The need to belong to a group is certainly inherent to our biology. For most of human history, it was of greatest importance to recognize who belongs to your group and who doesn't. Be separated from your group meant death. Evolution has written tribalism into our DNA.
But how does tribalism shape our concept of identity? Is tribalism the reason identity exists in the first place? I have long been puzzled by the question why people have preferences when it comes to music, food, apparel, decoration etc., that seem to be closely related but not entirely correlated with their cultural backgrounds. It makes sense when you consider that evolution needed to come up with an algorithm that lets individuals group together to form tribes that share a common identity, while also allowing tribes to merge and split up and individuals to migrate between tribes. If the bonds within a tribe were too strong, their gene pool would be too small. If they were too loose, collaboration would suffer.
The solution was to have many different dimensions for people to align themselves on. Each individual has preferences for each of these dimensions, that are determined by their genes, their upbringing and sometimes also random chance. Some are even flexible, so individuals can shift their preference if there's a need for it. This multitude of dimensions allows tribes to form, by selecting those dimensions that align most for tribe members, while clashing with anyone or anything outside the tribe they could reasonably expect to encounter.
So, if we were living in a hypothetical world where tribalism is abolished and no human considers themself part of any group other than humanity, what use does identity have in such a world? Moreover, wouldn't you have to abolish identity as well, to maintain such a state? Assume, in our hypothetical scenario, that there is one dimension of preference that people disagree on. For example, let's say some people like broccoli and others don't. Then wouldn't it make sense for the people who like broccoli to stick together? After all, they could grow broccoli, share broccoli recipes and produce broccoli related music together. For the others, it makes just as much sense to form a group, as they can collectively stay away from any restaurant that serves broccoli, exchange knowledge about how to remove unwanted broccoli that grows in their gardens and paint expressionistic paintings depicting broccoli as their nemesis.
So are we doomed to either live with the fact that there will always be war or give up our individual identities and live in a fascist utopia?
No. Did you think this argumentation is sound? If so, you're forgetting that the world is not black and white. It's not "either eternal war or fascism" as much as it isn't "either broccoli yum or broccoli bah". Those dimensions that people can use to define their identities are continuous spectra! I personally like to eat broccoli. If I had the choice to get either broccoli or carrots, I'd choose the broccoli, but if there were only carrots, I'd eat those. That's not a good basis for forming a conflict. It's the power of indifference.
We don't need to abolish identity to get rid of war, because war is one of the most extreme results of tribalism. We might get away with "dialing down" identity a bit, for it might just have the effect of "dialing down" armed conflicts as well.
But hey, this is just a theory. And it's not looking like people are on board with "dialing down identity" any time soon. So ... uhh, thanks for reading, I guess.
