Hypertribalism

After another week of debate about 'culture wars' and 'cancel culture', I decided to write something about it this morning. Then I realised I already had.I wrote most of the post below back in January, but never quite finished it. It's very much a provocation without too much evidence behind it. But reading through it today, it certainly felt like an accurate representation of what I have continued to witness this year in politics and culture.By the way, I note that the term 'hypertribalism' has been used by a few different people from conspiracy-theorist forum posts to Catholic ministers. But I use it here in a slightly different sense.##High frequency change has disrupted the foundations of our identity. These foundations include familial political affiliations, sporting allegiances, religious affiliations, and shared economic and cultural experiences. These things have been persistent between generations and across age cohorts in the same communities for decades. But now they are being disrupted by the explosion of choice, the more global communities created by always-on digital communication, and the globalised supply chain for media, products and politics.These shared foundations of identity were what connected us to a sense of place, and what bonded us into coherent movements. Into tribes. In the digital age, our sense of place is undermined, and old tribes are fractured. We share less with our geographic and historical peers than we did in the past, whether those peers are family members, school friends, or colleagues.What has replaced these old tribes is a new hypertribalism.I would characterise hypertribalism as having three traits:

1. As tribes get smaller, the adherence to core tenets gets stronger. Any diversion from those tenets sees rapid expulsion
2. 'Opposing' tribes and their members are demonised for even slight divergence from the tribes' core tenets
3. Transient leaders, structures, and sometimes principles

You could argue that these are all traits of tribes throughout history. But I use the term hypertribalism to highlight the fact that each one of these core traits is amped up in this current age. The extreme reach and accessibility of global communications platforms being the primary catalyst for this change.

Adherence to core tenets

"One Trot faction, sitting in a hall,One Trot faction, sitting in a hall,And if one Trot faction, should have a nasty squall,There'll be two Trot factions, sitting in a hall."This rhyme is related in Christopher Brookmyre's (excellent) Country of the Blind, but I remember it first from my time in student politics in the late 90s. Trot, for the uninitiated, is short for Trotskyist/Trotskyite, an adherent of Leon Trotsky's branch of Marxism. The story the rhyme tells is that of the endless rifts in the political left, particularly in the emotion-drenched realms of student politics, over issues of principle.Today those rifts are more evident than ever, on both ends of the political spectrum. On the left, it is not just Corbynites vs Blairites, but fractional groups aligning around different priorities, whether it is the achievement of power, the rolling back of austerity, or the rejection (or pursuit) of one of the many possible forms of Brexit. On the right, the rise and subsequent implosion of UKIP and then the Brexit Party has torn apart the broad church of conservatism, leaving a loose and deeply unhappy coalition of europhile moderates, disenfranchised working classes, hedge fund managers, and frankly, racists.Though Boris Johnson successfully attracted enough of this coalition to his cause (namely, his own power) in the recent general election, this base feels highly unstable and very open to disruption, either by a resurgent and more appealing Labour or just as likely by a new force on the right. As Moises Naim said a few years ago, power is now harder to win, harder to use, and easier to lose.While each faction defines itself by hard adherence to some key tenets, and rejects anyone who does not share that adherence, the fracturing of each group into smaller groups will continue. This is a phenomenon particularly amplified by social media, where it is hard to express nuanced views and anything except full-blooded commitment to the cause is often met with opprobrium. Given the driver for the existence of tribes - as much about our need to belong as any real connection to a cause - people are incentivised to keep their views blunt in order to secure social approval.

Demonisation of others

Tribes have always defined themselves in opposition to others. They are as much about what they are not, as about what they are. As tribes fracture and become smaller, and to the outsider, their differences appear perhaps smaller, so each tribe has to express its differences more strongly. Particularly by highlighting the apparent failings of the other. Five minutes on Twitter and you will see incredible levels of hate directed between groups who might be expected to be natural allies, were there not a single issue of principle separating them.This phenomenon can be incredibly damaging to those who become the target of a particular group. Particularly when they were part of that group but have been ousted from it for some apparent breach of its rules. But it reaches its most disturbing peak in the use of language like 'traitors' and 'enemies of the people' by national media.

Unstable leadership and structures

What the various interests coalesced around the Brexit agenda have shown over the last few years is that a complete lack of structure and stability is no longer an obstacle to achieving your ends. Whether it is the 'strong and stable' party of power, or the endlessly reforming and leader-shifting UKIP/Brexit Party, if your narrative connects with the public it can continue in spite of the machinery failing.This power of a story to exist beyond its teller feels like it too has been augmented in this age of low friction communication. Stories - and conspiracy theories for that matter - can rapidly take on a life of their own.Of course, this instability is apparent in organisations with a less successful story as well. Anyone remember TIG?###This is as far as I got with the post (in fact the last sentence is a new addition just to round out that last point). But I think it gets the key points across. And it raises some important questions. Is this a new or growing phenomenon? Or is this just another case of a digital age observer seeing age-old patterns of behaviour through an new medium? I am more convinced now than I was in January that this is not necessarily something new, but something that has been incredibly amplified by the communications capabilities unique to this digital age.I have written before - here in 2017 and here in 2018 - about my concerns for the way that technology can fragment society. This post is really just documenting that effect and its emergent effects in a little more detail. But these facets, or symptoms of the phenomenon seem important if we believe it is something that needs tackling.I certainly think there is an argument for tackling the bullying elements of this phenomenon. And the way that it allows, or even encourages, the spread and use of  - even deep belief in - false information. These things do serious harm both at the individual and the societal scale.But I also see this commons as a positive and powerful thing. A place where ideas can be shared, debated, demolished or enhanced. This is a society working out its differences primarily through language not violence.How do we keep these positives while addressing the negatives has been a big debate for the last few years. Where does responsibility lie? With the social networks? Police? Or society? Personally, I don't think we can or should ask corporations to police our speech. But they can give society the tools to do so, whether that's fact checking, abuse blocking, or providing information to law enforcement - subject to appropriate judicial oversight.The rest, I think, remains up to us. The improvement of this commons is only likely to come from the commons itself.

Is tomorrow's society diverse or fractured?

Who are you? How is that identity defined? What groups do you associate with? And which ones do you define yourself against?

These are the issues increasingly at the heart of modern politics, according to a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Francis Fukuyama. No longer is the debate defined by who has what, but by who we are. Traditional class lines have been disrupted by signifiers that have taken on greater importance. Low-friction global communications have allowed us to build tribes that are no longer defined by geography, as I have written about before.This last point is, in many ways, a good thing. As one Twitter friend put it yesterday: “Why would I want to associate with my neighbour? I’d much rather join a global group of people I actually like.” The freeing of communication has allowed us to find perhaps a truer sense of our own identities, by meeting like-minded people around the world who share our hobbies, interests, or deeper definitions of who we are. Other people who challenge norms and the status quo and want to explore what it might mean to be human beyond historical limitations.But increasingly digital as our lives may be now, there are still issues to grapple with that are defined by space and place. From the simplest issue of bin collections, to more thorny issues of rights, benefits, and education. How do we address these issues that are shared and contested among increasingly fractured communities sharing the same spaces?

Internet principles

Fukuyama suggests that common creeds form part of the answer. Shared sets of ideals around which countries are built.For me there are parallels here in how shared systems like the internet are created: millions of components of both hardware and software, created by thousands of different companies, operating to a huge variety of different ends. And yet through a set of shared standards, somehow co-operating to achieve a sufficient level of coherence that it all works — most of the time.The problem with Fukuyama’s solution for me is that it operates at a state level, and I am no longer convinced that we can maintain a shared state identity even in a country as small as the United Kingdom. Or rather, there may not be sufficient shared identity across the country to maintain coherence in that national community. Rather, we have to acknowledge that there is an increasingly devolved identity, just as we are — slowly — acknowledging the need for more devolved power.

Shared spaces

I think we can create a sense of shared purpose across diverse communities in a shared space. But that sense of purpose can only be defined in part at a state level. What will be much more important is a sense of local identity that binds us to our neighbours around the things that matter that are inevitably defined by space. These people may not be our friends, they may form part of groups against which we choose to define ourselves. But we will have to accept a measure of compromise over the issues in which we have a shared interest.That compromise is unlikely to be forced upon us. Communities of shared interest are rarely built from the top down. They have to be constructed from the bottom up. Doing this will require renewed efforts to overcome identity-based boundaries.I’ve never liked the term ‘tolerance’ in this context. Surely we should be striving for more than that? Acceptance, understanding, or resolution. But these things take time, and in that time we will have communities with a proportion of shared interests that need to take action. They will need to get past their potential areas of conflict to work for their common good.This sounds a little light weight: “all we need is peace, love and harmony”? Hardly a radical conclusion. But I come back to my position on the future: short term pessimist, long term optimist. The direction of travel for the human race is a positive one when it comes to resolving differences. More and more is handled by communication, less and less by violence. I think we can and will reach a situation where we can celebrate the rich diversity of our race while reliably building ad-hoc coalitions to achieve shared goals, even between groups with wildly different, and sometimes conflicting, ideals.But it’s going to take time. The next few years will continue to be challenging.