Why we 'Other'
Do our tribal roots explain why humanity so easily distances itself and demonise one another?
If you’d like to listen to this, instead of reading it, you can find an audio version here.
Have you ever wondered why humans are so good at hating each other? Today, we are going to be exploring exactly that.
I consider myself a good, responsible driver. I’m aware that the ability to drive is a privilege, and the fact that we drive around heavy metal boxes at high speeds is no joke. That means when I’m driving, I’m keen to be safe, take it seriously and follow the rules. Recently, I’ve had a number of unhelpful run-ins with taxi drivers who, in my opinion, have not been compliant with the rules of the road. Who don’t seem to uphold my strong values of road safety, being considerate to everyone else driving and doing the legal obligation of driving well.
I’ve found that on my best days, I can let this go. It’s annoying, but it will pass. On my not-so-good days, I find myself getting easily frustrated as they pull out without indicating, or park on double yellows with their hazards on, or crash into my parked car and write it off. You know, the little things.
At an individual level, it’s okay to be annoyed at these things, but it’s what the accumulation of these frustrations does to the way I think about a whole group of people that’s interesting, and a potential problem. I find myself now frustrated as soon as I see a taxi in front of me, or I’m anticipating them to do something I consider stupid or unsafe on the road. I’m making judgments about people I don’t know, putting a whole group of people (the taxi drivers) into a box and building some kind of moral superiority over them. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on starting a hate campaign against taxi drivers or scaling that up into something worse. However, I am uncomfortable with how easily I find myself angry, critical and ‘othering’ them in my thoughts. From all we see in the news, on social media and maybe even outside our front doors, we know it doesn’t take much for thoughts to creep into actions, and in some cases, really extreme, horrific actions.
Interestingly, I think there is a good explanation as to why I’ve found it so easy to distance myself from taxi drivers and to start to demonise them a little, and why we as humans seem to have a huge capacity for hating each other, discriminating, and outright abusing each other. This can be known as our ability to ‘other’.
To explore this, let’s go on a brief trip back in time. It’s 15,000 years ago, and you’re part of a tribe consisting of fifty other people. These are people you’ve known your whole life, that you trust with your life, and you’d do anything for. They are pretty much the only people you’ve ever known. You’ve seen your tribe leader have a few interactions with people from outside your tribe, but it’s only ever been brief.
Then one day, you’re in a small valley where your tribe hunts and gathers, and you find out another tribe is also there. This has never happened before, and so it causes uproar within your tribe. Initially, there are a few options. Firstly, you could attack and kill them. They are a threat to your food sources, your way of life. Life is always a delicate balance; the smallest change in weather, in the ecosystem, could kill you all off, never mind a whole other tribe stealing your food. They also might be dangerous, and are probably thinking the same about you. Surely it would be best to wipe them out? Your people come first; they are all that matters.
Secondly, there is the option to communicate with them, trade and agree a peace. After all, they might not be hostile, and there might be enough food for everyone. You might learn something from them, or they might have a healer or someone useful your tribe could benefit from.
Finally, you could run. Maybe they are just too much of a threat. Maybe for the sake of your tribe, you need to move on and find somewhere else. They’re too scary, too different and just aren’t even worth trying to engage with.
You move forward with option two, negotiation and peace. As you move forward, tensions start to grow. Fear creeps into your tribe, shadows appear to move at night, imagined or real. Things in your tribe start to mysteriously go missing, and you aren’t bringing in enough food. There have been a few encounters with the other tribe. They look different to you and smell different. They don’t understand the rules of this valley, and they disregard nature compared to the way you respect it. You met one of the others, and they just seemed rude, sneaky, different. Anxiety levels are rising. Tensions are flaring. Stories are being told like truths. Accusations are starting to appear, and slowly, this other tribe are looking worse and worse to you.
In this context, 15,000 years ago, humans were built to live within these tribes. Trust was the ultimate foundation of survival, and the likelihood of anyone outside of that group being trustworthy was limited. We had our people. But outside of that, the rest of the world were strangers. For hundreds of thousands of years, this had been the case and what we were genetically encoded to do. Yuval Noah Harari, Author of the incredible book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, argues in his book that to this point in evolution, we humans (or more scientifically homo sapiens) are naturally xenophobic creatures. He says that we…
“instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘us’ and ‘them’. ‘Us’ is people like you and me, who share our language, religion and customs. We are all responsible for each other, but not responsible for ‘them’. We were always distinct from them, and owe them nothing.” (Harari and Harari 2015, 219)
How familiar does that feel? It happens in all of us, whether we like to admit it or not. We may fight it, but humanity seems to be predisposed to this ability to ‘other’.
Then, about 10,000 years ago, the path of humanity changed. We started planting seeds and waiting for food to grow. For hundreds of thousands of years, we have been nomadic travellers, but then huge amounts of the population across the globe started what is called the agricultural revolution. We abandoned much of our nomadic ways, grew crops and settled down in specific places. With this settling, instead of being in bands of 50-150 people, we started gathering in small villages, then towns, then cities. The human population started multiplying drastically, and most started living a settled life, knowing and interacting with more and more people. Fast forward to now, 2025, living in the globalised age of the internet, social media and the ability to know about, and interact with, millions of people. I don’t literally mean we all know a million people, but what I’m saying is the pool of people we are influenced by, that we encounter as we walk through a busy city, that the news, social media and technology have opened up is huge.
However, 10,000 years later, while we feel like we’ve adapted to modern living, our genetic coding and preference for tribal living haven’t changed too much. And according to the best science, it could take another 10,000 years to catch up to how we actually live now. We’re still tribal people, living in a world which doesn’t allow tribal living anymore.
I read something a while ago, and the premise was about this idea that our genetics haven’t caught up, meaning our fight or flight system hasn’t either. 15,000 years ago, if I saw someone who looked different to me, or wasn’t part of my tribe, I would have a natural fight or flight response. My nervous system would react, my body would get ready for action of some kind. The body naturally, without us even thinking, starts doing threat analysis. Do we know them? Are they giving off aggressive signals? Am I in danger with this person? Is this person a threat to my tribe? All of this is going on subconsciously as the body prepares to fight or run. It’s protective and self-sustaining. That’s how the body works, and what keeps us alive. It’s how our ancestors survived.
But the problem is when I’m walking through Birmingham in 2025, with thousands of people around me, I have that same genetic wiring, and my body is doing that exact same thing to every single person around me. No wonder we all seem to be so anxious, so tired, so grumpy and find it so easy to ‘other’ those around us. No wonder that in the slightest wrongdoing, disagreement, or difference, we separate ourselves. Our mind is flooded with fear, indignation and mistrust because it’s trying to protect us. It hasn’t caught up with modern living.
It’s well known that we all have willpower, but it’s a resource that can be drained. And when we run out of willpower, it’s so much harder to fight our bodies’ cravings, to not eat that doughnut, or other temptations. I wonder whether it’s the same with othering. Maybe there is a capacity to fight the natural urge, but when we are so tired and worn down, our ability to fight this urge diminishes. I can only speak for myself here, but I know the more tired I am, the more self-centred I become, and the more I get frustrated with taxi drivers or whatever group of people might have become othered within our minds and contexts.
It makes me think: are our bodies and minds, because of this, just primed to be manipulated by leaders with strong agendas, who demonise the ‘other’? When you hear story after story, from people whom you consider trustworthy, about how awful this other group of people are, it’s easy to see how, over time, when we are so worn down by life, these messages can easily sink in. Are we in a losing fight? Personally, I don’t think that this is completely the case. Although we may not be fully genetically adapted to this modern world, I believe in willpower, habit building and our ability to have more control over our bodies and minds than we sometimes believe we do. At least, maybe that’s my hope, about a topic that can feel pretty hopeless.
So in summary, we have this crazy genetic adaptation for survival, we ‘other’. It’s helped keep humans alive and the species going for hundreds of thousands of years. None of us can escape it (unless you are a miracle of evolution that has skipped forward a few thousand years in your genetic makeup), and we all have to witness and live with it every day. For better, or worse.
Well, at least we now know a possible reason why we ‘other’.
What do you think?
The two books that taught me lots and inspired deep thinking about this topic are Sapiens and Tribe (both linked below). I would highly recommend giving them a read if you want to explore this topic more. I’d also recommend reading a bit about Dunbar’s number, which I haven’t mentioned here, but gives an interesting modern take on our need for tribal living and how many humans we can healthily interact with.
TRIBE, by Sebastian Junger: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40940205-tribe
SAPEINS, by Yuval Noah Harari https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens
References:
Harari, Yuval N., and Yuval N. Harari. 2015. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. N.p.: Vintage Books.
Junger, Sebastian. 2017. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. N.p.: 4th Estate.