VII. A Web of Interconnections ↑
51. Tribes organize even larger groups.
As groups become larger than the limits of the Dunbar number — so large that not everyone can immediately recognize each other by their natural appearance and presentation — they adopt new mechanisms for group communication and organization.
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Members recognize each other via shared appearances, ornamentation, symbols, slogans, forms of greeting, and behaviors that are distinctive to the group;
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Members exhibit a peer instinct, trying to fit in with others in the group;
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Leaders are identified, often selected by means of competition;
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Leaders are recognized by all as individuals;
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Group direction flows downward from leaders at the top, through a hierarchy of nested groups.
These sorts of groups are often called tribes.
This organizational paradigm encourages loyalty to tribal leaders, and to others displaying tribal symbols.
Words from Others on this Topic
A tribe is not a race, or even a population… a tribe is a creed; it is a team that has agreed upon a set of symbols – including sacred values – that identify membership. A creed is a mechanism that glues together disparate small camps and bands of cohabitating humans into a singular identity and shared purpose. Those who know the codes have in their possession a social passport.
David R. Samson, 2023, from the book Our Tribal Future: How to Channel our Foundational Human Instincts Into a Force for Good
The “Tribe Drive” is an ancient adaptation that has been a prerequisite for survival for 99.9 percent of our species’ evolutionary history. It is a critical piece of cognitive machinery – honed by millions of years of evolution – that gave us the ability to navigate, both cooperatively and competitively, increasingly complex social landscapes.
David R. Samson, 2023, from the book Our Tribal Future: How to Channel our Foundational Human Instincts Into a Force for Good
Our sideways glances at classmates, coworkers, and neighbors are part of the peer instinct, as is our impulse to mesh with their patterns in our everyday inferences and actions.
Michael Morris, 2024, from the book Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together
To the best of our knowledge, only Sapiens can cooperate in very flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. This concrete capability – rather than an eternal soul or some unique kind of consciousness – explains our mastery of planet Earth.
Yuval Noah Harari, 2017, from the book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
So next time you hear a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans, for a moment at least see if you can understand his problem: He is heeding an ancient call that – however dangerous, obsolete, and maladaptive it may be today – once benefitted our species.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, 1992, from the book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are
Humans … cooperate based on kinship and friendship, but we also have more powerful forms of social glue that other species lack. From the early Stone Age, we started evolving specialized brain systems that facilitated sharing knowledge in groups. If someone in your foraging band figured out how to dislodge coconuts from a tree, you would learn by watching, and soon the whole group would share the skill. Then you could work in closer coordination with each other by following this shared script. In this way, groups living in different ecologies developed different pools of common knowledge: different cultures. Members of each group gained increased mutual understanding; even if the topic wasn’t coconuts, the common ground of shared coconut expertise could help in learning other survival-relevant skills. Group membership became increasingly manifest in behavior, making peers more similar, predictable, and sympathetic. Our forebears began to experience the elevating sense of “Us,” an expansion of identity beyond close kinship and direct friendship to a broader group. In these larger clans, they began to highlight their membership through distinctive styles of dress and self-adornment. At the same time, human brains kept evolving to share new kinds of knowledge, such as reputation in these broader groups, all of which further boosted our fitness as social animals. In time, interactions using new forms of knowledge, such as ritual, coalesced across clans to forge broad networks of sharing in mates, resources, and knowledge. Humans began feeling solidarity with these large communities (thousands of other people living in small groups nested within larger groups) held together by the glue of common cultural knowledge. This form of social organization is not a hive or a troop but a tribe.
Michael Morris, 2024, from the book Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together
Relevant Reference Models
- An element of Core Design Principles for the Efficacy of Groups
- An element of Developmental Levels
Preference for one’s group - SS
- An element of The Social Suite
- An element of The Social Suite
- An element of The Tribal Instincts
Next: 52. Written culture allow groups to expand