EDIT: I really shouldn't say tribalism is not useful. We wouldn't be so tribal if it didn't have its benefits (evolutionarily speaking). But now that we live in a global world it is increasingly becoming a net negative.
EDIT: I really shouldn't say tribalism is not useful. We wouldn't be so tribal if it didn't have its benefits (evolutionarily speaking). But now that we live in a global world it is increasingly becoming a net negative.
Tribalism has brought us, wars, petty disputes, populist politicians and bigotry.
I know which one I would choose in a heartbeat.
I would say most people all over the world maintain a weak form of particularist identity and a weak notion of global identity and simply don't think about the contradictions.
Tribalism, by my definition at least, comes when the foreigner (whether ethnically or ideologically) is seen as not just an outsider but also as a competitor or a threat. In extreme situations perhaps they are, but in a civil society properly governed by the rule of law, this kind of tribalism is just poison for a community.
I’d go further and say that because it’s an evolved inclination, we’re far less immune to it than we’d like to think - that tribalism and globalization form a false dichotomy; you can have both. I.e. tribalism within a framework of international cooperation or a global empire as the will of a tribe (or alliance of a few tribes).
The post-war global order is a very new thing, depends on a delicate power balance enforced by continual threat of war - buy in or die is hardly what you probably want to endorse when you champion globalization, but there’s a degree of that at work since the end of WWII. Growing up a Roman citizen makes you kinda partial to the global benefits of empire. If you disagree with Rome, you realize it’s not all peaches and cream.
What’s different in the modern world we live in is more the scale of the tribes than a lack of tribes. But sitting in Rome, you think all the world is Rome.
Degrees matter here. Most of the world's population live in countries where less than 1% of the people are immigrants. That's not very global.
Western Europe and countries founded by colonists from Western Europe (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) are following a different pattern than most of the world.