On our need to start looking past tribalism

Sometimes it does a person good to change his perspective. Get out of town for a while. Turn off the smartphone. Stop thinking about the poisoned state of our politics, the culture wars, the class warfare, the intolerance. The fear of nuclear war. The weariness of actual wars that never seem to end.

I did so recently, and took along the new book, “Why Buddhism Is True,” by Robert Wright.

I get it that, for a lot of us Americans, the idea of even reading about Buddhism seems about as much fun as giving up red meat and whiskey.

But a hungry mind likes to know what’s what, and here you have a perfect book for a skeptic. An evolutionary psychologist with skill at the keyboard, Wright provides a factbased, rational and well-written examination of the ancient practice and philosophy.

As an opinion journalist, a central theme appealed to me: the necessity of figuring out how to calm the dangerous influence of evolutionary instincts that, while hopelessly outdated, too often control us.

Wright argues that among the forces that bedevil us as 21st century homo sapiens is the short-sighted way in which evolution cemented deep in our genes instructions meant to keep us alive and reproducing in a hostile, natural environment.

Those instincts too often delude us and lead to regrettable action.

Only 30,000 years ago, survival meant running with the pack. If one of the members of your hunter-gather tribe

threatened you before your peers, fighting back — even if it meant a literal fight — made perfect sense.

Less clout in the tribe could lead to less food, a less desirable mate — or no mate at all. If the others began to think you were weak, you might find yourself alone in the wilderness.

But as a 21st century office dweller, going tribal on a challenging rival will land you in big trouble and could lead to you looking for a new job once you’re out of jail.

The smarter play by far is gaining the ability to quickly recognize those dangerous instincts and prevent them from interfering in how you handle the situation in terms of what we now consider acceptable behavior.

Another holdover instills in us mistrust of and antagonism to- ward other tribes, as well as the belief that our tribe is better than any other, and more deserving of the resources all tribes need to sustain themselves.

Yet here we are. We’ve advanced to the point our economies and cultures increasingly require interdependent ways of thinking and living.

Wright quips, “What could go wrong?” His answer is groups of people following their tribal instincts and fighting each other for all the reasons I wanted to go on vacation.

“The lines of battle may be ethnic, religious, national, or ideological, but antagonism seems to have grown along many of those lines in recent years,” Wright notes. Worse, the anger creates self-reinforcing feedback loops that only increase our desire to annihilate our enemies. This in a world full of dangerous technology — including chemical and nuclear weapons — and social media.

Wright argues that a change of perspective needs to be a lot more than just getting away from it all for a few days. Rather, our survival depends on an ability to think beyond the tribe. We need to see ourselves more clearly, and without the filter that our side must prevail at any cost.

The challenge of that observation is daunting and harrowing. It’s easy to imagine that, because too many of us aren’t willing to think beyond our biases, we’re already on a path toward global failure to survive.

Meanwhile, the way we’re running things here at home in our politics and public policy — as increasingly hardcore in our affiliations and beliefs — is hugely wrongheaded, but all the rage.

The motivation to think outside those filters ought to be as strong as avoiding punching a coworker in the face for a perceived slight.

But it’s not.

Shouldn’t it be?