That creates cognitive dissonance in most people’s minds. They know, on an instinctive level, that the elites are doing wrong, but their tribal instincts require they support the elite agenda. This phenomenon can partially explain the rise in psychological pathologies we see arising in modern, especially urban society, considering the disconnection from natural reality inherent in urban life.

The replacement of the tribal meritocratic elite with the pathological elite (the “political class”) requires that the tribe support elite agendas that degrade social cohesion within the tribe. Even though tribesmen are at least subconsciously aware of that degradation, their hard-wired, instinctive impulse to support elite ideas and opinions directs them to support their own exploitation.

As long as this condition (pathological personalities as the tribal elite) persists, the productive class is doomed to be victimized by the political class.

Religions are persistent and pervasive throughout human civilizations. It always seemed strange that religions are so regional and cultural. Wherever you were born and in which culture you were born usually coincided with whatever religion you adopted. Why is that? Why wouldn’t people see other religions that appealed to their sense of spirituality more and disperse to other religions in an equilibrium like particles dispersing in water?

It makes more sense in the light of tribalism. The number one priority of an organism is to continue living. The second is to reproduce. Only one organism that we know of that is aware of its own mortality and that is the human. No human, from the tribal elite to the ostracized, wants to die, and fear of death is the strongest of all fears. All humans in the tribe want to believe they aren’t going to die and religion, along with the belief in an afterlife assuages that fear. It’s reassuring if others share your religious beliefs, and especially so if the tribal elite shares those beliefs. If the elites believe it, you should believe it!

Part of achieving acceptance and standing in the tribe is reassuring your tribesmen that they aren’t going to die, because our religion says we’ll live on in an afterlife. The elites want that, too. Once that’s established, it can be used to codify and enforce moral codes that enhance tribal harmony, unity and encourage a high-trust social hierarchy. Societies like this will tend to succeed. That success leads to selection for the genes that caused this behavior.

Tribal cohesion is essential for the tribe’s success. Though the property-based libertarian moral code is baked in to the human genome, people are still often subject to emotion overriding this instinct, creating conflict. Because people generally don’t grasp the philosophy behind moral codes, religions can be an effective way to enforce moral codes within a tribe. The tribe members won’t understand moral philosophy, bit they will understand that their all-powerful god will deny them the afterlife if they don’t behave. So, religions serve multiple purposes in helping the tribe to survive.

Pathological personalities, while they may try to manipulate the religious beliefs of their tribesmen for their own benefit, they will also be unlikely to abide by religious moral codes and be rejected by the tribe, resulting in their exile and probable death or by being directly killed by god-fearing tribesmen. Tribes in which pathological personalities were able to successfully manipulate the tribe through religious misdirection would have been less likely to survive.

This helps to explain the tribal nature of religion and why it’s so universal among humans. Like the tribal survival instinct itself, religion has become genetically selected for.

The story goes like this. Mankind evolved into what we are today over a couple of million years, depending on who you ask. Regardless of who you ask, it’s what I consider a long time. The vast majority of that time was spent in small tribes wandering around searching for food. Then, around 10 to 12 thousand years ago, the agricultural revolution began and changed the course of human history.

Genes are funny. They are what make you what you are, but they’re very complex and subject to errors, some of which can benefit the owner while most disable him to some degree. People don’t like to admit this, but it’s true; your psychology is just as much a product of genetics and your individual genes as your physiology is. Genetic errors may occur where your immune system is weak or you only have one arm or you have too many or too few chromosomes, or you’re a psychopath. Genetic errors are easier to see when they’re physiological, less so when they’re psychological. Psychological genetic errors may result in various deficiencies, including pathological personalities, like the aforementioned psychopathy, narcissism, megalomania and so forth. These types of pathological personalities can lead to antisocial behaviors. In the pre-agricultural revolution, hunter-gatherer days, the tribe was small and mobile and could easily deal with pathological personalities by ostracizing the individuals in question, where they were unlikely to survive, or by simply killing them.

In those days, ostracism was a death sentence. Humans are a social, but individualistic species. We each have different strengths and weaknesses and we tend to work together to minimize our weaknesses and maximize our strengths. This is the economic idea of the division of labor. If you’re good at catching fish and I’m good at collecting coconuts, we can trade with each other for fish or coconuts and both of us will have fish and both will have coconuts and by doing this, we increase our chances of survival. Those of us whose genes influenced us to engage in this type of trade tended to survive and reproduce, therefore transferring these genes to our offspring and those of us who didn’t do this tended not to survive or reproduce, and we have, therefore, become genetically hard-wired to engage in this behavior. So, anyone rejected by the tribe was unable to use the strengths of others to offset his own weaknesses and was unlikely to survive.

Being accepted by and having good standing in the tribe meant survival and passing on genes and ostracization from the tribe meant death and not passing on genes. Over time, the genes that encourage behaviors that promote good standing in the tribe have been selected for and we have become hard-wired to seek acceptance and standing in society.

Before the agricultural revolution, the tribes survived according to the strengths of their individual members. The strongest and most beneficial members of the tribe became the tribal elites. One of the best ways to secure acceptance and standing in the tribe was to support and assimilate to the ideas and beliefs of the tribal elite. Over time, genes that promoted that behavior became selected for and we became hard-wired to adopt the ideas and beliefs of the tribal elites in order to survive.

So, people sought acceptance by the tribe and its elites and people with pathological, anti-social personalities could be ostracized or killed. Good system, until…

The agricultural revolution changed all of that. While mankind was evolving all of these tribal instincts, he was also evolving a powerful intellect. It’s this intellect that has made mankind successful and is unique (in its magnitude) among the other species. We used this intellect to create tools, develop hunting strategies and learn medicine. The more we used intellect to survive, the more powerful it became due to the same genetic selection forces that led to our tribalism. Eventually, however, we learned that, instead of wandering around searching for food, we could grow it, either by farming or by animal husbandry, without moving. Even though this led to an overall decline in health, birth rates exploded and mortality rates declined. It’s this agricultural revolution that allowed for the accumulation of capital, the development of complex economies and, eventually, the industrial revolution and modern civilization as we know it.

Many, if not most, would argue that the agricultural revolution was the greatest development in the history of mankind because of the the results, above. I argue, however, that the agricultural revolution may have doomed mankind.

Mankind was a completely evolved and adapted species achieving success in nature. Life may have been more difficult, but who’s to say? We were fully adapted to that way of life. The problem is that now, men are tethered to a piece of land on which they’re farming or herding, tying the tribe to a certain geographic location. When there are genetic errors that lead to pathological personalities, they can no longer be walked away from. While the well-adjusted tribe members are growing their crops and tending their herds, the pathological personalities have the time to develop tools and strategies to dominate and exploit other tribesmen and steal the product of their labor. With these people expanding their power over the tribe, killing them becomes a much more difficult task. Ostracizing or killing the anti-social becomes impossible. As the pathological personalities gain wealth and power at the expense of their tribesmen, they emerge as the new tribal elite, supplanting the previous meritocracy.

Here’s the real problem; human beings are hard-wired to seek acceptance from the tribe by supporting the tribal elite and adopting their ideas and beliefs. After the agricultural revolution, the tribal elite were no longer the meritorious, but the pathological. Once that paradigm shifted, the pathological created governments and propaganda to prey on the tribal instincts of their victims, establishing a new political class capable of holding mankind hostage forever. It’s a distinct possibility that the political class could eventually completely enslave mankind and/or destroy civilization. Mankind may have an evolutionary flaw which will will eventually destroy us; namely, an intellect strong enough to discover agriculture and tribalism too strong to overcome.

How does this relate to or explain libertarians? Libertarians, obviously, have no tribe to follow, so where do they get their ideas and beliefs? Just like the tribalists, meaning people whose tribalism is the primary guide to their beliefs and ideas, libertarianism is a symptom of a certain genetic condition. Libertarians have a weak tribal survival instinct, which frees them from the tribalist instinct to adopt the ideas of the tribal elite and deviate from the cultural norms of the tribe. Libertarians may not even be aware of the tribalist impulse directing the behavior of virtually all others. But it isn’t just a weak tribalist instinct that makes a libertarian. Libertarians also need other personality traits, like reasonability and curiosity, which are, like anything else, determined by genetic expression. Likewise, they need certain highly-ranked values, like morality and/or social utility and the desire for knowledge. People with these characteristics are few and far between. Maybe only one t two percent of the population falls into this category and not all of them have yet discovered (and may never discover) libertarianism. So, libertarians will never have the numbers to challenge the political class and they’ll try to use logic to sway others to their point of view, unsuccessfully. They won’t understand that a libertarian political order can’t be manufactured. It can only arise temporarily from cultural circumstance. A libertarian political order doesn’t serve the interests of the political class and the small percentage of libertarians lack the numbers and personality traits to replace the political class as the tribal elite and then redirect the tribalism of the masses toward a free society.

The best libertarians can hope for is to find and identify each other, reach those who have the traits but haven’t found libertarianism yet, and help each other build the wealth and networks necessary to help them blend in with or insulate themselves from the political class. As long as we don’t draw the ire of the political class, we may be able to evade their radar.

The purpose of a manager should be to coordinate, facilitate and regulate the workforce. Coordinate by getting the workers where they need to be, when they need to be there, understanding what they need to do. Facilitate by giving them the tools, the training and the support they need to do the work. Regulate by making sure everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done, what each individual’s role is and making sure everyone understands this. A manager should track the progress of projects, make adjustments when needed and report important changes and other information up the chain of command.

A manager should allow the greatest amount of worker autonomy as is possible. Allow them to develop their own methods. This gives his company the advantage of distributed knowledge and turns the workforce into a “Best Practices” laboratory. The manager should align worker incentives with the incentives of the company. If the company is being paid piece-rate, the workers should be paid piece-rate. If the company is being paid hourly, the worker should be paid hourly.

Avoid, at all costs, micromanagement. Micromanagement is inefficient, demoralizes and disempowers the workers who drive production and the health of the company; it increases the management load, thereby increasing the need for more layers of management which decrease the profitability of the company and rob the company of the “Best Practices” laboratory.

Management is non-productive. It should be kept to a minimum. Worker incentives should encourage self-management and highlight those who can’t self-manage, so that they can be replaced by those who can.

Expenses shouldn’t be reimbursed for employees or contractors. The firm should pay enough up-front to compensate for reasonable expenses and that will incentivize the workers to make economic decisions about expenses which can allow them to profit from wise economic decisions.

However, people are people. They’re tribalists. They will tend to make decisions the way tribalists do, by picking up on subtle social queues and implementing processes and practices that are accepted by the business community, whether or not they are optimal, or if they even make sense. This is the struggle for the very small percentage of people who have a high intellect to tribal survival instinct ratio, trying to figure out ways to convince the tribal to make decisions logically.

I’ve come to believe that a libertarian political order isn’t possible. Libertarianism is the way that the productive class deals with each other, naturally. The libertarian social order already exists and functions at a high level. The political order, however, will always be dominated by pathological personalities who will be able to manipulate the general public’s genetic tribalism for their own gain.

Those of us who call ourselves libertarians have certain genetic characteristics like a weak tribal survival instinct, logicality, curiosity and a high value for knowledge. If people don’t have those characteristics, they won’t be able to recognize libertarianism even though it’s clearly correct and they live their own lives by it. They will believe what they perceive the tribal elite want them to believe and they can’t do anything else. It’s literally in their DNA to do so.

The question for me has become whether or not I should be a knowing victim of the political class in a dying empire, or should I get whatever I can from the government and help other libertarians do the same? Logically assess the situation at hand and figure out how to profit from it? The real difference between us and the normies is that we can see and, therefore, try to avoid our own political victimization. So should we do it?

I haven’t made up my mind., however, for the reasons described above, I don’t think anything can be done about tribally motivated social unrest and the political scams. As I’ve said before, the scams are how the political class transfers power and wealth from the productive class and that’s as permanent as modern settlements. You’re either going to get on board with the scams or be a victim of them.

That’s something we’re all going to have to figure out according to our own moral codes.

The bad news is that libertarianism can only be understood and accepted by certain people who happen to have certain characteristics, like weak tribalist instincts and talents like curiosity, reasonability, and intellect. If you don’t have those characteristics, you aren’t going to get it and that includes the vast majority of people. Additionally, since virtually everyone lives according to libertarian principle without understanding it, the few who don’t live by it have a big advantage. If I walk into a room of normal, peaceful, cooperative people who aren’t going to use violence, for the most part, but I don’t have any problem using violence, can you guess who’s going to get their way? Once I get my way with violence, I become the de facto tribal elite and, over time, I will be accepted and followed by the normies. After that, I can pretty much do whatever I want to them with their support. Libertarianism is a part of the human genome, but so is a certain amount of psychopathy. In the hunter/gatherer times, that was manageable because tribe members could simply leave the tribe or neutralize the offenders if the psychopathy became malignant. With the advent of permanent civilization, that safeguard faded.

This seems to be an unfixable problem with humanity. It may be that our species was never meant for permanent civilization, but our intellect and drive for survival uncovered agriculture, led to permanent civilization and now we’re dealing with the friction that’s caused between our current conditions and the conditions we evolved in. I think it’s unlikely to destroy us, because successful species, like mankind, tend to self-regulate (the pendulum swings), but it seems likely that humanity will continue to be dominated by the worst of us, forever.

What to do?

I’ll warn you now that I have no good solutions. I’m no political or social strategist. However, I do know a few things. One, after accepting libertarianism, most don’t realize that libertarian principle isn’t binding. You can accept and advocate for principle and still do things that are non-libertarian, or even anti-libertarian. I can prove it. Even though I’m a staunch advocate for libertarianism, I can walk over to my neighbor’s house and set it on fire. If I decided to do that right now, no one could stop me. All that libertarian principle tells me is that it’s morally wrong to do so and that behavior like that will have negative consequences for society in general. That’s it. Libertarianism is a pretty narrow philosophy. It’s almost impossible to live strictly according to principle. In real life, no compromises must be made, but life’s going to get really tough if compromises aren’t made. It’s best to live according to principle, however, we need to realize that we’re going to do things that aren’t particularly libertarian, whether we want to or not.

The point of saying that is to raise the question of whether or not we should get on board with whatever scams the political class is running and try to benefit from their violence. Basically, you’re going to be a victim or a beneficiary. I don’t think violence against the political class is a good answer, because they’re the best at violence. That’s why they’re at the top. And, even if violence could overthrow them, it would, most likely, only establish a different, violent political class. It might be a less bad political class for a while, but violence now is an awful big risk to take for a “maybe better political class” later. Controversially, participating in the scams isn’t against libertarianism, since it doesn’t actually involve violating property. Taxation isn’t theft. It really isn’t. The political class demands money and we give it to them. Under most circumstances, they don’t actually steal it. If they do, then yes, it’s theft, but that’s rare. The decision to pay taxes is like any other decision; it’s making a tradeoff to avoid something or to gain something. What’s more, being the recipient of tax money definitely isn’t objectively immoral. It doesn’t violate property when it’s collected and it certainly doesn’t violate property when it’s distributed. So, receiving tax money isn’t objectively immoral. “…but taxation is a threat and threats are aggression!” Well, you can define aggression however you want, but the Non Aggression Principle is really about property and consent. Threats don’t violate property. What about The Fed? The Fed literally takes the value of my money from me without asking. The question, however, is whether or not I’ve consented to this taking. The answer is yes. I have consented. I know that they’re going to take the value from me, yet, I willingly participate in the Dollar monetary system. What people don’t like about that is that it’s unfair. The political class has an enormous advantage over the rest of us and they tilt the tables in their favor. People don’t like the fact that they’re on the weak side and so they want to call it immoral, when, in fact, it isn’t (at least it’s not objectively immoral. Subjective morality varies.). So, receiving money printed by the Fed isn’t objectively immoral. As odd as it seems, as far as libertarianism goes, there are no moral concerns about getting involved in political scams, as long as it doesn’t require that the libertarian actually violates others’ property.

Political scams are absolutely inevitable and I’m not advocating involvement in them. I’m just trying to assess the situation realistically. If a libertarian world isn’t an option, then the question is, again, are we going to be a victims or beneficiaries? That’s something people have to decide for themselves. If your subjective morality rejects involvement in such things, then good for you. That’s probably a virtue. However, you will be a victim. Maybe, if we were to focus our energies on political scams, we could work ourselves into the elite class and, finally, have some tribal influence with the normies while gaining wealth and insulating ourselves from the otherwise inevitable victimhood. We aren’t going to be violent. It’s not in our nature, but we might be able to piggyback on the violence of the political class in order to gain the tribal sway that they maintain.

Should it be a religion?

As I mentioned, only certain people, with certain characteristics, can understand and accept libertarianism. There’s a small industry built up around libertarian awareness and persuasion. There are people out there who can be persuaded, but the number is small. That’s why, even though we win all the arguments, we aren’t a bigger constituency. The mind mine that these mind miners are mining is a lot smaller than I think they hope it is. It’s more about entertaining current libertarians than it is discovering new ones. We might be better served to just hand out a generic, libertarian essay and those who can grasp it will and those who can’t won’t and we won’t have wasted our time evangelizing to NPCs. As I pointed out in this post, normies who can’t grasp moral principles or ideas can be persuaded to follow them, through a religion. It might be worth developing a religion, like the elites did with the Covid-19 scam, or working libertarian ideas into current religions by creating a story that manipulates tribalism, provokes fear and offers security and is simple enough for average people to understand. How that might work, I have no idea, but it is a proven technique. It’s been done before to great effect, however, new religions often end up as cults. Maybe being a cult is a process that religions have to go through. Regardless, it can be done and there are people who will have a knack for it.

Are we an ethnicity? Should we act like one?

I’ve heard, anecdotally, that jews tend to be a very exclusive ethnic community who discourage marriage outside of the ethnicity and who value any jew over any non-jew. I don’t know if that’s true, but the idea is interesting. Maybe libertarians should be this way. If you are one of the few who can “get it”, then you can join the group, or maybe, more specifically, you are one of the group and we can focus on our own well-being. Some are already doing this, setting up groups of libertarians to help each other progress. That’s great, but maybe we need to be equally zealous in excluding non-libertarians from participating. I’m not suggesting only doing business with or helping/supporting libertarians, but excluding non-libertarians from our “ethnic” support groups. Ultimately, there is the violent, dominant political class, the clueless, tribalistic normies who support them and are exploited by them and us, the libertarians. Unlike the normies, we don’t have to be exploited by the political class, because we can see what the game is. The political class treats the rest of us like cattle, because that’s what we are and that’s what we’ll always be…unless you’re a libertarian and you realize that there are ways to get outside the fence that keeps the rest of the cattle in. So, if we can stick together, to the exclusion of others, maybe we can help each other avoid exploitation, or even benefit from the exploitation.

The problem with that idea is that we are, necessarily, weakly tribal. Our cohesion will be and has proven to be, tenuous, at best. I guarantee that response to this post, if there is any, will be all over the place and very contentious, maybe even nasty. I’m not sure we’re even capable of a strong ethnic affiliation. Maybe we don’t need to be organized. Maybe we should go our own ways, individually, with the goal of avoiding exploitation, teaming up when it’s beneficial.

This post has been prompted by what may be a realization that human society can never be broadly libertarian. Humans aren’t unlike any other animal in the sense that our social structures are genetically dictated and we can’t change that. The New Socialist Man can never be created, nor can the New Libertarian Man, for the same reasons. The difference is that, unlike socialism, libertarianism is in our DNA, but so is the tribalism that makes us beholden to the political class, whose personalities are pathological. The political class will always use violence against the naturally libertarian productive class, they’ll get their way and gain the support of those they’ve exploited through the tribal response. If this is true, and I’ve come to believe it is, then we need to figure out how to deal with it. We need to stop spending our time, talent and treasure on things that may be useless, like political reform and proselytizing and focus on that which will allow us to thrive – whatever that may be.

The reason understanding anything is important is because understanding influences quality of life. Other people are probably the most important factor in most people’s lives that influence quality of life, positively or negatively, so it’s important to understand ourselves and each other as well as possible in order to increase our quality of life as much as possible. Setting the right expectations for virtually anything heavily influences quality of life and you can’t set expectations correctly if you don’t understand the subject those expectations are based on. If you don’t understand that dogs can’t fly, you will be constantly frustrated and disappointed when teaching your dog to fly doesn’t result in a flying dog. That diminishes your quality of life to some extent, and, generally, the more your expectations aren’t met, the more miserable you’ll be. Understanding, in order to set appropriate expectations, is fundamental to quality of life. People are, arguably, the most important subject to understand.

Human evolution can be traced back as far as you want, but our genus, Homo, developed around two million years ago, give or take. Since then, various human species have come and gone, and, as of this writing, Homo Sapiens is the only human species remaining. That species, however, has been successful. That evolutionary success has come from the programming of our genes on both the species-wide level and the individual level.

Humans are social, individualistic animals. Even though we tend to live together in groups, each of us seeks to fulfill our own individual ends to whatever extent we can secure the means to do so, generally through cooperation and the division of labor. We’re more like lions and wolves, social, but individualistic, and less like natural social collectivists like bees or ants who are all of one mind to advance the hive or colony. Through the course of our evolution we have tended to group together in small tribes as is common for many species throughout the animal kingdom; herds of cattle, packs of wolves, flocks of birds, schools of fish, or prides of lions, for example. The reason for this is simple; survival is easier in greater numbers. We’re better able to defend ourselves and to provide for ourselves if we have others to help us. If a lone individual fails in a hunt, gets injured or wanders into a region barren of food, he will much more likely die than if he has a group of friends whose successes can offset his losses and vice versa. One big difference between human social groups and other animals is the wide division of labor.

The Division of Labor is an economic term that labels the tendency for individuals to specialize in one or more means of production. For example, some people become plumbers, electricians, teachers, engineers, doctors, etc. and that is how they create value in the human social arrangement. The division of labor allows individuals to survive without being good at everything. Instead of providing everything for themselves, individuals can provide what they’re best at and trade with others for the things they otherwise need. The division of labor is an innate characteristic of the human social structure, genetically ingrained in each of us through the natural selection process of evolution.

The Tribal Survival Instinct

One of the keys to understand is that this type of social arrangement requires social cohesion. The way that this social cohesion most likely developed was through the genetic encoding of tribalism. On December 4^th, 2021, Jeff Leskovar’s essay, The Psychology of Human Action was published on the libertarian website, lewrockwell.com. In his essay, Leskovar makes the argument that humans depended on their tribes for survival. Those who were best at integrating into the tribe were those who tended to survive. Those who tended to survive, also tended to pass on their genes. Through that natural selection, humans became genetically coded to seek inclusion in the tribe in order to survive. In other words, humans developed an instinct to survive by gaining the approval and acceptance of the tribe. The Tribal Survival Instinct is one of two concepts required to understand others and why they do the things they do.

Leskovar argues that humans gain approval and acceptance by the tribe by adopting the tribe’s prevailing cultural norms and practices and by serving and supporting the tribal elite, often by adopting the beliefs and opinions of those elites while shunning those who refused to do so. This is a self-reinforcing mechanism; those who support the elites and shun those who don’t are more likely to survive and procreate and those do not support the elites and are shunned are less likely to survive and procreate.

This idea, the “Leskovar Insight”, has tremendous explanatory power applied to today’s society. It’s arguable that human evolution has largely been halted by the agricultural revolution, facilitating permanent settlements and the concentration of resources allowing virtually all people to live long enough to procreate. However, the agricultural revolution is a relatively recent development (10,000 years ago vs the two million years of humanity’s evolution) and if indeed it’s true that humans are no longer evolving, or evolving much more slowly, then we are the same creatures as we ever were, operating under the same instincts. We all have a genetically hard-coded instinct to be accepted by the tribe and looked favorably upon by the tribal elite. That is why we see groups of people who, if they hold Belief A, they probably also hold Belief B, even though the two beliefs are otherwise unrelated and, more often than not, nonsensical, or, at least, illogical.

Holding illogical beliefs could be attributed to a lack of intelligence or a belligerent ignorance, however, highly intelligent people often fall victim to these beliefs. It isn’t because they’re stupid, it’s because they have a strong tribal survival instinct wired into them at the genetic level.

All human characteristics are on a curve. Toward the extremes, there are fewer people and in the middle, there are more people. This is also true for the tribal survival instinct, though skewed towards more people having a stronger instinct than a weaker one. Some people have an instinct so strong that they can’t overcome it. Some may have a very weak instinct. People with a strong instinct, no matter how smart they are, will be more likely to adopt the beliefs and opinions of whoever they see as their tribe and that tribe’s elites. But this only applies to subjects that have a cultural component. Politics, religion, tradition, regional affiliation, team sports, etc. will be subject to tribalism, where subjects like physics, engineering, construction, individual sports, etc., will not be. We can see it in smart people who hold dubious ideas and beliefs on anything cultural, unable to reason out of them, but who are able to reason through other complex ideas without cultural components. Those with weak tribal survival instincts will be better at reasoning through ideas with cultural components.

This is not a critique of tribalism. Tribalism is a fact of our genetics and has been a strong factor in our ability to survive and thrive over the eons. In order to understand human nature, it’s necessary to understand the tribal survival instinct and to recognize that many people have the instinct so strongly that they can’t overcome it. They may read this explanation and recognize the instinct in others, but they’ll never see it in themselves. The smarter they are, the better they’ll be able to deny, justify and excuse their own tribalism, but they will never be able to reason their way around it because the instinct is a function of their genetic code. Good or bad, nothing can be done about it.

Tribalism is, at least, implicitly known by most people and exploited constantly by religious, business and political interests and often, even in interpersonal relationships, even when the exploiter isn’t explicitly aware of the tribalist phenomenon. It’s important to understand that the tribal survival instinct is a leash around people’s necks that allows them to be pulled this way and that way and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Expecting people who have a strong tribal survival instinct to have logical beliefs in subjects with a cultural component will inevitably lead to disappointment. That expectation is unrealistic and leads to frustration where there need be none and a tendency toward incivility to people for simply being human; a lose/lose situation that lowers everyone’s quality of life.

Talent Theory

The tribal survival instinct is genetic, but so is every human characteristic. The tribal survival instinct is variable among individuals; some have the instinct more or less than others, and the same is true for all other human characteristics.

The division of labor was previously mentioned and alluded to the phenomenon of human diversity of talent. Talent, for the purposes of this guide, is defined as the degree to which an individual has a genetically determined capability. Like the tribal survival instinct, talents are on a curve. Some people have more or less of any given talent compared to other people. This concept is widely known and accepted. What isn’t widely known or accepted is the range of talents. Some talents are recognized by everyone, like athleticism or musicality. Others aren’t, like business, communication, strategy, reason, mechanics, discipline, persuasion and more. All of these talents are genetic. You either have them to an appreciable extent, or you don’t. Talents can be improved upon over the baseline genetic level through practice, but not to a great extent. For example, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest level of talent, 10 being the highest, one may have a baseline genetic talent level of 5 in Talent X. With practice, the capability Talent X represents may be may be increased to a 6 or 6.5, but, regardless of the amount of practice, it will never be a 7, due to genetic limitations.

Many argue that Stephan Curry, point guard for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, is the greatest shooter in professional basketball history. If you were to ask him how to become rich and famous, he may tell you, “It’s easy! Just throw the ball through the hoop!”. To him, it is easy. To him, it may seem so natural that his talent isn’t obvious to him. But no matter how well you understand the mechanics and physics of throwing the ball through the hoop and no matter how much work you put into learning to throw the ball through the hoop, you will not be able to do it to a level that even comes close to Curry’s. Curry has a talent at an extremely high level. You may also have that talent to some extent and you may be able to work your capability up to a higher level, but, because of your genetic limitations, you will not accomplish what Curry’s accomplished.

That’s obvious, and no one would encourage people, en masse, to spend their time and money pursuing a professional basketball career because they recognize athleticism as a talent. But it’s common to see people with a talent for business encouraging people, en masse, to pursue business, because they don’t realize that success in business, like success in basketball, requires talent. Like Stephan Curry, their talent is such a natural part of who they are, that they don’t even recognize it in themselves. How do you become rich? Just create a successful business! Well, if you don’t have business talent at a sufficient level, no amount of work or understanding will make you successful. “You can do anything you put your mind to”, is false.

That is not a criticism toward people who encourage others or want to help others. Even people with the requisite talents need help and encouragement. The point is to understand people. People are only capable of what their genes allow. Expecting people (including yourself) to be capable of what their genes do not allow is, inevitably, disappointing. That expectation is unrealistic and leads to frustration where there need be none and a tendency toward incivility to people for simply being who they are; a lose/lose situation that lowers everyone’s quality of life.

Less relevant to the subject at hand, but worth mentioning; if you have significant talents, you will probably discover them. You will find yourself drawn to them over time. The more you’re exposed to in life, the quicker you will find them. However, the older you are when you discover those talents, the riskier it will be to pursue them. Interest in a subject doesn’t always indicate talent; if you’re interested in engineering and you decide to find out if you have engineering talent at age 40, you risk much more going to engineering school than if you had explored that interest at age 10. It’s important for people to discover and develop their talents as early as possible.

The tribal survival instinct and talent theory explain the basis for why people are the way they are and allow us to set our expectations of ourselves and others better, therefore, at least theoretically, achieving a better quality of life.

There are other considerations, however.

Simple Mistakes

Logical, honest, conscientious people of good faith make mistakes. Occasionally, even the best people have a lapse in judgment or set sub optimal expectations. Any one you see at any time doing something stupid could be a great person (like you) making a mistake. If we all extended each other a basic level of forgiveness to account for simple mistakes, we’d all be better off. That’s not likely to happen, but accepting the fact that people make mistakes and allowing for it isn’t something you do for them, it’s something you do for yourself. It’s a failure to set expectations correctly if you expect that people won’t make mistakes and setting expectations incorrectly lowers your quality of life.

Phase of Discovery

No one is born wise and developed. While most people are not seeking truth, wisdom or understanding, some are. If you look out into a crowd, you couldn’t tell one from the other. Take into consideration that you didn’t become the wise and knowledgeable person you are today overnight and that there may be people who are genuinely seeking truth, wisdom and understanding who haven’t gotten to the point that you have because they’re young or slower to develop. They may not have the talent for reasoning that you do and have a harder time figuring things out than you. Maybe they think they’ve found truth, but, in fact, are simply at a waypoint on their journey. They will one day discover truth and become wiser, but they will have many false positives along the way. Allowing for the fact that some people will seek virtue but take a long time to develop it will allow you to better set your expectations. An additional key to setting expectations is to identify those who are seeking virtue and those who aren’t.

Those seeking truth may be worth guiding or engaging with and those who aren’t will not be open to engagement or guidance. Don’t try to teach dogs to fly. If people are tribal enough, they may not be able to seek virtue. They will see the only virtue as tribalism and that’s determined by their genetics. If they lack the requisite talent level in curiosity, reasoning, discipline or if virtue ranks low on their value scale, which is determined by their personality, which is determined by their genetics, then they may not be able to seek virtue. Set expectations accordingly.

Environment Matters

Genes may express differently in different environments. The nature of the environment may determine how certain genetic predispositions like cancer, depression, violent behavior, degenerative disease, etc., appear or are suppressed. Poor diet may cause one person’s genes to express in a way that causes cancer, while another person with the same diet may not. Someone raised in an abusive household may develop depression while his sibling, raised alongside him, may not.

The Intent of This Guide

None of the above is intended to excuse anyone’s behavior for any reason. It isn’t implying that anyone should have sympathy for anyone else. It’s purpose is only help us to understand others and, hopefully, increase our quality of life by giving us a basis on which to set better expectations for the behavior of others. Some people are benevolent, maleficent, a little of both or neutral. This guide makes no recommendation on how to deal with those people, but only on how to understand them and set appropriate expectations. The primary source of our displeasure in life is poorly set expectations.

Understanding the concepts described herein allow the reader, with practice, to remove the emotions of disappointment and frustration from their exposure to human behavior by setting realistic expectations and to react strategically and purposefully to the actions of others. Ideally, we would find ways to benefit from the results of other’s illogical behaviors, where previously we had been impeded. For example, people become much more interesting when expressing illogical ideas and beliefs, because of the insight that can be gained into their psychology. That insight can be used to filter those who can be persuaded by logic and those who can’t. It can also be used to understand techniques that may be employed to persuade those with a strong tribal survival instinct. Instead of using reason only such as, “buy my goods and services because they’re a good value”, try “buy my goods and services because we are members of the same tribe (of course, with subtlety) and they’re a good value”. It can also simply be fascinating, from a psychological perspective, to hear people express their ideas and opinions when viewed from this perspective without feeling the need for rebuttal.

When people do annoying things, those things no longer need to be annoying because it’s clear why they’re doing them. A few examples:

– People driving badly. Some lack the talents necessary, some don’t and will become better over time.

– People who block traffic in the grocery store. They lack self-awareness (a talent) or their genes dictate a personality where other’s inconvenience is not important. Maybe they’re going to learn not to do it, but haven’t yet. Maybe they’re just making an uncharacteristic mistake.

– People who parrot nonsensical political, religious or cultural ideas or beliefs in accordance with their tribal survival instinct. It makes no sense to look down on them.

– People who can’t seem to do any of the things you find easy, or vice versa, despite your significant talent as a teacher, because they lack talent.

– People who have talent in intellect and curiosity and have wide and varied interests can understand why no one else cares about those interests.

– We can appreciate our talents and excuse our weaknesses or tribalism, if desired. Bob might be a helpful and generous friend, a great piano player, but also a hardcore tribalist. Maybe excuse the tribalism.

These ideas are intended to be applied to normal people. They may need to be altered to apply to those with psychological maladies.

This guide will probably benefit only a small group of particularly clueless people. Hopefully you got something out of it. If not, congratulations on being a normal person.

One of the implications of Talent Theory and Tribalism is that most people will never be able to achieve any level of good health. Because health depends on, more than anything, diet, and diet has a strong cultural component to it and that cultural component is largely influenced by corrupt institutions, both in the private and public sectors. Those with a strong tribal survival instinct will succumb to that cultural pressure, eat badly, and, therefore, be unhealthy. The results of a bad diet will be, in the short-term, suboptimal biological performance like obesity, disease, auto-immune problems, metabolic issues and so-on. In the long term, it will lead to degenerative disease and general physical decline.

That, by itself, means the majority of people will never be healthy, but that’s not the end of it. When you factor in Talent Theory, the number of people capable of health is even lower. Even those who have a weak tribal survival instinct that allows them to resist the cultural pressures influencing diet, they have to have certain talents gifted to them by their genetics to achieve health. One needs curiosity to want to know the right way to eat. One needs reasoning to be able to separate fact from fiction when their curiosity encounters it. One needs the discipline to implement the facts that their reasoning has sifted out. Additionally, health has to be a high priority value in the first place.

That means that only a small percentage of people will ever be truly healthy, and I didn’t mention anything about exercise which is also important.

On a personal level, my health is probably my top priority. If you are one of the people who is capable of good health, be happy for it and don’t blame people for the outcomes they experience because of their inability to achieve what you’ve achieved. You have gifts that they don’t have and that isn’t their fault. It may be worth sharing your understanding with them, because they may have the gifts you have, but haven’t learned what you’ve learned, however, chances are that you won’t be able to help them and you should be prepared for that. It’s like seeing someone you care about drowning, so you throw them a float, but they don’t know what a float is and so they don’t grab it. From your perspective, the float’s right there and all they have to do is grab it, but they don’t and you have to watch them drown.

That’s what’s so disturbing to me about this particular issue.

I’ve also made the argument in Talent Theory, that human capability, or what I’ve been calling “talent”, is limited to what is coded into our genetics. If these assertions are true, then any human being will only ever be able to achieve those things which are not inhibited by the lack of talent and the level of tribal survival instinct. This is important to understand because it helps us to better understand each other and to set our expectations of other’s behavior. I feel compelled to acknowledge that this may apply only to certain people, who have the talents required to understand it and a sufficiently low level of tribal survival instinct, since these ideas run counter to the popular idea of “you can do whatever you set your mind to!”. No, you can’t.

Tribalism and Talent Theory are intimately linked with real outcomes in the real world, both good and bad. In politics, where talented people with strong tribal survival instincts can destroy a society, to entrepreneurship, where talented people with weak tribal survival instincts can discover new ways to advance society. For example, in business, talented people who have a strong tribal survival instinct may be less competitive than equally talented people with a weak tribal survival instinct because they will be compelled to adopt widely-accepted (implying a cultural component) business practices, even though those practices are suboptimal. Those with a weak tribal survival instinct will be better able to explore potentially superior practices.

Tangentially, it’s interesting to think about the implication that those of us who have a strong ability to reason and a low level of tribal survival instinct are the ones who are able to facilitate human civilization the best, being able to employ less inhibited reasoning, therefore discovering truth more easily, while also being the most likely, in a state of nature, to die because they don’t have a strong enough tribal survival instinct. It’s surprising people like that would have survived at all. Maybe their ability to reason pointed out that they need to be in good standing with the tribe and they were able to do so through alternative means, or maybe the tribe recognized their value in uncovering truth and that value kept them in good standing.