Lesson 10.1: Tribe is Truth, and Truth is Tribe: Part V of Autism and Superminds

Why we are capable of accessing hidden truths unavailable to the non-autistic.

I don’t like radical anything, left or right. I have a radical dislike of radicals.
    .Temple Grandin, autist, 1993 interview.

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It appears I severely underestimated the number of articles I require to fully explain the relationship between autism and superminds. But perhaps I should’ve guessed: supermind thinking is the most important mental dynamic for making sense of the personal experience of living with the dark gift.

In this article, the fifth in the series, we’ll focus on The all-important, all-influencing, all-clarifying biological relationship between tribalism and truth.

Most of this article will explore the fascinating and deeply-intertwined connections between supermind thinking and individual belief. In particular, we will commence a deep dive into the question of how the human brain is designed to find and establish truth, and why our own autistic brain generates and affirms truth using neural dynamics that are fundamentally distinct from those used by non-autistic folks.

By the end of this article, I hope you may begin to see knowledge and insight—and your own ability to attain knowledge and insight—in a bold new light.

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The human tradition of science began wrenching itself away from superstition when Polish astronomer Copernicus published evidence suggesting the Earth orbited the sun, even though virtually every human on the planet believed the sun orbited the Earth. This event has been mythologized by contemporary scientists as a conflict between noble reason, in the heroic form of Copernicus, and credulous dogma, in the benighted form of the Christian tradition which dominated Europe at the time and maintained the Earth was the center of the universe.

A battle between scientific light and superstitious darkness, is how Copernicus’ historical theory of heliocentrism is framed in the science tribe textbooks.

But we should always be suspicious of tribal mythologies that impute ignorance and bad motives to one’s enemy, and intelligence and decency to one’s tribemates. That’s exactly what human brains are designed to do, after all.

Non-autistic brains, that is.

It’s useful to consider why, exactly, it was so difficult for sixteenth century folks to accept what Copernicus was offering, despite his facts and ratiocinations. Modern scientists usually contend the true reason everyone rejected Copernicus was because Christians were unwilling to let go of blind faith. “If the Bible says the sun goes round the Earth, then that’s what I believe!” is how they’re often caricatured.

Though tribal beliefs always have moral feelings associated with them—indeed, that’s a pretty good way to know if a particular thought of yours is getting generated by tribal circuitry: do you feel a prominent sense of right or wrong as you contemplate certain ideas and actions, particularly in the context of a group?—the obstacle preventing Europeans from endorsing Copernicus’ proposal was not dogmatic faith in their religion. And it certainly did not stem from an inability to comprehend how the Earth could possibly go round the sun. The problem wasn’t closed-mindedness or stupidity, even though such accusations are frequently hurled at the Christians who rejected Copernicus.

As happens surprisingly often in mindscience, it was a writer rather than a scientist who first gave voice to the true reason why tribal folks, like the Christian tribe and their antagonistic tribe of scientists, are so reluctant to change their opinion:

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives. 
   .Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?

The whole reason for the existence of tribalism as the fundamental dynamic of supermind thought is to ensure that the supermind—the tribe—can think as one, function as one, act as one. And to achieve that, tribalism generates a rich network of mental connections—social connections—between members of the tribe to bind them together. This is the true power of shared attention and tribalism, the main components of sapiens supermind thinking: that by imbuing ideas and prospective goals with moral emotion—in particular, endorsing ideas and behaviors from one’s own tribe as good and righteous and rejecting those from other tribes as bad and unethical—the minds that feel such moral force end up getting knitted up with other tribal minds through a great many practical social knots—not because of blind faith in a shared belief system.

In short, the neural dynamics of tribalism acting within a brain generate a rich suite of self-sustaining mind-to-mind social dynamics that sustain tribal coherence in the face of threats to harmonious tribal action. Let’s call these self-sustaining social dynamics the burden—the tribal burden.

For a non-autistic human to change their mind, they must overcome this burden.

Thus, for a sixteenth-century European to publicly accept that the Earth goes round the sun wasn’t merely a matter of changing one’s mind. It required sweeping and impactful changes twanging almost every thread of one’s social life.

If you are a sixteenth-century Christian parent and embrace heliocentrism, what do you tell your children? Their school insists the sun goes round the Earth. Their church insists the sun goes round the Earth. Their neighbors insist the sun goes round the Earth, as do the neighbors’ kids. Do you want your son or daughter to be the only one touting a radical doctrine that will get them shunned by classmates, churchmates, and neighbors?

What about your spouse? What happens to your marriage if you start promoting prohibited ideas that your spouse disapproves of? This is exactly what burdened Charles Darwin and prompted him to delay the publication of his landmark Origin of Species for twenty years. Darwin’s wife was a devout Christian, as was her family, and he was rightfully daunted by the prospect of disrupting his intimate tribal connections, for the publication of his book did elicit rancorous pushback from religious and political tribes that continues to this day.

What about your colleagues at work? Your boss? Yesterday they saw you as a fellow member of the tribe. Today you start spouting radical notions that not only go against what they all believe, they’ll run their own social calculations and consider what would happen to their relationships with their own family, neighbors, and church if they allow themselves to consider the truth of heliocentrism. Your boss may very well decide that you’re too disruptive for the tribe and let you go. In 1710, the physicist William Whiston, who succeeded his mentor Isaac Newton as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was expelled from university because he rejected the notion that torment in hellfire was eternal.

What about public-facing leaders of the tribe? Those whose status and income is dependent on tribal convictions, like priests, professors, peddlers, politicians, and Popes? For them, adopting new conviction is hardly a simple matter of changing one’s mind. To become a heretical priest, radical professor, or Bible-doubting Pope would entail the dissolution of one’s livelihood and standing—or even risk the dissolution of one’s tribe.

Tribes reject blasphemous ideas not because tribal brains are too dogmatic to grasp the truth. They don’t want to see, because they instinctively grasp the steep burden and chaos and most especially loss that will intrude their lives if they give blasphemy its day in court.

Galileo invited colleagues to peer through his magical telescope at Jupiter and see, for the first time in human consciousness, a moon other than Earth’s own. Jupiter boasted four visible moons in Galileo’s far-seeing lens, visually demonstrating that the Earth was not the center of the universe. You might suppose, how could an intelligent person possibly cling to the notion that everything orbits the Earth after looking through Galileo’s glass? Surely witnessing truth with one’s own eyeballs should be enough to overcome any tribal devotions.

But that’s not what happened.

Many of Galileo’s colleagues simply refused to look. They didn’t want to deal with the burden that would ensue if Galileo was correct. (Such as acknowledging that one’s entire academic career was based on falsehoods.) One colleague tried but gave up before seeing anything because he said it gave him a bad headache. Another put his eye to the lens but claimed he did not see any of the moons that Galileo was talking about.

For a healthy human brain, tribe is truth. Shared truth.

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That’s why denouncing tribalism is naïve and misguided. You can’t run a company, publish books, run a political campaign, build a bridge, fly to the moon, smash atoms, cure disease, or complete any collective human project without effective tribal thinking. If we want to build a strong bridge, we must all agree that steel is stronger than wood, that bolts are stronger than string, that suspension bridges are stronger across long distances than cantilever bridges, and we must all report to work at the same place and time and follow the same blueprints.

The human supermind must create and enforce consensus to execute collective behavior in any context. Medicine, filmmaking, energy production, car manufacturing, hurricane relief—all require (close-minded) tribal thinking to function.

The closed-mindedness and distrust of outside opinions that arise in every tribe—in every supermind—is an essential precondition for effective group performance. What if Copernicus declared that Satanic elves lived on the moon? Or that the sun was an angel? Or that Earth’s orbit would plunge humankind into the fires of the sun in a matter of months? The Christian tribe would have been well-served by rejecting such notions out of hand, without further consideration.

Tribalism is an essential and healthy and astonishingly sophisticated set of mental dynamics necessary for effective supermind thought. It’s wise for a tribe to reject tribe-threatening ideas without giving them serious consideration.

Of course, this deep truth about the human brain means that you, pilgrim, are destined to play the role of Copernicus and Darwin. The role of Barbara McClintock, whose brilliant groundbreaking work on genes was disparaged by her colleagues as “mystical,” “cute,” “peculiar,” and the product of an overactive imagination. She faced severe difficulty obtaining funding, getting hired, and getting published, yet continued to do her unique, trailblazing work on her own until finally, four decades later, she was awarded the Nobel Prize. The role of Lynn Margulis, another biologist whose work was rejected by the science tribe as “fringe,” “fanciful,” and “unsubstantiated,” even though it’s now accepted as foundational to our understanding of biological evolution.

Though McClintock and Margulis are often held up as examples of sexism and misogyny in science—and there’s certainly evidence one can marshal to support such contention—I’d advise you, pilgrim, to step back and instead consider their experiences within the context of tribalism. Rather than viewing these female biologists as rejected by male colleagues (true), they were rejected by the science tribe in the exact same manner as men who proposed ideas different than those endorsed by the tribe: Copernicus, Darwin, Cantor, Boltzmann, Alfred Wegener, Gregor Mendel, Stephen Grossberg, Carl Woese—the list is very long. Here’s one leading biologist’s rejection of Darwin’s theory of evolution: “Darwin's theory is a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievous in its tendency."

If you want to understand why some new science findings are accepted and celebrated quickly, and others rejected or scorned, it usually comes down to whether the tribe was expecting something new. Watson and Crick were immediately celebrated for discovering the structure of DNA because there was a science-tribe race to discover the structure of DNA. Einstein was quickly lauded for his “Miracle Year” when he published several tribe-transforming papers on different physics subjects, because the papers addressed well-known problems that the tribe was seeking answers for—such as Einstein’s explanation of the mysterious “photoelectric effect” and his explanation of enigmatic “Brownian Motion.” Simply put, Einstein’s discoveries served known tribal needs.

But McClintock and Margulis—and Copernicus—offered new ideas that nobody was looking for. They weren’t solving problems the tribe wanted answers for, but rather, proposing answers for questions the tribe considered solved and closed.

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Tribe is truth. To be a member of a supermind—to be a non-autistic human—means to understand facts and notions through the filter of one’s tribe. This is no intellectual flaw nor moral shortcoming. Not some human stain to be cleaned. It is quite literally the exact same mental dynamics we find operating on every rung of the ladder of purpose: diverse thinking elements, each with their own unique structure and purpose, find a way to link together into an integrated mental network that thinks holistically and harmoniously.

Indeed, this very achievement establishes a new rung of the ladder of purpose. The thinking elements of one level of thinking join together to form a new level of thinking.

Tribe is truth on every rung. Tribe becomes truth in order to ascend to a new rung.

This deep reality about the supermind holds two profound consequences for those of us fitted with the dark gift:

Non-autistic individuals’ knowledge is limited by what the tribe can know as a group.

Autistic individuals naturally discover, understand, and promote truths different from the tribe, limited only by one’s time, resourcefulness, and imagination.

Our quirky Why module doesn’t make us orient effectively to other people, which disrupts our shared attention mechanisms, which disrupts our tribal thinking mechanisms, which disrupts our social integration mechanisms, which causes our brains to be less sensitive to the convictions of the tribe. (Or, perhaps more accurately, to process tribal convictions in our own unique way.) Instead, our brain develops its own intense, unmediated relationship with reality as it is presented directly to us.

Non-autistic people feel intense discomfort thinking and acting against the values of their tribe. They feel a constant inner pressure to adjust their convictions to suit the supermind. They feel a moral resistance—and a pragmatic tribal burden of anticipated social hassle and loss—when confronted with notions that lay outside tribal conviction. Such feelings do not blaze as intensely in our own darkly gifted brain.

This poses two momentous and experience-defining consequences for us:

1.     We can attain truths more easily, generate novel ideas more easily, and come up with new solutions more easily than our non-autistic counterparts.

2.     We are usually doomed to live like Copernicus or McClintock: our truths, ideas, and solutions will mostly be rejected by the tribe.

Perhaps the most defining refrain from those of us endowed with the dark gift is I feel like I’m on a different wavelength than everyone else. Or everybody seems to be following a rulebook I never read. These commonplace autistic feelings are expressions of the frank fact that our own personal truth is often entirely distinct from tribal truth.

Which circles us back to the Dark Gift Dilemma. To be autistic means you can get at the truth easier, especially in our democratic digitized world, but it also means rejection, alienation, isolation, because the tribe is rarely able to handle our truths.

Warren Buffet frequently makes observations about tribalism in business quite similar to Tolstoy’s, adding a dark gift twist: It is a feature of the financial world. . . that most people would rather be wrong in a group than right on their own; the people who insist on being right on their own tend to have the psychological equipment to match.

For you, pilgrim, the matching psychological equipment is autism.

Each of us must choose:

Do I want to be right on my own? Do I want to nurture my talent for attaining truths inaccessible to others, in many cases deeper and more insightful truth, as opposed to the watered down compromises that make up tribal truth?

Or do I want to be wrong with the group? Do I want to not live as an outcast and instead find some way to mitigate tribal rejection even at the cost of attaining such glittering truths?

For many of us, it’s a difficult dilemma.

For others, it’s no choice at all.

Previous LESSON: Lesson 10: The "Autistic Role" is Found Throughout the Kingdom of Life: Part IV of Autism and Superminds

Next LESSON: Lesson 11: The Why Module

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