“Given limited food, and limited physical gifts, our species had to work in close-knit groups, and become territorial, to stay alive. Tribalism is one result of this. We largely define ourselves by asserting our loyalty to the groups that we’re in. A psychologist in the seventies named Henri Tajfel showed that humans can enter into us-versus-them thinking in seconds, over just about anything. He showed that as conflict grows between groups, it becomes more difficult to think about those you’re competing against as individuals, with positive qualities, making it easier to discount their
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