Lesson 8: Autism and the Supermind Part II: Tribalism

What is Us vs. Them when your brain doesn't form an Us?

I also struggled socially. At the incredibly unconventional Steiner school I attended from an early age, a place where people believe in fairies, I was immediately marked out as too weird for the other weirdos. There was a cool crowd and I most certainly was not on the guest list. I overcompensated by being loud, talkative and incredibly clingy. I wore my heart on my sleeve and cried openly and often, earning me the nickname ‘crybaby’. 
   .Sara Gibbs, “What It’s Like to Get an Autism Diagnosis After Years of Being Called Difficult, Dramatic and Lazy”

1. TRIBES MEAN LOVE

What does it mean to be human? For many poets, prophets, and philosophers, to be human means to be connected to the human tribe—to be a united member of the supermind.

“Only connect!” proclaimed author E. M. Forster, while poet John Donne asserted, “No man is an island.” The Dalai Lama concurred, insisting, "We human beings are social beings.” Mother Teresa echoed the Lama, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

Venerated human rights activist Demond Tutu places the notion of humanity squarely within the notion of the tribe: "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." And, "You can't be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships."

For most people, throughout most of history, emotionally bonding with other human beings was viewed as the ideal of decency, compassion, and fulfillment. Person-to-person connection is usually ranked #1, or close to it, on most folks’ list of Key Things that Define our Humanity.

Indeed, one of the very first thinkers to philosophize about the supermind, Aristotle, prefigured the Dalai Lama by more than two thousand years when he professed, "Man is by nature a social animal.” In fact, Aristotle was so sure that supermind integration was the supreme mark of humanity that he declared being a loner was downright inhuman.

The über-philosopher’s quote in full: “Man is by nature a social animal. An individual who is unsocial naturally is either beneath our notice or more than human."

In other words, for Aristotle, to be autistic was to be beneath the notice of others. (Or, perhaps, to be more than human.) To be autistic is to lack the very quality that poets, prophets, and philosophers spotlight as most richly human: to be part of the tribe.

Those of us endowed with the dark gift often do not connect. We are often found on an island, alone. We are decidedly not social beings or social animals. This is the core autistic experience: sweeping difficulties forming bonds with other feeling folk.

But if connecting with others is the most human thing we can do, then is it fair to ask if we autists are human?

.2 TRIBES MEAN HATE

In this set of articles about the supermind, we explain why the specific neural dynamics that embody autism lead to our extensive social challenges, including our difficulties integrating with tribes. We’ll learn how a physiological deficit in our Why module produces such far-reaching problems with fitting into groups and getting along with non-auts. But we’ll also learn how this same deficit generates unique opportunities for achievement, fulfillment, and revelation.

In the previous lesson, we looked at the first of two critical supermind dynamics: shared attention. In this lesson, we address the other: tribalism.

Scientists hovered and sniffed around tribalism for a solid century, deploying diverse jargon: sectarianism, ethnocentrism, normative social influence, herd behavior, cults, social identity theory, sociocentrism, groupthink, social categorization bias—though these days the most common term is the intergoup bias.

Whatever scientists choose to call tribalism, and whatever their particular academic stance on the subject, a century of scientists have consistently expressed a profound sense of moral concern while addressing the science of tribes.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, anthropologists, geneticists, and psychologists laid out elaborate theories arguing that their own (imagined) tribe was morally superior to other tribes. Such conviction was implicit or explicit in scientific movements such as eugenics, social Darwinism, poygenism, racial hierarchies, unilineal evolution, racial typologies, phrenology, and for a while, much of American physical anthropology. These tribal scientists declared, “Tribalism is good and right! Because our tribe is the best!” A view perhaps captured best by upper-class statistician Francis Galton, who announced, “I do not join in the belief that the African is our equal in brain or in heart; I do not think that the average negro cares for his liberty as much as an Englishman, or as a Frenchman, or as one of the people of the United States of America."

In this light, the quintessentially human act of connecting with others in our tribe seems a bit less noble, peaceable, and, er, human.

By the twenty-first century, however, scientists were rushing to join a new tribe—the anti-tribe tribe. These days, scientists call upon humans to somehow overcome their human nature in order to become, well, more human:

"The intergroup bias is a fundamental aspect of human psychology, and it's essential to recognize and overcome it if we want to achieve true cooperation and understanding," saith Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

"Tribalism is the enemy of progress, and it's what holds us back from achieving our full potential," saith celebrity physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

"Tribalism is a form of collective narcissism, where we worship our own group and dehumanize others," saith psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

So is tribalism the loving and noble achievement of the sapiens supermind, empowering humanity to deeply connect with one another? Or is it our greatest problem, a divisive human flaw we must strive to conquer?

Fortunately for those of us afflicted with the dark gift, we need not solve this quandary because tribalism doesn’t work in our brains.

3.         TRIBALISM IS MENTAL DYNAMICS

Supermind thinking resides on the fourth rung of the ladder of purpose. Human brains are the only brains on Earth to wield four distinct layers of mental activity simultaneously, including supermind thinking.

Supermind thinking, which takes place between multiple brains, is little different than modular thinking (which takes place between multiple neural modules in a brain), or neural thinking (which takes place between multiple neurons in a module), or molecular thinking (which takes place between multiple molecules in a neuron). All these forms of thinking are mental dynamics. In other words, they are all compatible forms of physical activity.

Supermind thinking consists of two main forms of mind-to-mind dynamics. One is shared attention, which governs how multiple independent brains share consciousness of the same subject, such as a bright orange basketball. The other is tribalism, which governs how multiple brains think about or take action on the shared subject, such as ten brains deciding to play a game of five-on-five basketball with the ball. (Because all ten brains must share a common understanding of the rules, values, and purpose of the game in order to play the game.)

Shared attention unites two or more minds within the same collective consciousness. Tribalism empowers those minds to execute effective joint behavior.

It’s important to recognize that even though most folks don’t usually think of group activity (such as tribe formation) in the same biological terms as neural activity, both forms of activity are firmly anchored on the same physical principles. Namely, the dynamics of purpose, including flow, interaction, change, choice, and goal pursuit.

The entire point of supermind thinking is shared by all rungs of thought on the ladder of purpose: to adapt more effectively to a chaotic world.

Supermind thinking, including shared attention and tribalism, were designed by millions of years of hominid evolution to help superminds—tribes, for most of human history—to think and act more productively in their wildly complicated environment.

Tribalism isn’t a temporary aberration or an evolutionary mistake, nor is it “collective narcissism” nor “cultural” nor “something taught and learned.” It’s a deeply rooted physical mechanism for fourth-rung thinking, embodied within highly refined neural circuitry in the human brain. (Tribalism is also an essential component of the neural dynamics of self-awareness and the neural mechanism by which we experience our sense of self—“me”; as we’ll learn in later articles in this series.)

Tribalism is a very effective form of conscious collective thinking that over the past couple of hundred thousand years was the mental dynamic most responsible for humankind’s triumph over the Earth.

So how did tribalism come about?

4.         EVOLUTION OF THE SUPERMIND

To build a new mind on a higher rung of the ladder, purpose must first get the old minds on the lower rung to work together. To think together.

A simple example is found in amoeba mind.

Amoebas are single-celled beasties who possess “bacteria minds”:  first-rung minds wielding molecules as thinking elements. But when food runs low, individual amoebas come together and unite to form an “amoeba supermind”—a tribe of cells that thinks as one and works harmoniously to build a tower of spores that will (hopefully) drift off to more fertile lands.

To build a new, higher mind out of old, lesser minds demands three things. First, the old minds must get physically positioned close enough to each other than they can communicate effectively in real-time. Second, the old minds must develop new means of communicating with one another, mind-to-mind. Third, once the old minds are united in a supermind wired up with mind-to-mind communication, the supermind must develop new supermind-wide mental dynamics by organizing the new forms of mind-to-mind communication into collective thought.

Amoebas accomplished the first by evolving a new communication system that “broadcasts” a signaling molecule that other amoebas follow to the broadcaster before merging with the broadcaster and transmitting their own signaling molecule for other amoebas to follow. Once amoebas are brought together through chemical communication, they develop physical means of communicating mind-to-mind, including tunneling nanotubes, cell adhesion molecules, and ion fluxes. These local communication mechanisms are then orchestrated across the entire supermind to achieve collective thought and action.

To build a supermind out of sapiens brains required the same three achievements:

1.        Getting brains together.

2.         Inventing new ways for brains to communicate.

3.         Inventing new supermind-wide dynamics of thought.

In the previous supermind article, we learned how the evolution of shared attention was a powerful mechanism for bringing two human brains together and establishing brain-to-brain communication. Beginning with an impulse to seek out and monitor other brains’ eyes, shared attention continued to develop new forms of neural resonance between brains until a sophisticated and potent means of resonant mind-to-mind communication was finally established that empowered multiple brains to be fully conscious of the same subject at the same time:

Spoken language.

But other evolutionary mechanisms also helped push human brains together to form sapiens superminds. Such as bringing together multiple human brains to resonate upon the same dramatic subject of shared attention. Such as a campfire. Or cave art.

Humans sitting around a fire and staring together into the hypnotic flames established shared resonance among the gathered brains. Also achieved by standing together in front of an elaborate painting of a magical hunt in a torchlit cave. And if one of the gathered brains then assumed the role of storyteller, standing in front of the flames or art and broadcasting a stream of useful knowledge that the resonating brains could process together—now we have rudimentary supermind thinking.

But to fully establish flexible, reliable, collective supermind thinking, additional dynamics were required. Shared attention and its highest expression, language, brought humans together and established mind-to-mind thinking. But to establish tribal thinking—collective mental dynamics involving many or all minds in a group of humans—needed more than shared attention.

It needed tribalism.

5.         Evolution of Tribalism

Once it became possible to communicate effectively mind-to-mind, it was necessary to guide that communication so that multiple minds could think together. More practically, so they could agree on a goal and work collectively to achieve that goal. Supermind thinking required a shared understanding of shared subjects of attention and a shared response pointing to a shared goal.

Deciding which social goals are worthy and unworthy falls within the domain of morality. So it should be no surprise that human moral valuation arose as an essential component of supermind thinking.

In order to designate this thought as supermind-worthy but that thought as supermind-unworthy required applying moral feeling to supermind thoughts. This required the development of moral circuitry in the human brain interfacing with the Why module, the part of the brain responsible for generating conscious feelings (and autism).

As ideas were communicated between minds in a tribe (through shared attention mechanisms), new moral circuitry began assigning moral feelings to these “social” ideas (ideas originating in other minds or involving other minds). Though it’s very difficult to assess the timeline and stages of how this may have unfolded historically from limited archaeological evidence, one straightforward way it may have unfolded was to start assigning “morally good” feelings to any social idea that originated from within your tribe.

If your tribe’s storyteller sang a tale around the campfire, your brand new “moral feelings” made you believe in the story and view the story as right and good. If the story was that a giant eagle laid an egg that hatched into the Earth, and from hatched Earth sprouted the first men, then this story was accepted as good and right. Sacred, even. And if the same moral circuitry got installed in every brain around the campfire, the entire tribe can now think harmoniously about the origin of the Earth and the history of mankind. Yes! We all agree that Earth was hatched from a holy egg! We are the egg people!

The supermind can then employ language drawn from the morally enhanced story to describe itself as a unitary being. As a “tribe” or “people.” In the names of aboriginal tribes across the globe we find a great many that mean “people” or “humans,” including:

Diné (Navajo)

Anishinaabe (Ojibwe/Chippewa)

Maasai (Kenya and Tanzania)

Inuit

Lakota/Dakota/Nakota (Sioux)

Lenape (Delaware)

Ainu (Japan)

Hopi

Māori

Nama (Namibia)

It’s also worth observing that in early texts, words for “people” and “humanity” predated words for “I” and “me.”

But these same tribes used different words to describe those not in the tribe—words that mean “other” or “foreigner” or, quite often (as even Aristotle implied), “not human.”

At some point the same moral circuitry that assigned positive moral feelings to thoughts originating in one’s tribe began to assign negative moral feelings to thoughts originating outside the tribe. If an outsider insists the Earth was carried hither on the back of a tortoise, then the supermind needs to resist such thoughts to make sure there’s no disruption of smooth and integrated supermind thinking. If half the people in the tribe believe the egg story and want to gather sacred eggs, but the other half believe the tortoise story and want to gather sacred turtles, the supermind will be riven and unable to pursue goals effectively. The tribal supermind cannot afford to question the egg story, so it cannot afford to even consider the possibility of the tortoise story.

So the tortoise story must not merely be discarded, it must be labeled evil or morally wrong. The constituent brains in the tribal supermind cannot risk any brain indulging in such supermind-shattering thoughts, any more that you can afford to have your visual modules start to reject everything your auditory modules tell your brain. Each mind in a tribe must feel strongly that outsider ideas are dark and dubious. It’s a matter of cohesive and effective supermind thought.

But the moral feelings serve double-duty helping sustain the supermind. If every brain in the tribe shares the same moral convictions, everyone in the tribe will feel intensely the tortoise story is dangerous blasphemy. This shared emotional state—which physically resonates across the brains in the tribe—also enhances supermind cohesion. “Together, we feel and believe! Together, we cast out the blasphemer!”

Social values have entered supermind thinking, including moral convictions and moral outrage.

Now we can understand why anytime someone pontificates about tribes and tribalism, their disquisition is inevitably well-larded with moral justifications and exhortations. Either celebrating the goodness and righteousness of our tribe (always the “human tribe,” as the Ainu, Hopi, and Inuit called and viewed themselves, and celebrated by the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, Demond Tutu, and Francis Galton.) Or denouncing the wickedness of that other tribe (as twenty-first century scientists Daniel Kahneman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Jonathan Haidt do.)

The fact of the matter is that for supermind thought to exist at all requires moral feeling. If every person in a tribe nurses their own assumptions, their own facts, their own beliefs, their own moral code, then tribal thinking becomes impossible. The tribe can’t build a barn (let’s build an ice cream shop instead! No, a swimming pool! Hey, what’s a barn?), the tribe can’t share common joys (let’s celebrate the birth of our neighbor’s son! No, let’s wait ‘til the boy is two to celebrate! No, let’s celebrate the birth of our other neighbor’s new cow! ) or fight against other tribes (Let’s create a defensive wall! No, let’s sneak attack them! Let’s negotiate! No, let’s join their tribe! Let’s just run away!)

If you want to think together in harmony—if you wish to enjoy common knowledge, values, and goals, then you must feel moral hostility towards alternative knowledge, values, and goals.

Even those scientists who advocate for the dismantling of tribal morality could not achieve such an (impossible) goal unless they first persuade a large tribe of humans to share such conviction and embrace it as a common moral good. Which, I hope you can see, is an expression of a normal human tribe engaging in normal supermind thinking: our science-enlightened tribe is wise and good and together we will convince all those narcissistic science-ignorant tribes to stop interfering with other tribes!

Humans can’t escape tribal thinking, even when they’re denouncing tribal thinking, because human brains are fundamentally designed to function as thinking elements in a supermind. Tribal thinking is supermind thinking, which is human thinking.

Humans can’t escape tribalism. But what of us fitted with the dark gift?

6.         Autism and Tribalism

Those scientists who decry the ills of tribalism, warning of tribalism’s malevolent nature and calling for the rejection of supermind thinking—I’ve never heard any of them anoint autists as an enlightened ideal to emulate. Yet, if one truly believes that humanity is better served by rejecting all forms of tribalism, then those of us endowed with the dark gift should be the paragons of enlightened revolution.

For the simple reason we don’t participate in tribal thinking.

Autists are not subject to the dire ills (or unappreciated benefits) of tribalism. Autism prevents our brains from fully engaging with the supermind.

Autism originates in a defect inside the Why module. Inside a very recent part of the human Why module, the part that causes other human beings to “pop out” as important, interesting, special environmental stimuli. In non-autistic brains, the Why module makes people feel intensely they should pay attention to other folks. In our brains, the Why module produces no such feelings.

In autistic brains, our moral circuitry is still intact and operational. So is our shared attention circuitry.¹ Thus, the wiring for supermind thinking is usually intact and present in our craniums. The problem with autism isn’t that our supermind circuitry is garbled. It’s that our supermind circuitry never gets properly activated.

Socializing starts with the Why module motivating us to orient onto other humans. From there, our shared attention circuitry locks onto other people’s eyes and begins resonating on their eye gaze, facial expression, body language, and verbal communication. From there, moral circuitry kicks in, telling us that this person here is good because she’s part of our tribe, while that person there is bad because she’s part of some other tribe.

The neural circuitry governing human connection is sophisticated and strong. But in autistic brains, it never gets initiated correctly.

For most folks, their brain rolls out a red carpet leading through the front gate into a palace of social thinking, full of well-appointed rooms designed to facilitate participation in tribes. Our darkly gifted brain possesses such a palace. But ain’t no red carpet in our skull. Instead, our autistic brain rolls out a welter of other carpets—a blue carpet, an orange carpet, a chartreuse carpet—all leading to alternate pagodas of thought.

We aren’t naturally and automatically guided into the mental dynamics of tribalism, the way the human brain was designed. When non-autistic folks step outside and see a group of people, they’ll almost always focus on the people. But when we step out, our attention can be drawn to anything at all. An interesting smell. A beguiling pattern of cracks on the sidewalk. The formula for electric charge. The green beret on that girl’s head. Or, possibly, the group of people.

What our particular brain gravitates to depends on our own individual unique brain architecture. Every autist, like every human, is one of a kind, with their own distinctive constellation of interests, tendencies, and dislikes. (Though you may have encountered stereotypes holding that most autists like math or science, this is not true at all. Autists are as likely to be obsessed with sports, business, fashion, or comedy as math.) Though non-auts also possess unique brains, their brains naturally prioritize humans over anything else.

One of the defining experiences of the dark gift is feeling like everyone else is on a different wavelength. That everybody shares a common understanding you do not. This is, in fact, perfectly true. They are all participating in supermind thinking. We are not. (Or, more accurately, we are doing so partially and ineffectively.) They are engaging in shared attention and tribalism. We are not.

They are enjoying a shared collective sense of right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, good and evil, and readily organize themselves around such convictions. Though we certainly feel things are right or evil, our own moral feelings do not naturally align themselves with the moral feelings of the group.

Many contemporary scientists, philosophers, and spiritualists argue that to embrace our humanity, we must “overcome tribalism.”

Congratulations, pilgrim! You are apparently the exact sort of higher human dreamed of by the moralists because your brain naturally overcame tribalism!

Unless humanity is defined by connecting with others. In which case, maybe we’re not so human after all. . .

Previous LESSON: Lesson 7: Autism and The Supermind Part I: Shared Attention

Next LESSON: Lesson 9: The Dark Gift Dilemma

Read FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS about Dr. Ogas and the Dark Gift

1. Some autistic brains may have impaired moral circuitry.  There are many biological ways to  disrupt the Why module, and some of these ways can disrupt other brain circuitry, too. The same way that a swarm of ants eating their way through your house may chew through the floorboards—but they may also chew through your dining room table and grandfather clock, too. I intend to soon follow-up on my article about tagging your deficits, where I point out that many deficits may be collateral damage rather than a downstream consequence of the autistic deficit.