The Screw-You Spirit
Fallows, James
The Screw-You Spirit by James Fallows Sometimes the Monthly includes "tribalism" on its list of evil practices, along with expense-account conventions, end-of-the-year government spending...
...But the meaning behind the term has a bearing not only on America's major problems but also on the country's best future hopes...
...yes, the American vision has never been free from tribal bias...
...The more sensible conclusion, I think, is a version of the old "Socialism in One Country" theory about Russia...
...What makes America unusual, however, is the goal of a society that accepts individuals regardless of their "tribal" background...
...The idea behind "tribalism" is the instinctive sense that people are divided into "us" and "them" categories on the basis of traits they acquire by birth or upbringing—race, language, religion, clan, or caste membership...
...The Chinese have a very strong sense of Chinese-ness...
...help during World War II...
...but in its belief that tribal ties do and should matter strongly, it is more typical of the world than America is...
...Obviously the explanation can be taken only so far, since Christianity has coexisted with and even been used to justify slavery, apartheid, holy wars, and other intolerant practices...
...the politics of most Asian countries break down on tribal lines (sometimes these are racial and ethnic, as in Malaysia...
...In the background of every mainly Christian culture lurks the suspicion that tribal discriminations are basically wrong...
...To most Americans, this tribal outlook sounds terrible—and it clearly is harmful in its effects...
...sometimes regional, as in Korea...
...Our values will go farther if they advance other countries' nationalist feelings, not overwhelm them...
...The more important point, however, is that this kind of tribalism is the normal outlook in most of the world...
...Tribalism and group antipathy family/tribal ethic that allows people to mistreat anyone who's not part of the same clan or "barangay...
...One underlying reason is the Western/Christian concept that every human being is created by the same God and therefore all people have some bond...
...But why, when so many people take the tribal mentality for granted, does it seem to Americans not just inconvenient but "wrong...
...One reason why Japan is happier internally than, say, India is that its sense of "us" includes most people in the country...
...The political-science term "nationalism" sounds like a force that waxes and wanes—increasing when Third World countries are escaping from colonialism, decreasing at other times...
...Tribalism" doesn't sound as if it has anything to do with the average American's life...
...China, India, and the Philippines may remain tribal societies...
...That is, tribalism warps it only in its dealings with the outside world...
...What this means is recognizing the tribal roots of many of our domestic problems—not just black/white differences but also the screw-you spirit of interestgroup politics and big-city life...
...most Koreans scorn "impure" children of KoreanAmerican marriages...
...But we should remember that the values themselves will be much more popular if they're not mixed up with cultural or political subservience to the United States...
...Yes, the Founding Fathers were nearly all from English or other white Western European backgrounds...
...One crucial ingredient of the tribal mentality is that it's almost inconceivable for people to shift out of the category they're born into...
...sometimes based on clans, as in the Philippines and Indonesia...
...America can best help itself and promote its ideal by doing everything possible to make it work at home...
...If we think of the United States as a nontribal society in a tribal world, what does that tell us...
...The other crucial ingredient is a double standard of morality...
...yes, they excluded blacks from their social contract and killed off the Indians...
...No matter how popular American movies, music, and blue jeans may be around the world, no other society really wants to be dependent on the United States, England, for example, is culturally closer to America than Vietnam or Nicaragua is, and the English desperately needed U.S...
...This is a goal very few other societies share...
...From what I can tell after several years in Asia, most people strongly prefer to live with others of their own "tribe" and feel only a feeble bond to those who are born different from them...
...An appreciation of tribalism can also help our foreign policy...
...That is noble but completely unrealistic...
...The most admirable thing America stands for is its nontribal, open social ideal...
...The other explanation is a specifically American one: the idea that a society can be made up of people who did not have a preexisting racial or cultural tie to one another...
...but Chinese, Indians, and Filipinos who try to become Americans are, by definition, showing a desire to be judged as individuals, not as members of a category or tribe...
...People inside the tribe—"us"—deserve better treatment than the people on the outside— "them ." When tribalism is described this way, it's easy to think of illustrations of its deplorable effects—in Northern Ireland, in the Middle East, in The Godfather and Romeo and Juliet...
...The central tragedy of the Philippines, I think, is a "Godfather"-like James Follows, an editor of The Washington Monthly from 1972 to 1975, reports for The Atlantic from Yokohama, Japan...
...One possible conclusion, implied in much of what the Monthly has said on the subject, is that we should try to convert everyone else to believe as we do...
...It is not some peculiar, localized evil, like wife-burning in India, or just a form of ignorance that economic progress automatically corrects, like the drinking of impure water...
...The only effective conversion America can carry out is case by case, through immigration...
...Yet even the Brits after a while got tired of GIs who were over-paid, over-sexed, and (the main problem) "over here...
...Calling these things "tribalism" does not make them easier to solve, but it does help show why they're particularly offensive to America's unique ideal...
...Buddhism is also theoretically universal but in practice leads to less evangelism...
...America stands for certain universal values, like freedom and democracy, and we should never be afraid to recommend those values to others...
...There's an important point here that is concealed by an unfortunate name...
...In fact, nationalist feelings are another form of tribalism, and as such should be seen as a constant in our dealings with other countries...
...Asia is not a microcosm for the entire world...
...The word sounds like something strictly from the Third World, appropriate only for people who actually describe themselves as belonging to "tribes," like the Ibos in Nigeria or the Miskitos in Nicaragua...
...Still, Christianity and Islam are the two religions with the most powerful evangelical component, based on the idea that everyone regardless of race is a potential convert...
...This emotion is strongest in the most modern Asian countryJapan—but is powerful in all the others...
...There are other, less obvious illustrations...
...The Screw-You Spirit by James Fallows Sometimes the Monthly includes "tribalism" on its list of evil practices, along with expense-account conventions, end-of-the-year government spending sprees, and so on...
Vol. 21 • March 1989 • No. 2
