Cultures around the world are quite diverse and with different worldviews, religions and customs, it's hard to find things that are virtually universal. But one thing you can find in every single corner of the world is tribal pride. And its acceptance is higher than pretty much anything else - everywhere you look patriotism is regarded as a good thing and calling something unpatriotic is pretty much slanderous.

We all tend to derive a lot of personal pride from the achievements of groups we feel we belong to. For instance, we tend to be proud of our countries, we tend to be proud of our regions, we tend to be proud of cities, we tend to be proud with our families, we tend to be proud of the culture we belong to and we are even proud of superficial things like the sports teams we support.

But does this tribal pride make any logical sense?

I don't think it does. Most people never stop to think about if such pride makes any sense at all and this is one of the reasons we still view it as good and acceptable. When you are proud of your heritage, your ancestors or your country you are actually proud with other people's achievements. If you look at all of this critically, you will probably arrive at the conclusion that it's actually absurd. It simply doesn't make sense to be proud with what others are actually responsible for.

We are supposed to be patriotic, but most of the time our countries are neither something that we have really helped built, nor something we usually choose. Saying that your country is the greatest and being proud of it is like telling another kinder-gardener that your dad can beat up their dad. Even if what you are saying is true, it isn't something that you have a logical reason to be proud of because it wouldn't be your achievement anyway.

All the great moments of heroism in the history of your country are things that you had nothing to do with - they were the result of other people's bravery, sacrifice, will, wisdom and/or strength. While there might be a good reason for you to appreciate or value them, is there really any good reason to have personal pride in something you had nothing to do with? You just happened to be born in the same area or as part of the same culture, that's all.

It doesn't really matter if you are proud of something as expansive as a whole country or something as specific as your great grand-father. Being the offspring of somebody that did something of value is not really an achievement on its own. So even when we are proud with what our parents have done to get us to where we are today, we are not really being logical. It makes a lot of sense to be thankful, but being proud with what they have done is like taking credit for other people's work.

Yet we all do it all the time. Virtually all of us are proud of our cultural heritage and we tend to find at least a label or two that would let us associate our self-worth with a group of some sort. But why do we do it if it is in fact so illogical?

We have an innate need to belong

Humans are a social species and this means that we are wired in such a way that our personal identity is tied to a sense of belonging. It makes us cooperate with each other on multiple levels and it makes us more likely to defend the tribe ensuring its longterm survival. In other words, this quirk of our psyche has given us an immense evolutionary advantage.

While there are other animals that show some love and attachment to their families, we as humans have the potential to feel an attachment to much larger and vaguer groups which in turn gives us motivation to cooperate on a much larger scale, usually unthinkable for other species. This is one of the components that has allowed us to build such an intricate civilization and has played an important role in allowing us to build a really complex social structure that expands the scope of a single tribe to global dimensions.

We simply want to belong to tribes and we feel best when we accept the delusion that this is really the best tribe to belong to. We are so invested in our own tribe's success that other members' achievements feel as our own. This is why we care about arbitrary things as the Olympic Games or the World Cup - we want our own tribe to succeed and to show that it's better than the other tribes. This is why so many people are so invested in watching millionaires chasing balls of all shapes and sizes in stadiums full of cheering fans. Even when we say we are proud with our heritage, we mean that we are proud with the tribe we belong to.

This need is so strong that it's usually impossible to get rid of even after the realization that it's absolutely illogical. I have thought about this for years and have readily acknowledged its absurdity, but this doesn't stop me from tuning in for the games of the national soccer team of the country of my birth and rooting for it despite the fact that they aren't even that good. Hell, I even have a club team I support in Spain which is a country I have very little to do with. And this is where the biggest problem lies.

Tribal pride comes with a lot of downsides

Our need to belong is usually quite strong and some of the tribes we feel we belong to quickly become a significant part of our personal identity. This feeling is so intense that it is easy for it to get out of control. It often becomes quite polarizing and it's easy for it to lead to hate for everybody that does not belong to our virtual tribe.

You see the negative consequences of this part of our psychology in a wide variety of negative phenomena like war, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, internet flame wars, hatred between sects of the same religion, soccer hooliganism and pretty much any form of demonization of people that disagree with our tribe's opinion. This is why political dialogue is so hard -
many people simply feel that their tribe is great while the other tribe is evil without feeling the need to question that assumption as it is based on a basic urge. While political parties might begin their differentiation based on core values and ideas, it's really easy to fall into illogical and senseless partisanship which leads to conflict instead of dialogue.

This is why I think we need to try and realize that most of the things that give us pride and identity are not really our own. It makes very little sense to love people just because they share the same identity with us and to hate people just because they don't. Tribal pride is not really justified and I believe we should always watch ourselves for illogical behaviors that it is dragging us into, even if we have accepted it as a normal part of life and being human.

Image Sources: [1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5]

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So do you agree? Do you love your country? Are you proud of your heritage?

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