Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind

This groundbreaking and eloquently written book explains how and why people are wedded to the notion that they belong to differing human kinds-tribe-type categories like races, ethnic groups, nations, religions, castes, street gangs, sports fandom, and high school cliques. Why do we see these divisions? Why do we care about them so much? Why do we kill and die for them? This is the stuff of news headlines. How has a nation gone from peaceful coexistence to genocide? How does social status affect your health? Why are teenagers willing to kill themselves in hazing rituals in order to belong to a fraternity or social group? How do terrorists learn not to care about the lives of those they attack? US AND THEM gets at the heart of these profound questions by looking at their common root in human nature. Politics, culture, and economics play their parts, but it+s the human mind that makes them possible, and that+s the focus of US AND THEM. We+re not born with a map of human kinds; each person makes his own and learns to fight for it. This is a crucial subject that touches all of our lives in ways both large and small, obvious and subtle. Human-kind thinking-whether beneficial or destructive-is part of human nature, as David Berreby+s brilliant book reveals.