Part 2—An Introduction to Tribalism for the Modern World that has Forgotten it
This is part 2 of the series. You can read part 1 here.
“I call to put an end to corporate lobbying. I call for the billionaires to pay more taxes. I call for healthcare to become cheaper!”
“All tribes with dominant positions in our nation, give them up!!!”
This is the blissfully ignorant way of the modern statesman.
Of course, they can’t be wholly blamed, having lived with the privilege of summoning powerful institutions to enact justice for them all of their lives. The harsh truth is that few of us would know how to fight back without institutional protections—few would survive a radical shift to the law of the jungle.
In part 1, tribalism1 is defined as the response to a world where only power checks other power, and the modern Western world is carved out from the tribal world by sacred institutions that protect individual liberties and livelihood. Sacred institutions are continually under attack by tribes, and to defend them is an exercise in tribal warfare - checking power with power.
In part 2, I want to focus on the differences between the modern world and the tribal world. We take for granted not just institutional protection, but also the benefits of playing by the rules—so much so that we do not understand tribal world actions and the motivations that inspire them.
When Covid first broke out in China (a nation still largely tribal), the Western world took the numbers published by China as the transparent and whole truth. Why wouldn’t they? Obscuring the numbers would just delay the global community’s efforts to combat the virus. To the West, it seemed so obviously self-destructive to report false numbers that many believed China’s figures for months, even after statistical analysis proved they had been doctored.
As of the last update in April 2024, Covid deaths in China remain at 5200, a glaringly fake number. Western media has demanded for China to publish the real numbers time and time again, for the sake of transparency and out of bitterness for China not acting in good faith with the rest of the global community. They characterized the fake numbers as an ego trip, a refusal to show weakness, or even an attempt to sabotage genuine containment efforts.
To me, this highlights exactly how the modern world has forgotten tribalism. The tribal world has a different set of rules and moral code when it comes to information, alliances, and group dynamics. Assumptions about behaviors of nations, leaders, businesses, community leaders, all the way down to peers, must take into account where the behavior falls along the tribal-to-modern spectrum.
To learn about tribal behaviors, we’ll analyze writings from eras of intense tribal fighting. One such period is the Warring States period in China from 475-221 BCE, which gave rise to a rich body of thought dedicated to the art of power politics. The most famous during this era is Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, but in European history, Machiavelli’s “The Prince” also embodies similar views. These works are sometimes treated like the profound inner thoughts of evil masterminds, but from the perspective of tribalism, the authors are merely recording their experience of tribal warfare at the highest levels. They are introductions to the grandmaster strategies of tribal power games.
Information Management
“All warfare is based on deception.” — Sun Tzu
The management of information shows profound divergences between tribal and modern leaders. The tribal leader views information as a weapon to be hoarded and deployed for strategic advantage. The modern leader views information as a catalyst to be shared openly, to foster trust, empowerment, and collective intelligence.
Machiavelli explicitly advises a prince to master the art of deception, arguing that a leader must be a "great pretender and dissembler" because "men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived".
This principle extends all the way to the cultivation of an entire public persona. A leader should appear virtuous—compassionate, trustworthy, loyal, and religious—because people wish to believe their leaders are good. However, the leader must be ready to act contrary to these virtues—to "know how to do wrong"—whenever necessity dictates.
For Sun Tzu, information dominance is the key to victory in power struggles. The highest realm of warfare is actively shaping the enemy's perception of reality. A leader must seem inactive when preparing to attack, appear far when near, and feign disorder to lure the enemy into a trap. The more your control of information dictates what others perceive of reality, the more effectively you win.
This is the opposite of what many modern leadership books promote—transparency, authenticity, and vulnerability. To modern leaders, information management is about enabling others to know the true situation so they can design effective solutions. To a tribal leader, it is about confusing others about the real situation so you maintain an advantage.
While we cannot know the definitive reason China withheld its Covid numbers, we can surmise its tribal logic. The information would likely be used to attack the Chinese Communist Party by internal rivals, and the lack of published information prevents that.
Rivals: “The abundance of deaths shows you are not fit to govern China or care for the welfare of the Chinese people!”
CCP: “What deaths? Look at the numbers, there are no deaths.”
And that’s the end of it. It’s simple, effective, and completely tribal.
Alliances
For the tribal leader, alliances are temporary, transactional arrangements, devoid of genuine trust or shared values. In a world where only power matters, any relationship not based on direct control is prone to treachery and betrayal.
This is why Machiavelli advises a prince to distrust external support. He repeatedly warns against using allied forces or mercenaries, deeming them "useless and dangerous" because their interests are their own, making them unreliable in a crisis.
Sun Tzu reinforces this view. He ranks attacking enemy alliances as the second-best strategy, surpassed only by stopping an enemy before they even start. Alliances are critical structural vulnerabilities rather than places of strength. A shrewd tribal leader should not rely on them, and instead should work to dismantle enemy alliances through diplomacy, deception, and sowing discord.
The modern world sees alliances very differently. Alliances are the formation of sustained value creation over the long term. Modern alliances build long lasting synergies based on trust, reinforced by institutional protections like contracts and market reputation, and with long term ROI in view.
But in a tribal environment, with no third party institution to reinforce trust and enemies actively attacking your relationships, long term alliances are difficult to maintain. So tribal leaders mostly use alliances with caution and precision, at moments that maximize self-interest and success. The Trump-Musk alliance is one such example of a tribal alliance - it is a deliberate act, timed to exploit a strategic opening and with a good understanding of the risks and rewards. And judging by the electoral outcome, it worked out well for Trump.
Of course, Machiavelli offers a caveat: "A prince ought to take care never to make an alliance with one more powerful than himself for the purpose of attacking another, unless necessity compels him." Such an alliance can easily lead to the prince becoming a victim of his more powerful "ally" after the common enemy is defeated.
How prescient.
Group Members
In the tribal world, the group is a tool to reach the leader's goals; in the modern world, the group is an untapped potential to be unlocked. Tribal leaders control, modern leaders empower.
Machiavelli famously argues that it is safer for a prince to be feared than loved. In his eyes, the populace is fickle and self-interested, and their loyalty cannot be relied upon. Therefore, the leader must maintain control through the judicious application of punishment and the ever-present threat of force.
Sun Tzu emphasizes the absolute necessity of discipline and unwavering obedience of your subjects to carry out your war efforts. Others in the Warring States era would go so far as to say that peasants should be doing only two things: “farm and fight”. To maximizing the chance of winning, the group members must be well oiled cogs in a war machine, their individual wills subordinate to the leader's plans.
Obedience and punishment is the essence of in-group/out-group dynamics. Belonging to the in-group is granted only in exchange for unwavering obedience, and those who step out of line get punished by being cast into the out-group. This resulting pressure to obey and threat of being cut off creates a system of control that both Machiavelli and Sun Tzu would approve for its brutal efficiency.
This perspective stands in stark contrast to that of modern leadership. The philosophy of modern leadership acknowledges that the complexities of the world are too numerous and complex for just the leaders solve. The goal is not to have every problem bubble up to the top, but to empower people at the right level with the right tools to solve problems themselves.
The modern leader, therefore, focuses on creating an environment of psychological safety where individuals can contribute their unique talents and perspectives. The aim is to unlock the group's collective intelligence, fostering collaboration, innovation, and a shared sense of purpose.
This creates a fundamental difference follower expectations. Tribal followers expect a strong leader who acts like a prince. They want to see their leader powerful and winning because often they themselves feel helpless against the world around them. But modern followers expect to be given autonomy to operate, and they pride themselves on doing the best job they can given their capacity, environment and circumstances.
A modern leader cannot effectively rule a group that has been trained for helplessness, and a tribal leader will quickly be rejected by a group of independently-minded problem-solvers. The implication is that leadership style creates a feedback loop. In essence, a leader’s assumptions about their people—whether they are cogs in a machine or a wellspring of potential—becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
World View
The driving force behind these behaviors is their fundamental world view. In tribal times, the world is viewed as a zero-sum game where the most efficient way to acquire more resources is to take it from others. In modern times, the world is an ever-expanding pie with infinite opportunities for wealth and value creation, and unlocking the human potential to create value is the most effective strategy.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the world was more zero-sum than it was exponential growth. It makes sense then that the logic of tribalism dominated. But a basic view of global GDP over time shows just how insanely strong the value creation strategy is, once it is rolling:
So it also makes sense why modern citizens do not understand tribal logic—its heyday was many generations ago.
But that doesn’t mean tribalism has disappeared—far from it. There is a growing amount of blatant tribal power plays in the modern world, and a sharp rise in leaders who look more tribal than modern. This coincides with a period of weak institutions, and even weaker opposition who are inept at the ways of tribal warfare.
Tribal leaders would see the modern world as a giant vault to plunder, with the only protection being its institutions. As such, a strategy of 1) weakening institutional capabilities to protect individual liberties, 2) inciting frustration at the perceived failures of modern statehood, 3) calling for the tear down of our current systems, and 4) taking it over with your own loyal base, is not an insane conspiracy theory, it’s just a natural path of conquest in the law of the jungle. Those who know the rules of tribalism see it plain as day.
Against such strategies, modern statesmen are indeed woefully unprepared to deal. And yet, while I rant against the ineffective ways of the modern statesman, I left out that appealing to the human moral compass is a very winning strategy in its own right that should not be underestimated. For it was through such moral appeals that civil rights were won, that women’s rights were won, that slavery was abolished, and that the very concept of individual liberty was carved out from the tribal world.
So, ultimately, the challenge for modern citizens is to learn the complex world of both tribal and modern dynamics. We should learn to spot the tribal behaviors of nations, corporations, or our own leaders so that we can appropriately interpret their actions and more importantly, their issue. We should also relearn why the modern design of sacred institutions protecting all individuals and their freedoms is such a good idea.
There is a profound abundance of the modern state. The exponential curve of global prosperity is the direct result of dismantling tribal walls and freeing up individuals from serving tribal goals. It is the accumulated value of millions of synergistic partnerships that were impossible in a fragmented world.
Don’t be fooled - that abundance will not come from plunder or your tribe winning. And the spoils from plunder will definitely not be given to the common people, no matter how convincingly tribal leaders say it will.
Just a note: this has nothing to do with anthropological tribalism, which attempts to explain the society and behavior of primitive tribes, but rather borrows meaning from political tribalism, in which tight coalitions form and fight each other for dominance.