
Tribalism is the enemy within - nuclear_eclipse
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/439
======
fwez
Tribalism in politics leads to identity politics rather than governance
politics. I grew up in Lebanon where there is no single religious majority.
Political discourse has mostly been about how different factions (sunni, shia,
maronite christian, orthodox christians, etc.) should be represented within
the ruling coalition. Deadlocks are common and appropriation of ministries is
mostly based on sectarian identity rather than competence. Discourse is rarely
about fiscal, educational, or health policy. I think a similar unhealthy
situation can exist within open source projects or professional organizations.

------
whichdokta
If Greg had started his post with a question along the lines of:

    
    
      "Dear Mark, what can GNOME do to help 
       Canonical integrate your  work & devs 
       with upstream?"
    

Rather than:

    
    
      "*omfgroflcopter* you Canonical dudes 
       are all like soooo lame and have never
       done anything for GNOME"
    

...then maybe his post would have translated to a measurable improvement in my
reality.

As it stands all he's created is a distraction from getting code written.

 _sigh_

~~~
CodeMage
I've often wondered what it would be like to work on Open Source projects and
contribute to something like that, but I've never done it before. This post
piqued my interest, so I read it and followed the links and read the comments
and, in general, spent more than an hour on reading the discussion.

Which leads me to my question: is this normal, widespread behavior in Open
Source? I'm honestly interested in answers, because, frankly, to me this
looked like a boatload of politics. I get enough of that at work.

~~~
whichdokta
Is normal, widespread behavior for humans when we are not getting what we want
I think!

One practice is to be more conscious of when we're not getting what we want
and pay extra special attention to how we're reacting to others as a result.

Greg says he wants Canonical to contribute more to upstream.

Mark probably wanted Greg to not badmouth Canonical.

Now neither party are getting what they want so the question is can everyone
pay enough attention to their reactions to avoid a full-blown civil war?

Oy vey.

~~~
randallsquared
_Is normal, widespread behavior for humans when we are not getting what we
want I think!_

Or in pathological cases, even when we are. :(

------
mkr-hn
Tribalistic thinking is something I've been trying to break myself of over the
last few years.

When I avoid it, I end up being better off. I used to be firmly in the "all
conservative republicans are gibbering idiots" camp, but was able to break out
and have a genuinely useful discussion with one.

He and I still don't agree on most things, but we did convince each other of a
few things (he no longer believes atheists are inherently amoral, which I
consider a big success). Tribalism wouldn't permit that.

------
j_baker
In my anecdotal experience, Canonical hasn't exactly been a shining example of
working with the community instead of being tribal. They have open source
projects, but they don't tend to go very far out of their way to make those
projects useful to other organizations. The pace at which changes from outside
Canonical get merged into their projects is very glacial.

But that's just my experience. I'm sure others have had plenty of great
experiences with them.

~~~
kylemathews
Hmmm... that doesn't sound like tribalism, that sounds like Canonical has a
strong product vision and strong internal engineering culture.

------
mapleoin
And here's Greg's response to Mark's response:
[http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/its-not-
about-...](http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/its-not-about-
tribalism-mark/)

------
motters
You also should recognize that whether you like it or not tribalism is part of
everyone. There always exists the temptation, especially when under pressure
or in a crisis, to revert to a tribalist mode of thinking. Tribalism no doubt
had adaptive advantages in our past in terms of group cohesion, but it can
also be one of the most destructive forces.

------
abalashov
_Don’t do it because you feel intimidated or threatened or belittled._

I suppose ideally, no. However, it runs against basic psychology to fail to
consider the enormity of the motivating force that is this kind of coercion
throughout human history. It has untold power. So many things - good and bad,
but all having enormous displacement - have been spurred by motives like
proving something to someone, showing someone up, avenging an insult, publicly
righting a false claim, establishing identity, going through a socially
acknowledged rite of passage, validating strength, etc. Sex, money, power...

It seems to me patently self-evident that such forces underlie, in whole or in
part, the actual activities of open-source developers, and technologists in
general, though the level of indirection that must be navigated in order to
see it is often greater than in more naked and crude testosterone plays like
much hedge fund management and so on.

Don't pretend that we're somehow above the general liabilities of humanity (if
that's how you see them).

------
lionhearted
Two thoughts -

First, I agree with the author on tribalism in general and technology
specifically, but he falls into another common unwritten trap - all his
examples are of discrimination against women or minorities. That's subtly
saying - "White males, don't be tribalistic" - maybe the particular author
doesn't feel that way, but certainly a lot of people tell Caucasians and men
to stop hating/oppressing/discriminating, but ignore very real instances of
discrimination and hate against men or Caucasians. No one bats an eye at anti-
male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric, which is certainly tribalism. I haven't seen any
equality movements to make everyone register equally for the military draft in
the United States, for instance, or make traditionally women's work
environments more open to men working there, nor are there any advocacy groups
for a white person is wronged on account of their race.

Second, mildly contrarian point - if you've never lived somewhere where
nationalism/tribalism is rampant, you haven't really experienced it. Yeah, it
sucks and produces all kinds of idiocy. But there's actually a few good things
about it that never makes it into the literature - if you've never been
somewhere like South Korea, you don't really know what it looks like.
Frustrating as it was for me as an outsider, I did admire a few points about
it. There's an attitude of, "I am KOREAN and STRONG" built into most Koreans -
this can be insufferable if you're not allowed to eat at a restaurant, but I
also find Koreans to be a bit more confident and proud than people in
surrounding areas, and I've some time in all of those places and admire all
those cultures. I guess it's unfashionable to say this, but my eyes say there
are a few limited upsides to tribalism.

~~~
dgabriel
I would guess that the Shirley Sherrod mess is a clear rebuttal to the
statement: "no one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric." Not only
were eyes batted, but heads rolled (even though it was an entirely false
accusation of discrimination).

Other examples of widely condemned figures who are, or appear to be, anti-
white or anti-male: Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Andrea Dworkin.

~~~
lionhearted
> clear rebuttal to the statement

I don't know, you picked three extreme nutjobs[1] and one person who looked
like they were completely derelicting their duty but it turned out it the
evidence was mistaken... I'm not sure there's a clear rebuttal of anything.

But regardless, that was a small part of the comment. The bigger point was
about discrimination articles that focus on examples of discrimination against
women and non-whites and not the other way around. Seems like that's a bad
thing that teaches bad lessons in the modern world. Would you agree that's a
bad thing?

[1] I should clarify - Wright and Farrakhan are serious, serious anti-Semites
to the point of being totally offensive. Dworkin... well, you can google for
quotes from her if you've never been exposed to it.

~~~
dgabriel
I was just pointing out that anti-white, anti-male bias is clearly not
considered acceptable, contrary to what you stated. The evidence against
Sherrod was not mistaken so much as manipulated to project an anti-white bias
that immediately got her fired.

In the essay, the examples were chosen to illustrate his point, and were very
non-contentious in my opinion. I see no "bad lesson," per say, but I'm not
sure I understand what you're getting at.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_The evidence against Sherrod was not mistaken so much as manipulated to
project an anti-white bias that immediately got her fired._

The evidence "against Sherrod" was not about Sherrod at all. It was about
demonstrating that her audience (the NAACP) is tolerant of racism, as long as
it is the right kind of racism. From the original article:

 _In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against
a white farmer[...]_ Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white
man is poor and needs help. _But she decides that he should get help from “one
of his own kind”...Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience
with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the
behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another
groups’ racial tolerance._

Go read the article - Sherrod is nothing but a minor anecdote in what is
primarily a criticism of liberals, the media and the NAACP and a defense of
the Tea Party.

[http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/07/19/video-
proof-t...](http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/07/19/video-proof-the-
naacp-awards-racism2010/)

~~~
jbooth
Yes, a criticism of liberals, the media, and the NAACP, that hinges on
doctoring a video to make an innocent woman look like a racist.

The dude she was allegedly being racist to, white farmer, actually went on a
bunch of media shows to say how great she was and how she helped them in their
time of need. Darn white-hating liberals.

~~~
w00pla
> Yes, a criticism of liberals, the media, and the NAACP, that hinges on
> doctoring a video to make an innocent woman look like a racist.

Criticism of the media hinges on the fact that they cover some things (e.g.
white kids beating up a black kid) extremely intensely, but ignores cases
where the reverse happens.

~~~
jbooth
Dude, give me a break. If you're a white American male, and you're gonna whine
about the discrimination you face in life, you need to wake the fuck up.
Literally everybody else on earth has it worse than you. Grow up and take
responsibility for your own situation.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
> _Literally everybody else on earth has it worse than you. Grow up and take
> responsibility for your own situation._

So when I was trying to go to university and my family was too poor to pay my
tuition, but I could only apply to <40% of scholarships available because I
was white instead of a "minority", that's better off than everybody else? How
is "taking responsibility" going to fix that sort of reverse discrimination?
Why is it OK for scholarships to focus on poor minorities, but it's not OK for
scholarships to focus on poor caucasions?

~~~
jbooth
Start your own scholarships if you're such a big believe in self-reliance.

More to the point -- yes, you still had it way the hell easier than you likely
would have if you were black or hispanic. White males are not victims -- we
have it easier than every other group. If you forget that, you're being an
asshole.

------
sabat
"Tribalism": a great term for what's wrong with the world today in general.
I'd been fishing for a word, calling it "the team sports mentality" for lack
of something more insightful and concise.

~~~
seanalltogether
If that were true, the entire history of humanity would be wrong in general.

~~~
thwarted
Most of the meaningful (and most interesting/worth talking about) events in
humanity's history have been because of an us-vs-them mentality. Even
something good and benign like landing on the moon was partially because of a
desire to best, and differentiate from, another world superpower. The critique
("wrong with the world today") is if this is a good way to go about it when
it's used in the extreme (or tending towards being extreme), not the quality
of the results. Does the means justify the ends?

~~~
sabat
The _money_ comes from those with us-vs-them mentalities (your example of the
Moon shots), but that isn't where the urge to innovate usually comes from.

 _when it's used in the extreme (or tending towards being extreme)_

That's what I was trying to get across -- extreme behavior considered to be
normal. Everyone on the freeways driving either 45 or 90, no sane moderation.

------
gaius
He starts off by saying tribalism is the root of racism. Then he says it's
judging people on choices they've made. These are obviously mutually exclusive
definitions!

~~~
jerf
Tribalism is "the other". Racism is "the other". People who have made other
choices, such as religious choices, can be "the other".

There's no contradiction here. It's just two different elaborations on how you
get to "the other".

