debilitating fear of rejection. Though it was by no means irrational at the time, it did mean that conventionalism was destined to play God from the precise moment that one became aware of what it meant to judge and be judged.

Ideal conditions for the perfect carbon copy.

As such, the incessant measure of looking over one’s shoulder to see what everyone else is doing has created an interesting social heuristic. Humans have adapted to inherit convictions mimetically from each other — we learn what is of merit through imitating our peers. The need for organized humanity kept us alive back then…

And the thing about evolution is that it’s painfully slow.

That’s right. Our bodies and minds are definitively hardwired for life in 50,000BC. Irrespective of the fact that everything else has come leaps and bounds, our biology is left choking on the dust. Consequently, modern humans are stuck with a number of obsolete traits – one of which being a fetish for tribal-style social survival in a world where social survival is no longer a palpable concept.

So no matter how sophisticated someone thinks they are, if they find themselves making a conscious effort to be part of the crowd, they’re about as backwards on the evolutionary timescale as it gets.

Tribes continue to hold awesome power over day-to-day affairs. As worldviews become increasingly polarised, this has re- accentuated the importance of identifying a group within one is able to express themselves freely without fear of exploitation. Three immense dividers – religion, politics and race – have so far proved the primary agitators of wars and mass destruction in our short and bloody history (the irony of such establishments is far from lost here). 

Ancient social code states that we should be always and forever have the backs of ‘our people’. As such, we get the Nationalists and Imperialists. Liberals and Conservatives. Activists  – who can make each other extremist. Degrees of bias (conscious and unconscious) incentivize us to stand up for the groups that we belong to and shun anyone on the outside. It is such a basic instinct, yet we have been grappling with it for as long as anyone can remember.

This ‘them vs us’ mentality can also lead to insidious acts of corruption. Modern politicians regularly assume highly-paid positions in the private sector after leaving office – often working with industries they once managed. Capitol Hill is notorious for members of Congress giving jobs to the children of friends in return for their friends giving jobs to their children. The term has been coined, ‘reciprocal nepotism’. Politicians are, essentially,  “profit centres” for their nearest and dearest.

In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, psychologist Jonathan Haidt asserts that – to both liberals and conservatives – members of the opposing party are not simply ‘wrong’; they are deliberately engaging in ethical malpractice. They are morally flawed and can even be dangerous. “Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings,” Haidt argues, “to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship. But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.” Thus, he insists, morality welds people together into cohesive factions but renders us utterly uncomprehending when it comes to the motivations of other groups, no matter how reasonable they may be.

It’s not us, so why should we care?

We are herd animals. from our vantage point, it makes absolute sense to follow the pack – it certainly goes a long way toward explaining why we are so predictable. That’s why big corporate businesses can make billions upon billions of dollars, selling the same stuff over and over again. The command has become a parasite leeching off our better judgement

Follow the crowd. Follow the crowd. Follow the crowd.

And that’s the mimetic trap: No matter how unnerving it may be to copy others, it hurts to leave the group, and there’s nowhere to go. It dissociates the social reward signal from the rest of objective reality — you can spend years ascending ranks in a hierarchy without producing anything that the rest of humanity finds valuable. we don’t even hear the sheep bleating instructions in our ear until it’s too late.

And since our 50,000-year-old convictions are set up to hone in on what other’s think of us, any evidence of our authentic voice and true feelings get pushed further and further into the abyss. If we think of individuality and conformism as a dual-headed muscle, the former will undergo disuse atrophy whilst the latter becomes very swollen indeed. Eventually, we’ll forget we were even capable of owning an opinion, let alone expressing one.

So, adults, next time you feel the young people in your life aren’t complying with your wishes, scratch past surface-level problems. Frowning in the face of 50, 000 years worth of stagnant social norms won’t make them go away. Attempting to guilt-trip kids into soiling the trust of their mates might not do the trick.  Oftentimes, the people who make us feel bad about these things really underestimate the power that evolution holds over us – over all of us. Handing a tribe member to authoritative figures (often seen as ‘the enemy tribe’) is the ultimate betrayal. It’s them vs us all over again. Despite how our awareness of moral truth has progressed as we mature, the primal instinct to defend someone we consider friend or family cannot be ignored. Its a part of our genetic makeup; part of who we are.

Instead, one must acknowledge the intense need to ‘fit in with the tribe’. You can’t fight it outright. But there is hope. Yes, ideologies predispose. But they can never predetermine.

It’s important to note that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another does have positive connotations. The prevailing hive mind was a consequence of “shared intentionality,” – “the ability and willingness to engage with others in collaborative, co-operative activities that featured joint goals and intentions In other words, ‘teamwork made dream work’.

A prime example would be that while foraging, one person tugs on a branch while the other plucks the fruit, and, as a result, they both have food on their plates.” When early humans began to share intentions, their capacity to hunt, raise children, and raid other groups for resources increased exponentially. Everyone on the team – or ‘tribe – were now able to envision a mental representation of the task, acknowledge that his or her partners shared the same representation, and collectively carry out said representation in such a manner that allowed each and every member of the team to indulge in the spoils later that day.

Finally, when it comes to conformism, there are always anomalies. Those who do not quite fit the model. Individuals who have not only failed to grasp the significance of blending in, but who have in fact made every conscious effort under the sun to stick out. At the time, they have been branded heretics, fools, blasphemers, extremists and crazy. But to imagine a world where no one dared stick their neck out; no one dared to pioneer, is to envision a land void of human progress. With a lack of incandescence, the world would become a cold and broken record.

The same dumb song stuck on repeat.

There are times where we should defend the status quo. But there are also times where we should challenge it. Striking a balance between fitting in and standing out is the only way forward.

The only way to get anywhere.