Loyalties & Tribalism

    

     Recent significant elections in Australia and the E.U., and the leadup to upcoming elections in Sri Lanka and the U.S.A have made me think about tribalistm and how it operates to create and utilize loyalties in digital commuities.

 Our society in Sri Lanka, despite some contemporary modernization, remains quite feudal in its structures: placing significance on lineage and connections and who is related to or associated with whom, and our citizens from every community are obedient to hierarchy and authority. Whether it’s the kind that is created by lineage or property or public status, or now by influencers on digital platforms. People believe they themselves are critical thinkers, and operating quite independently, and many do, but this inbuilt learned deference to external authority is hard to transcend or even challenge. And we can see it operating daily on Facebook and Twitter platforms as well as in real life. 

     As observers of these societal structures, we can call it tribalism. The way people share information, what and whom they rely on to mediate between them and the world, and to represent their interests. A person who articulates opinions and puts thoughts into words and images can become an influencer whose followers can willingly build their brand and their digital constituency through their approvals and endorsements of their pronouncements and products. 

In an earlier era, it was relatively easy for film stars in Hollywood and Bollywood to translate their popularity and glamour into public visibility on an electoral level. We assume their goodwill, because they are exceptionally good looking, and apparently good humoured. We are now very used to seeing and hearing celebrities of film and television, sport and industry, and now Instagram, commenting on environmental and social issues. By clicking a button and pressing a virtual bell we can follow and subscribe to them, and allow them to air their opinions to influence and impact our own personal space. 

Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous political observation that most people only see what you appear to be, few know who you really are, holds true today more than ever before. The Greek term ‘persona’, meaning an assumed and constructed identity, derives from the word for an actual painted mask mounted on a stick, which an actor would hold in front of their face while interacting in a play on a stage in a theatrical performance. 

Today, public personae are created as part of a brand: from portfolios of photographs to digital resumes, to the followings you build via the interests you align with and the posts you comment on, you can create a version of yourself to operate in the world which is a version of yourself designed to appeal to a target audience. Technology makes this easy to create and utilize. The way that one comment, GIF, meme or emoji response in a comments thread by one person opens up whatever they are talking about to their network adds to the way issues become viral, and opinions spread and trigger emotions like wildfire. It’s interactive, participatory, popular and populist. Pollsters become pundits. 

In the digital sphere, tribalism has clearly weaponised interpersonal connections. A positive aspect of human life that used to operate in a real neighborhood community, in the form of human familiarity, connectivity and trust, can be used (and mis-used) politically in the digital landscape. 

We see both public and private individuals constructing themselves in these ways, and the jargon associated with brand-building is passing into the mainstream lexicon. We can trace people’s political and ideological affiliations by the phrases they use, and the allusions they make: many cliches and truisms not only cloak individual ideas but reveal allegiances and associations, as human beings unconsciously reveal their belonging and status in their communities symbolically, through the way they dress - not only physically, through costume and accessories, but through the language with which they ornament and augment their ideas. 

Virtue signaling is all around us, in this year of election. Appearances are deceptive, and the cost of the deception in a world full of real crises is a high price to pay. We look for saviors, and people put themselves forward to appeal to our predicted preferences. Under a whitewashed sepulchre, we are warned in scripture, often lies the corruption of death; and behind a mask of tweaked and twerked personality stands a human being, motivated by desire for survival and fulfilment, striking a pose. 

It’s a dramatic performance, and everyone has an agenda, and is playing to an audience. Do we sit in our seats and clap on cue, or do we choose, at this critical juncture to identify the agenda behind the performance we are witnessing? Do we take the time - and make the effort - to make a truly informed choice? Going with the crowd and acting on our impulses is not the best option when the crowd is deceived, by the apparently magical fusion of our own hopes and desires with the targeted self-promotion of the person appearing to appeal to them. 

 The power of choice accessible to us via electoral votes and selective choice may be the only power left to us to exercise. Let us choose as carefully who represents us and leads us as we choose the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the friends we associate with. To exercise our choices with full sovereignty, we must educate ourselves. 

    To be mindful only of our daily physical actions, and emotional decisions, in ignorant unawareness of the consequences of our moral and political choices, is to operate with only a fraction of the intelligence we possess. 

      The alternative is to live predominantly in survival mode, at the lowest level of the hierarchy of needs, desperately reaching out to instances of joy between repeated disasters. Our choices shape us, and determine the quality of our life. Myths and slogans will not sustain us. 

     A person who has no independent and determined ideas of their own is a person who will be swayed by every issue that goes viral. Such a person is the majority in an uninformed electorate. 

The only cure for this is surely critical thinking, and personal insight, uninfluenced by bought or coerced loyalties.