Asklemmy

Bold to assume that it's an instinct and not a taught and learned behavior.

Doubtful. Climate change and our own ignorant stupidity will wipe us out long before we’ll ever evolve past idiocracy.

The late rapper, "Eyedea" of Eyedea & Abilities had a really memorable verse in a song that always comes to mind when I hear this discussed.

Grinding my teeth as I’m peddling uphill / The fight against ape-hood is fate versus free will / We think we've advanced but there's nowhere to go / Mammals stay captive to animal actions / So slowly we climb up this DNA brick wall / Addicted to emptiness, anger and pitfalls / Desire for space, territory, or lust / We'll eventually turn this whole planet to dust

Only if we were forced to and had our free will taken away.

Outside perspective. Only when we meet another other.

I don't think it's an instinct, because it can absolutely be taught.

I encourage my kids to get along with everyone, but at the same time I can see how some of their peers are taught to be racists and other clique behaviours from home by parents who are just like that and don't even think about it when they pass it on.

But by default, nobody is like that from birth. Babies aren't racists or afraid of different kinds of people. The fear of others is taught.

It will take many generations to change.

I hope so. Knowledge and curiousity feed intelligence feed knowledge feed curiousity. A highly educated society with healthy education sytem and good working socioeconomy (concurency in news coverage) can theoretically get over "us vs. them". Until we someday maybe lose it as evolutionary trait.

when aliens arrive

Not as long as capitalist nationalism is the dominant economic system. It's just tribalism on a global scale.

The "Us vs. Them" mentality is also called the "in-group bias", in which you tend to align with other members of a perceived group (with little to no logical reason, it can be as simple as belts vs. suspenders). Like many other fallacies or biases, it is a built-in feature of our caveman-brains that no longer benefits us. When used in propaganda, it is often paired with the "strawman fallacy" to build the perception of an enemy that is barely even human.

You can learn to recognize these biases in yourself and in others - This is called critical thinking. I recommend the podcast "You Are Not So Smart" to everyone to get more insight on this subject.

There's a book I read a few years ago named "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" that delvs into this a bit and why humans are so tribal instinctively. Would highly recommend.

https://www.amazon.com/Tribe-Homecoming-Belonging-Sebastian-Junger/dp/1455566381?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=2999a0a3-f1d3-4c19-b97a-6215a1e3c695

The news feeding propaganda over and over isn't helping.

The way I see it that instinct is the cause behind so much suffering and injustice in the world.

That's just what they want you to think.

Maybe if some mad scientist releases a virus with some CRISPR in it to edit our genes and snip out some of the tribalism drive. Otherwise, I doubt it.

It will never happen as long as there is injustice in the world. Also, there isn't a perfect world where justice is 100% served. A good book to read about that (political book, but goes through the us vs them) is "why we are polarized" by Ezra Klein.

No

I think we could if enough effort was put forth into making it happen. The problem is that very same "instinct," or rather the plethora of different experiences and ideals held by individuals seems to make it harder if not impossible to ever come to a global united consensus on anything.

No. There will always be another “them”. That’s what makes humans so great, but also so destructive. We never settle, and will always look for division, even if we need to create it.

As long as politicians exists no. People need something to have control on group of people. So this exists for long. Hope it gets over when robots take over.

This current version of humans? No. But could it ever happen? Absolutely, if we assume our future evolutionary human descendants survive and provided we can supply everyone's needs.

No. That is human nature. In order to overcome that, we would have to evolve into a different species, which I would argue is less appealing than it might sound on the surface.

Instead of trying to overcome it, it makes more sense to build a society that directs that energy in a positive direction.