The screw-you spirit; tribalism and group antipathy.

• Author: Fallows, James

James Fallows, an editor of The Washington Monthly from 1972, to 1975, reports for The Atlantic from Yokohama, Japan.

Sometimes the Monthly includes "tribalism" on its list of evil practices, along with expense-account conventions, end-of-the-year government spending sprees, and so on. There's an important point >; here that is concealed by an unfortunate name.

"Tribalism" doesn't sound as if it has anything to do with the average American's life. The word sounds like something strictly from the Third World, appropriate only for people who actually describe themselves as belonging t"tribes," like the Ibos in Nigeria or the Miskitos in Nicaragua. But the meaning behind the term has a bearing not only on America's major problems but also on the countrys best future hopes.

The idea behind "tribalism" is the inst >;inctive sense that people are divided into "us" and "them" categories on the basis of traits they acquire by birth or upbringing-race, language, religion, clan, or caste membership. One crucial ingredient of the tribal mentality is that it's almost inconceivable for people to shift out of the category they're born into. The other crucial ingredient is a double standard of morality. People inside the tribe-"us"-deserve better treatment than the people on the outside-"them." When tribalism is described thi >;s way, it's easy to think of illustrations of its deplorable effects-in Northern Ireland, in the Middle East, in The Godfather and Romeo and Juliet. There are other, less obvious illustrations. The central tragedy of the Philippines, I think, is a "Godfather"-like family/tribal ethic that allows people to mistreat anyone who's not part of the same clan or "barangay."

The more important point, however, is that this kind of tribalism is the normal outlook in most of the world. It is not some peculiar, lo >;calized evil, like wife-burning in India, or just a form of ignorance that economic progress automatically corrects , like the drinking of impure water. From what I can tell after several years in Asia, most people strongly prefer to live with others of their own "tribe" and feel only a feeble bond to those who are born different from them. This emotion is strongest in the most modern Asian country-Japan-but is powerful in all the others. The Chinese have a very strong sense of Chinese-ness; most Koreans >; scorn "impure" children of

KoreanAmerican marriages; the politics of most Asian countries break down on tribal lines...