Us and Them by David Berreby

I picked up a book today called US and THEM by David Berreby. The tag line of the book is Understanding Your Tribal Mind.

My first experience with “thinking tribal” (tribal thinking is when you think of yourself as belonging to 1 kind of people and everyone else as belonging to another kind of people who are less) was years ago after listening to an audio series by Jerry Clark called MURPHY’S COMMITTEE. Listening to this audio series caused me to seek out and read Scott Alexander’s books RHINOCEROS SUCCESS, ADVANCED RHINOCEROLOGY, and RHINOCEROTIC RELATIVITY. The audio series Murphy’s Committee by Jerry Clark and the books Rhinoceros Success, Advanced Rhinocerology and Rhinocerotic Relativity all put forth the idea that there are 2 kinds of people in the world. The first group are Rhinos. These kind of people charge through the jungles of life having fun, making money and living their dreams. The second group of people are Cows. These kind of people seek safety, make great employees and live dull boring lives like the cattle in the fields.

I was seriously hurting when I listened to Murphy’s Committee by Jerry Clark and read Scott Alexander’s books RHINOCEROS SUCCESS, ADVANCED RHINOCEROLOGY, and RHINOCEROTICRELATIVITY. I was running my first real world business (I owned a business in high school) and the cows of the world were beating on me every chance they got. I’d dropped out of college to start this business. I expected my family to be behind me but they were not. Every time my family got together I got to hear the question, “When are you going to stop wasting your life and go back to college?” Or I’d be asked, “When are you going to get a real job?” I wasn’t doing well in my business and that made the questions sting even more. In time those questions become my “Mad Dog Questions.” What’s a mad dog question? It’s a question you ask a person that causes them to go from zero to violent in 1 second. I nearly lost it on my mother one day after she asked me for the millionth time, “When are you going to go back to college?” I had to walk out of the room. I was so tired of my dreams being attacked. I’d hit my breaking point. Thankfully I walked out of the room to cool down but it took everything I had to do that. If it had been a male relative of mine I’d have joyously beaten him within an inch of his life. I had so much rage inside me from being attacked all the time for heading down the road-less-traveled.

It was around the time that I nearly lost it on my mom that I listened to Murphy’s Committee by Jerry Clark and read Scott Alexander’s books RHINOCEROS SUCCESS, ADVANCED RHINOCEROLOGY, and RHINOCEROTICRELATIVITY. Jerry Clark’s audio Murphy’s Committee and Scott Alexander’s books RHINOCEROS SUCCESS, ADVANCED RHINOCEROLOGY, and RHINOCEROTICRELATIVITY changed my life and likely saved my dreams. That was the good part. And I’ll be forever grateful to those two men. From that point on every time someone started bagging on me I simply thought, “What a pathetic cow.” Their opinion of me and what I was doing no longer mattered. I knew they were never going to do anything great with their lives and so like all cows do they tried to bring down the people who were out there trying. The bad part was it caused me to look at everyone who was employed as worthless cattle. Looking down on people is dangerous. You stop seeing them as people. Worse you stop treating them as if they are even human. I became a serious a-hole rhino. It took me years to get to the point where I didn’t look down on people who were employees.

Looking back I’ve never been able to determine if I could have stayed on the road-less-traveled with out Murphy’s Committee by Jerry Clark and Scott Alexander’s books RHINOCEROS SUCCESS, ADVANCED RHINOCEROLOGY, and RHINOCEROTICRELATIVITY. I needed a way to protect my dreams and these men gave it to me. However it was so damaging (as all tribal thinking is in my opinion). Suddenly everyone was either a rhino or a cow. I went out of my way to help rhinos and I also went out of my way to brutally stomp on cows. As I mentioned it took me almost a decade to start looking at everyone as people again. I was able to do this (start thinking of people as just people) because just like Jerry Clark said in the Murphy’s Committee and Scott Alexander said in the books RHINOCEROS SUCCESS, ADVANCED RHINOCEROLOGY, and RHINOCEROTICRELATIVITY my skin became “spear and arrow proof.” My rhino skin became so tough that no insult (insults were referred to as spears and arrows in the audio and book series) could hurt me anymore. Maybe one day I’ll be able to answer that question…

Alright so going back to the original reason I started this post which was to discuss the things I’d learned in the book Us and Them by David Berreby. The first thing of interest I found was a study done at New York University that uncovered the fact that people’s altruistic impulses are quite sensitive to subtler differences in their experience. One group of people was asked questions about comic-book superheroes. The other group of people were asked specific questions about Superman. Later when the different groups were asked to volunteer for community service the group that has been asked questions about superheroes in general signed up to give more time than the people who were asked questions about Superman. Why? It seems that thinking about an amazing person apparently made people feel like they could not measure up. However when asked to think about people who are altruistic and good they wanted to act a bit a more like those people themselves.

This is a huge lesson for me. I’m going to make sure that the stories I use to build the culture of the Privateer Nation are about privateers in history who helped other people. I want the Privateer Nation to be made up of people who live by the Golden Rule (do unto others as you’d have done unto you).

The next study I read about was one of the most famous studies for proving that circumstances change behavior. It was conducted at Stanford University in the 1970’s. The psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues divided a group of male college students into “guards” and “prisoners” in a simulated jail. In less than a week, the men changed their behavior to fit their categories (us vs them tribal thinking). The “prisoners” sank into despair and helpless rage. The “guards” looked down (this is the serious danger of tribal thinking) on their former fellow-students clothed in prison uniforms and a third of the guards actually abused them.

This is another huge lesson for me. One that I’ve already learned. I use to promote the domain names www.employeesareslaves.com, www.sillycorporatemonkey.com, and www.fuckcorporatelife.com. I stopped doing this because I did not want to promote a “cow vs rhino” philosophy. My target market for the Privateer Nation are aspiring entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and non-traditional entrepreneurs (musicians, actors, writers, comics etc). However I decided to make the Privateer Nation open to anyone who is willing to face their fears so they can have fun getting rich, traveling the planet and changing the world. I did NOT want to create a nation of entrepreneurs who looked down on their employees. And I knew the only way to do this was to take out the words “seeking entrepreneurs” and replace it with the words “seeking people who are willing to face their fears in order to have fun getting rich, traveling the planet and changing the world.” We will not likely attract a lot of employees but I never want people who are employees to be looked down upon.

The third lesson I learned (and this is super cool) is something that I’ve believed all along. You can NOT categorize people by race, language or education. For example you can’t assume that all white people do something just because they are white. Or that all educated people will act in a certain way because they are educated. If you must categorize people then categorize them based on their beliefs (the way they think).

I love this because it confirms my belief that the only war worth fighting and winning is the war of ideas. People act the way they do because of their environment. No one is good or bad. The enviroment they are in determines the beliefs they adopt and the way they in turn behave. This means that the Privateer Nation will be able to have a massive effect on humanity as it grows. One day we will be a nation of millions of people who BELIEVE in getting rich the right way, BELIEVE in traveling the planet for fun and understanding and BELIEVE in making a difference for others and leaving a legacy that continues to make a difference when we are gone. Who knows how great an impact a million or more winners who hold these beliefs can have on the world?