Experimental Blog # 224

Quotations from and comments on "Political Tribes" - Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua

"Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. < > Almost no one is a hermit. Even monks and friars belong to orders. But the tribal instinct is not just an instinct to belong. It is also an instinct to exclude. < > once people belong to a group, their identities can become oddly bound with it. < > They will sacrifice, and even kill and die, for their groups."
"In many parts of the world < > the group identities that matter most < > are not national, but ethnic, regional, religious, sectarian, or clan based."

"A striking fact about terrorists is that, unlike serial killers, they are not generally psychopaths. Most serial murderers, experts agree, exhibit traits consistent with diagnosable psychopathic personality disorders. By contrast, psychologists studying terrorism have struggled in vain for years to identify deviant or abnormal personality traits typical of terrorists."
"Indeed, there is now consensus among researchers that "terrorists are essentially normal individuals.""
"Very few people, no matter how angry, impoverished, or degraded, actually engage in terrorist activity. For most of us, it is incomprehensible that seemingly normal, likeable young men and women, often from loving families, could blow themselves up or participate gleefully in gruesome beheadings."

There are very informative and thought provoking chapters{close to one half of this book} specifically devoted to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Terror Tribes, and Venezuela.

The author's American chapters are entitled: "American Exceptionalism and the Sources of U.S. Group Blindness Abroad", "Inequality and the Tribal Chasm in America", and "Democracy and Political Tribalism in America". However, not all of this writing is entirely so informative or thought provoking. For instance, she writes a lot about the much talked about subjects of "race and racism", but not quite so much about the real significance of ancestry and related subjects.

None the less, Amy Chua has very interesting and thought provoking opinions and she expresses them very articulately.