{"id":593796,"date":"2026-04-08T17:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T17:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/593796\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T17:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T17:04:09","slug":"going-post-tribal-is-lonely-but-liberating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/593796\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Post-Tribal Is Lonely but Liberating"},"content":{"rendered":"

I waited with anticipation for the release of Ibram X. Kendi\u2019s latest book, Chain of Ideas<\/a>: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age. As a prominent voice in anti-racist scholarship whose ideas have shaped important conversations, Kendi has had a significant influence on popular beliefs about racial inequality.<\/p>\n

In the weeks since its March release, I watched several of his interviews<\/a> and<\/a> public conversations<\/a>. What stood out was that his discussions were exclusively with sympathetic voices\u2014aligned scholars, moderators, and supporters. The tone was collaborative and message-focused rather than exploratory on one of our most complex and divisive social issues.<\/p>\n

Having spent years in social justice work and later in the academy, I understand the deep impulse to advance a moral message. Yet I\u2019ve come to embrace a different approach: a \u201cpost-tribal\u201d mindset. As I suggested in an earlier post<\/a>, the first step is introspection\u2014seeing our political opponents as fellow humans and perhaps finding common ground. That sounds simple, but it\u2019s surprisingly difficult.<\/p>\n

Political psychology shows we are all wired<\/a> for<\/a> tribalism<\/a>. People on the left and right don\u2019t merely disagree on ideas\u2014we often experience emotions, morality<\/a>, and belonging in fundamentally different ways. For many of us, politics<\/a> isn\u2019t primarily about discovering the best policies. It\u2019s about signaling belonging. There\u2019s deep satisfaction in \u201cknowing\u201d that one\u2019s side is not only correct but morally superior. Researchers<\/a> describe dopamine<\/a> rewards from in-group validation, moral certainty, and the imagined approval of others for standing on \u201cthe right side of history.\u201d That pull is powerful, and many people are reluctant to let it go.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not claiming I\u2019ve fully escaped tribalism myself. It remains more of a lodestar than a destination. Yet striving for a more post-tribal mindset carries real costs. You forfeit those dopamine hits and the warm glow of moral righteousness. There\u2019s also a quieter price: Loneliness.<\/p>\n

When you stop reflexively signaling loyalty to one political team, you lose the validation and camaraderie that come with it\u2014those satisfying \u201cYes! We\u2019re the ones standing up for what\u2019s right!\u201d moments. Even harder, people on both sides begin viewing you with suspicion. If your views don\u2019t fit neatly into either tribe\u2019s script, you can seem unpredictable, odd, or even untrustworthy. Over time, many independent thinkers experience a subtle but persistent sense of social isolation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite these costs, the rewards are profound. It feels genuinely liberating and deepens your wisdom<\/a> in meaningful ways. Flashy debates lose their appeal; honest conversations become far more compelling. You stop instinctively dismissing thinkers because they\u2019re on the \u201cother side.\u201d The drive to \u201cwin\u201d arguments fades, replaced by openness<\/a> to the possibility that you might be wrong. Tribal righteousness gradually yields to epistemic humility. Best of all, you develop a real thirst for learning from perspectives that differ from\u2014and sometimes unsettle\u2014your own. <\/p>\n

The less we depend on kudos from tribal righteousness, the less incentive we have to demonize intellectual adversaries. Ideally, humility supplants hubris, and we begin to crave constructive disagreement.<\/p>\n

Of course, to anyone deeply invested in their team\u2019s moral superiority, this can sound like an abdication of principles. You can almost hear the Godwin\u2019s Law<\/a> retort: \u201cSo you\u2019re saying we should have been \u2018post-tribal\u2019 in Weimar Germany and not opposed the Nazis?\u201d<\/p>\n

But post-tribalism is not a political stance\u2014it\u2019s an intellectual aspiration. The social theorist Max Weber clarified this distinction in his famous ‘Vocation’ lectures<\/a>: the realms of politics and scholarship demand different ethical orientations. While politics entails the ethics of ‘conviction’ and ‘responsibility’ for one\u2019s actions, the intellectual\u2019s duty is to the truth alone. For Weber, it is incumbent on educators to set aside personal value judgments and actively pursue ‘inconvenient facts’\u2014truths that may unsettle our beliefs or the dogmas of our tribe.<\/p>\n

The humble truth is that every moral framework, shaped by our differing political instincts, both illuminates parts of reality and blinds us to others. Like the classic parable of the blind men and the elephant, each of us grasps only a portion of the whole. From this vantage point, there is always something valuable to learn from others\u2014especially when their viewpoint differs sharply from our own.<\/p>\n

Here is a different voice who, in my view, embodies the post-tribal spirit in practice: the heterodox thinker and podcaster Coleman Hughes. Hughes addresses the same divisive issues of race but from a quite different perspective<\/a>, advocating strongly for colorblind public policies and opposing race-based reparations. What stands out is his method: Hughes regularly invites dialogue with voices from across the spectrum, including Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald on the left, and Niall Ferguson and Ben Shapiro on the right. He has even publicly extended invitations for conversation<\/a> with Kendi in the past.<\/p>\n

I write this not to belittle Kendi nor to endorse Hughes\u2019s specific ideas. What I find compelling is Hughes\u2019s consistent willingness to engage substantively with criticism\u2014even (and especially) when it challenges his own views. In today\u2019s polarized climate, ideas as influential as Kendi\u2019s deserve the widest possible hearing\u2014among supporters and skeptics alike. Cultivating genuine openness to dialogue with those who see the world differently remains one of the most powerful ways to reduce polarization and sharpen our thinking. Approaches that prioritize such productive friction can help us all move closer to a fuller understanding of seemingly intractable problems like racial inequality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I waited with anticipation for the release of Ibram X. Kendi\u2019s latest book, Chain of Ideas: The Origins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-593796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}