Welcome to the Age of Cyber-Tribalism

June 2, 2025

About two million years ago, humanity existed as groups of small tribes. Small packs of people, following an elder, or perhaps a strong warrior, roaming the earth hunting, collecting plants, sharing stories and living in harmony with nature. Life was pleasant but not filled with convenience. Starting in 10,000 BC the technology of agriculture began to be discovered. Tribes members had to specialize in order to protect and maintain their crops. They needed farmers, warriors and administrators and within those groups they needed teachers and experimenters. If they wanted to perform their duties adequately, they would need more people in their tribe, and they eventually became kingdoms or tribal federations.

After World War II, the modern age came to a close and yielded to the post-modern age. In the past 10 to 15 years, that too has yielded to another age. The change is so recent that many scholars have not been able to reliably quantify it or even agree on a name for it.

Luckily for you, you have stumbled on this article. You will now know something that those scholars who are right now stumbling in the darkness trying to describe, do not. The age we are currently in is called Cyber-Tribalism.

Cyber-Tribalism came into being, thanks to our nourishing, addictive dependent relationship with technology. Without technology, civilization would immediate regress to its tribal state once again, before it could regain a foothold in agricultural based ones. There is so much to know about anything that even leaders in their respective disciplines forget the basic knowledge they learned when starting out, need to consult with journals to refresh themselves and rely on other systems of knowledge recording. The result is that if technology were eliminated, even our brightest would lose considerable amounts of our collected knowledge. I mention this not as a possibility but to illuminate why government has placed so much emphasis on developing and protecting technological infrastructure. It is the first thing an enemy would target to cripple them.

It should not be news to you when I say most of us spend more of our time interacting with technology than reality. We are so good at this interaction that we even have cyber-communities. How has humanity stumbled into Cyber-Tribalism? It is because our loyalty to our cyber-community has now eclipsed the importance of our loyalty to our physical community.

Online groups form around not physical space, but by held beliefs. We have poured our cyber-persona into the stream of zeros and ones and allied ourselves with like minded souls, and anyone not in our cyber-tribe is our enemy. Media on cyberspace have chosen not to be apolitical. Like the legacy media before them, each have a political leaning. However, they have added the capability that allows their consumers to block any people who’s views, beliefs or messages do not align with their aspirations. The result is the creation of what is known as echo-chambers, where participants only interact with individuals who all promote the same beliefs. The offense of being exposed to a thought they do not agree with can cause that person’s cyber-persona to be instantly wiped from their perception.

The zenith of technological achievement has led us to this Cyber-Tribalism, a state similar to the life we experienced at the dawn of humanity. We have spent most of our chronological range in a tribal state, our mind is hard-wired to respond tribally, so its only natural that our basest instincts drive us into the comfort that tribalism offers. But, is that really what we want for ourselves?

Cyber-Tribal arguments fired at enemies, never reach their intended target, as they too exist primarily in their own echo-chamber. The same evidence can be used by both to come to different conclusions. Actions of one clique, regardless of intent, is twisted into an outrage by the filter before it enters the opposing camp. Only ideas that align with the faction's bias can be accepted. Over time, this leads to increased polarization. Evidence that does not follow the Cyber-Tribal narrative is deemed false, or misinformation.

The most serious problem with Cyber-Tribalism is that it leads to authoritarian leadership. Information needs to be managed as not to corrupt the minds of the tribe. Free will, expression, critical thought and even compassion are not permitted. The credo of the tribe is not up for debate. Not following it exactly, is punished with banishment just as they would an enemy.

The hallmark of a free society is that people can make personal decisions by themselves. Certainly, the government has a role to educate and show various options. A government can create laws to restrict unwanted actions, such as making drugs illegal. Deciding when an action violates the rights of another person is a decision for judges. In the end, the ultimate decision is the individual's responsibility.

Despite the fact that in recent years we have had a string of narcissistic political leaders who have lied in order to guide the population to their desired behavior, this is not normal. A leader of a free nation presents truthful information to their citizens and allows them to make up their own mind on the issue.

Not all people are the same. They live different lives, with different problems, different experiences, different beliefs, different passions, different goals. There is no way a leader can know the intricacies of everyone’s lives, and arbitrarily decide what they all must do.

If you think that a political leader should be able to compel a person to wear a particular tie, particular clothing, work specific hours, at a certain job, sell to only certain customers and not to another group, inject a substance into their veins, or even cut out a spleen or some other organ of their body, or any other activity that only concerns themselves or other consenting individuals; then lets give up this facade of an experiment in democracy. Let us call it what it is, authoritarianism.

If you think think the correct response to hearing an idea you do not approve of is to shout it down, and restrict debate, all you will succeed in is to create factions who hold extreme views of that idea. Ideas should be freely expressed and freely ridiculed if necessary, but permitted to be expressed. Alchemists believed they could turn lead into gold, it was ridiculous, it was a failure, but it led to the science of chemistry. Ideas borne in madness often spark other revolutionary ideas.

‘Freedom is not free’, is the soldier’s expression, noting it often requires young men sacrifice their lives. It also requires each person be truly informed of the issues that face the nation, and not merely being able to spout the talking points of their tribe’s lead. Citizens must be wary of lies that authoritarianism relies and feeds on.

Cyber-Tribalism is swollen with noise and self-interest. It does not lead to personal freedom, but to adherence to unnatural beliefs, doomed to fail. The true work of a contributing citizen is not to march with placards and tend their own garden, but to lift their eyes to the wider horizon. The strength of a city, a nation, even a civilization, is not measured by how fiercely we guard our comforts, but by how bravely we question them. We must dare to ask: are my beliefs grounded in truth, or simply habits passed down and wrapped in certainty? The future will not be built by those clinging to what’s easy, but by those willing to challenge themselves—for the greater good, for the common cause, for something nobler than self. Freedom demands more than opinion. It demands thought, humility, and the will to rise above what is convenient toward what is right. The only problem is that the first step toward the future has to be made by you.

Zaarin -- Founder n·h·g