Monkeys in Three-Piece Suits

The Us versus Them mentality is an inherent and inherited trait from our origins as tribal people in prehistoric times. When our ancestors lived among wild animals as nomads and hunter gatherers, the “us versus them” mindset was necessary. They had to fight against wild animals and rival tribes for their very survival.

Tribal mentality is primordial, primitive, and prehistoric. Today we live in the 21st century; we shouldn’t think and act like our ancestors who lived in the wilderness thousands of years ago.

Don’t wear the most modern designer suits, drive the fastest luxury cars, talk on the latest smart phones, boast about living in the 21st century, and think and act like chimpanzees in wild jungles. That is exactly how most humans behave in many so-called developed countries today.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia happening as I write this, is an example of terrible territorial tribalism by a mad man in suits. It is barbarianism at its worst.

As E.O. Wilson rightly observes, “We are a Star Wars civilization, but we have Stone Age emotions.”

Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello puts it bluntly:

“We’re all asses; we’re lunatics. The only reason we’re not locked up in an institution is that there are so many of us.”

According to Sadguru, “We are the most comfortable generation to have ever lived on this planet. The rub is that we are definitely not the most joyful or the most loving or the most peaceful.”

More than fifty years ago, in 1964, during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King pointed out the incongruity of our material growth and spiritual decline.

Despite these spectacular strides in science and technology and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers and sisters…enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not a proportionate growth of the soul.

(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)