Originally a comment by Artymorty on Bjarte’s The hardest lesson to swallow.
I keep coming back to this idea when I try to understand why people stay loyal to groups that clearly do harm — whether it’s cults like Scientology or gender ideology or extreme political movements like MAGA or Fascism.
It’s that tribal loyalty lives in a completely different part of the brain than rational thinking. And sometimes, the tribal part takes over.
Roughly speaking, it’s the lower brain versus the higher brain. Or if you prefer Freud, the id versus the superego. Or if you’re Homer Simpson, it’s Devil-Homer versus Angel-Homer.
The “lower brain” (or limbic system) is evolutionarily older. It handles emotion, fear, reward, and motivation — all things tied to survival. The “higher brain” (the prefrontal cortex) is newer and handles planning, decision-making, and impulse control. It’s supposed to step in and override the lower brain when it’s about to make dumb, emotionally driven decisions.
But that override system doesn’t always work — especially in kids and teenagers (whose prefrontal cortexes aren’t fully developed) or in adults under stress or fear. In those states, control shifts back to the limbic system. Survival mode kicks in, and rational thinking takes a back seat.
Here’s where tribalism comes in. I think emotional bonding with a group is a deep, evolved instinct, rooted in survival. For most of human history, being cast out from your group could mean death. So once that bond forms, the brain treats any threat to it — like criticism of the group — as a threat to you.
And when do these bonds usually form? Often during periods of vulnerability: isolation, fear, major life changes, or identity crises. People are most susceptible when they’re seeking belonging, certainty, or meaning, and some people need those things more urgently than others. That’s why some fall harder or faster into extreme ideologies or cults. It’s not because they’re weaker or less intelligent — it’s because the group offered something they deeply needed, at the exact moment they needed it.
Once the emotional bond is locked in, rational information is treated like an attack, not a challenge to think through. The emotional brain slams the door shut. You’ll defend your group, even if it means ignoring evidence, contorting logic, or getting angry at facts. Not because you’re stupid, but because some ancient part of your brain thinks your life depends on it.
And if some part of you does recognize that something’s wrong? That’s when cognitive dissonance kicks in — that uncomfortable mental tension when your beliefs and your reality don’t match. The rational brain starts to panic, but the emotional brain is already guarding the gates. And almost always, to relive the tension, people don’t question the tribe. They double down on it.
Right now, we’re living through a period of massive technological and social upheaval. Everything everywhere is changing; the future feels uncertain; everyone’s overwhelmed. That uncertainty creates fear, and fear activates the limbic system. The result is what we’re seeing all around us: the culture war is less about ideas than about instinct — people retreating into opposing tribes, not because they’ve thought it through, but because some deep part of their brain is trying to feel safe.
And the deeper into the tribe people go, the more fear they generate in the opposing tribe — fueling a feedback loop that keeps the whole thing burning. It’s Mutual Assured Destruction.
If there’s a way out, it probably starts with recognizing the pattern and calming the fear. That means speaking not just to people’s facts and logic, but to their need for safety, respect, and belonging — the things the lower brain craves. Moments like the end of the Cold War, where dialogue and empathy defused decades of mutual fear, taught us that calm, patient communication can re-engage the higher brain. Political leaders like Nelson Mandela showed this when he chose forgiveness over revenge.
So basically, what we need right now is the exact opposite of Donald Trump. His political strategy works because it runs on activating the lower brain — fear and anger — which is where most people’s minds are at right now. Michelle Obama’s slogan, “When they go low, we go high” seemed a little trite at the time, but at the moment, it feels like a solid first step in a disarmament plan — an antidote to Trump’s apocalyptic destructivism.