Finding the good in our instinct to belong

U of T biological anthropologist studies how humans co-operate, but also feed into xenophobia

Tribalism was a species-defining evolutionary adaptation for humans, argues University of Toronto biological anthropologist David Samson in “Our Tribal Future: How to Channel Our Foundational Human Instincts into a Force for Good.” Without it, wide-scale cooperation, altruism, and complex groups would have been impossible. Like almost everything human, though, tribalism has a downside: a murderous lean toward xenophobia, dehumanization, and brutal violence.

In an interview, Samson, 40, talks about how maladaptive tribalism has become in a fractured world, and provides a road map on how to stress its best parts and suppress its worst. And about the unique “identity stack” he brings to the task: Samson is one of only a handful of scientists who have done field research among both human forager societies and wild chimpanzees; he grew up in Indiana in a fundamentalist cult where his Quebecois father was a minister for 25 years; and he’s an enthusiastic member of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

You pin the human tribal drive, our tendency to in-group/outgroup banding, to evolution, not learned behaviour?

The big questions for evolving humans — how do we get food and shelter, how do we avoid incest, how do we mitigate hard times and know with whom to co-operate — were and are all answered by living in tribes. But it took a long time to get there. Kin selection, evolution’s original solution to how to scale trust and create a network, goes back 0.7 billion years: if you share genes with individuals, then you direct your altruism in that direction. That’s how an ant colony works. Then about 25 million years ago — nothing on the evolutionary scale — nature came up with friendship in a few species. And that’s limited to the maximum number of individuals who can register in a mental ledger book of reciprocity. That was it until around 300,000 years ago, when human ancestors developed a capacity for symbolism that could send complex signals into the environment — a cheat on knowing who to trust and who not to trust among strangers that scaled up trust to small-tribe size.

That timing, 300,000 years ago, was also around as modern humans were emerging. Does that mean it is a Homo sapiens development, or did other hominids like Neanderthals develop it too?

Now there’s a question. We have had evidence for a while of when tribalism arose and more recently dates for the emergence of modern humans at the same time, so you could leave it at, “Well, that’s interesting.” But if my feet were held to the fire, I would say it’s likely a sapiens thing. There is some evidence that humans were trafficking in the symbolic world to a greater extent than Neanderthals, which may be the reason in and of itself that we outcompeted Neanderthals with the larger groups that symbolism allowed.

You portray tribalism as a drive entirely centred on who you can trust and who can trust you. Everything we think causes it — race, class, nationality, religion — are part of its code, its symbols of in or out?

All those elements are the playthings of the primary drive to belong to a group and to bias your group over others. Religion, which verges into paradox all the time, is particularly powerful. Consider the Holy Trinity, an illogical paradox — if you’re still accepting it, you’re sending a powerful signal of coalition alliance, that says, “I am in this group no matter what.” That’s also why conspiracy theories are so sticky and can spread so quickly.

And because it’s instinctive much of the constant exchange of tribal signals is imperceptible to us?

Yes. If there’s any objective I have for getting this book out to as wide an audience as possible, it’s to raise people’s awareness of their own drives, because the only way we have to push back on a compelling instinct is by bringing it into consciousness. In class I ask the students, do humans have instincts? We talk about circadian drives, sex drives, the drive to survive, and I ask them, how do we fight back against them controlling us? That’s where there’s usually a deafening silence. The answer, of course, is by being aware of them. Instincts really only function if they’re imperceptible. Is falling in love possible if you’re completely aware from the neurons firing all the way through? That’s how instincts work. That’s how they are adaptive. That’s how they enable individuals and the groups that they’re in to survive — and why this one, the instinct to form coalitions and identify with the group, can be so destructive. From the beginning, the tribal drive has been bug and feature, curse and blessing. Bringing it to people’s conscious awareness, I believe, is the only shot our species has of reducing intergroup conflict in the future.

Well, you can also channel the tribal instinct more playfully. Or I assume that’s what you’re getting at when you write that being a member of the SCA is as important to your perspective as your profession and your cult childhood.

I have never in my life come across a more constructive way to exercise my natural tribalism than the Society for Creative Anachronism. Do you know Pennsic, the Burning Man of medieval martial arts? Every year 10,000 people go to Slippery Rock, Penn., and during what’s called war week, everyone dresses up in full plate armour and beats the crap out of each other in a very, very fun way. That and peace week, when everyone tries to round up allies before the war starts, are the human coalition-building instinct to the max.