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Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together - Hardcover

Morris, Michael

 
9780735218093: Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0735218099 ISBN 13: 9780735218093
Verlag: Thesis, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A revelatory, paradigm-shifting work from a renowned Columbia professor and “one of the great social and cultural psychologists” (Amy Cuddy) that demystifies our tribal instincts and shows us how to use them to create positive change.

Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon. 

Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways. First, the peer instinct to conform to what most people do. Second, the hero instinct to give to the group and emulate the most respected. And third, the ancestor instinct to follow the ways of prior generations. These tribal instincts enable us to share knowledge and goals and work as a team to transmit the accumulated pool of cultural knowledge onward to the next generation. 

Countries, churches, political parties, and companies are tribes, and tribal instincts explain our loyalties to them and the hidden ways that they affect our thoughts, actions, and identities. Rather than deriding tribal impulses for their irrationality, we can recognize them as powerful levers that elevate performance, heal rifts, and set off shockwaves of cultural change.

Weaving together deep research, current and historical events, and stories from business and politics, Morris cuts across conventional wisdom to completely reframe how we think about our tribes. Bracing and hopeful, Tribal unlocks the deepest secrets of our psychology and gives us the tools to manage our misunderstood superpower.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael Morris is the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership at Columbia Business School as well as a Professor in its Psychology Department. Outside of academia, Professor Morris has consulted with and conducted executive training workshops for hundreds of clients across the globe, including Fortune 100 firms, governments, and the Obama and Clinton campaigns. He lives in New York City.

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1

Syncing Up

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

-Helen Keller

When mud is just the right consistency, it can stop time in its tracks. In 2007, near Kenya's Lake Turkana, archaeologist Jack Harris, who had worked for decades at the site, brushed away layers of sand to uncover traces of long-ago life. Indentations in the mud had hardened into stone. Among many tracks of birds and antelopes were some familiar oblong prints: ninety-seven impressions of human feet so well preserved that all the toes were visible. Carbon dating revealed, astonishingly, that these prints had been frozen in time for 1.5 million years. They were the oldest human footprints ever discovered.

These fossilized prints offered a tantalizing glimpse into the life of Homo erectus, who roamed the earth throughout the early Stone Age. While tried-and-true archaeological techniques could identify the species involved, they couldn't discern what activity the tracks reflected. They could have been left by a band of passing nomads, by one thirsty individual's repeated water runs, or by any number of other lakeside scenarios.

To plumb this mystery, young scientists flocked to the Turkana site to try new techniques that had been revitalizing the study of human origins. To experts on human anatomy and locomotion, minute structural details of the well-preserved prints spoke volumes. Neil Roach and Kevin Hatala used precise digital measuring tools and 3D modeling software to match prints from the same individuals and simulate the strides connecting them. In a behavioral science approach, they recruited volunteers of different ages and genders from the nearby Daasanach people to walk and run on some lakeside mud. From these reference points, they could identify the sex, age, and height of the paleo pedestrians, as well as their timing and pace. The tracks were created by a group of young men trekking quickly together-the earliest evidence of a human sex-segregated group activity. Tellingly, the group traversed the shore like hunters in pursuit of prey, rather than converging on it like seekers of water. The totality of the Turkana evidence points to an intriguing explanation-a hunting party stalking an antelope.

Archaeologists had long noticed antelope bones in erectus living sites, but had no clue how our forebears came by this bounty. Antelopes startle at the slightest sound and sprint away at sixty miles per hour. Not even Usain Bolt could catch one! This early species lacked any weapons that could close the distance. They invented only one tool in their million years on the planet: a handheld chunk of flint used for chopping, pounding, and smashing. This staggering technological stasis gave archaeologists the impression of erectus as little beyond apes in intelligence. Some surmised that they came by their occasional venison as scavengers (by scrounging carrion from the savanna after the big cats had had their fill).

But the Turkana tracks raised a more exalted possibility. The San people of the Kalahari Desert (the world's oldest tribe) can stalk antelopes through a technique called "persistence hunting." Several hunters work to separate an animal from its herd and then chase it, track it, and chase it again-repeatedly, until it overheats and collapses (evolution built antelopes to be sprinters, not marathoners). The key to this hunting method is coordinating on the same target; it does no good to chase different antelopes around all afternoon. The hunters must form a shared plan. Biologist and professional tracker Louis Liebenberg proposed that early humans like erectus could have collaborated this way to hunt antelopes. Roach and Hatala's findings provide supporting archaeological evidence.

The hunting explanation implies that erectus enjoyed a larger leap in brain evolution than previously assumed. Our closest ape relatives, chimpanzees, are impressively inventive but not collaborat

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Verlag
Thesis
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0735218099
ISBN 13 
9780735218093
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Portfolio
https://www.wetones.co.uk/

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