Tribalism Vs. Nationalism Essay, Research Paper

Tribalism may replace nationalism

Picture a world in the next century organized not around nation-states but

around a new form of tribes sharing the same culture and values. It’s a

world where you pledge allegiance not to a republic, but to a clan.

That possibility isn’t too far-fetched when you take the current state of

our fracturing world and overlay new information technologies and the new

telecommunications infrastructure. Here’s how it conceivably could play

out:

This melting-pot business is not working out. America no longer seems able

to meld all the various peoples within its borders into one harmonious

whole. As the years go by, Americans seem to identify less with their nation

and more with their various subgroups based on ethnicity, religion or race.

The rest of the world, now that the Cold War is over, is resuming its

long-simmering ethnic rivalries. Nations from the former Soviet Union to

Yugoslavia have broken apart into smaller nations based primarily on

ethnicity or religion. Separatist factions are mounting serious challenges to

nations from Canada to Spain to India.

The idea of the large nation-state, grouping people together within

geographic boundaries, does not seem to work anymore. We have

organized that way for several centuries, but it’s usefulness may be running

out. People seem to identify more with those sharing a common culture or

holding similar values.

People may rely on ‘tribes’ for education, security

Digital technologies can enhance — or, depending on your perspective,

exacerbate — such tendencies. They could allow people to connect with

people more like themselves regardless of where they live in the world. And,

ultimately, they could allow people to formally organize themselves that way.

Consider a world of the next century along the lines sketched out by Neal

Stephenson in his new science-fiction book, “The Diamond Age”: It’s a world

dominated by three large tribes, the Chinese, the Japanese and the

neo-Victorians, or people rooted in the cultural tradition of the British, which

includes many Americans.

That future world has many other less-powerful tribes that vaguely relate to

cultural traditions around today, such as the Ashanti, a tribe rooted in

African traditions but based in Los Angeles. And then there’s the majority of

people who don’t belong to any tribe and are virtually powerless on their

own.

People are not necessarily born into the tribes, but they join them by

adopting the values of the particular group. A person can even belong to

more than one tribe for different reasons.

These tribes could carry out most of the functions that we now associate

with nations or governments. A person at the farthest outpost of the world

could use the technologies for day-to-day contact and support from the

larger group based far away.

They could get all the same news, entertainment and casual gossip that

would reinforce their identities from afar. They could even rely on the group

for all levels of education, much of their health care through advanced

telemedicine and even their personal security.

People’s tribal identities would be so apparent, and tribal affiliations so

strong, that no one would physically harm you unless they wanted to incur

the wrath of the entire clan. The tribal police of the future would travel the

planet pursuing justice for their members, much as gangs do today.

Nation may become mere shadow of its former self

These new technologies simultaneously reinforce trends toward more

localism and more globalism.

They can empower smaller and smaller groups of people and allow them to

function more autonomously in the world. At the same time, they tend to

collapse the world into a more integrated global market which pays much

less attention to arbitrary political boundaries.

That leaves the large nation-state trapped in between. It’s too big to deal

with the particularities of a small group’s needs. It’s too small to grapple

with economic forces that are global in nature. And it does an increasingly

bad job of trying to do both.

Over time, we may see the nation fade in its importance until it’s just a

shadow of its former self.

Some fear that such a scenario would inevitably tend toward a riot of

parochial sects warring among themselves. They fear the emergence of

tribalism in the old sense — a new form of barbarism.

But that scenario leaves out the equally powerful forces that are integrating

the world. For every step toward more parochial localism, there’s a step

toward more universal globalism.

This end of the nation-state might not be such a disaster in the long run. In

the digital future, we might even see international peace.

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