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tribalism, religion, patriotism: A continuum
robert — (archived)

When I was arguing with Tech over describing the devoutly religious as "patriotic", my logic was based on the strictest of the monotheisms, Islam. Christian cultures developed the concept of separation of church-n-state early on and have learned to ignore the paradoxes, but it's significant how many devout Christians clearly pine to live under a Christian version of Sha'ria law.

A recurring observation in my reading about history is that successful rulers understand that their societies require some kind of religion to provide social cohesiveness. The European Dark Ages were marked by the struggle for control of this tool of power between the Pope and the various Kings and Emperors, but at no time did anybody consider dispensing with religion. Finally, the nation-state came along, dominated by the republican form, and I would argue that this marks the first appearance of what we now call "patriotism", an attempt to redirect the religious impulse into an enthusiasm for the nation; i.e., to create a stronger loyalty by collapsing religion and tribalism into a single emotion.

That's my long-winded way of agreeing with you that patriotism today, and religion yesterday, were both tools of social control. Up until recently our nominally secular nation-state required a healthy dose of religious indoctrination to supplement the civic indoctrination, as your cousin Rudy discovered to his disgust. We have to constantly work at keeping religion and state separate because they clearly have a natural affinity for one another, and it's almost painfully obvious, I suppose, that it's all rooted eventually in primate tribalism. We have an emotional imperative to bind with the group of which we're a member.

So I wonder, in recent decades as we've tried to conform more strictly to the ideal of separation etc., and succeed in removing religion from civics, are we leaving a vacuum that's causing the psychotic behavior we see in many segments of our society? Is there a fixed level of primate tribalism that, if it isn't satisfied by religion, must be satisfied by patriotism, and thus the modern destructive hyperpartisanship?

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