This post seems like it’s assuming methodological individualism when discussing the formation and perpetuation of tribes. This is an unfortunate limitation. Societies are often complex enough to respond to circumstances with articulated changes in their memeplexes and approved behaviors, even if most individuals in that society or even participating in that response couldn’t tell you the decision tree. For instance:
Jihadis don’t hate “American freedom and democracy”, they just hate Americans.
This fails to explain the ways Jihadis tend to attack Americans—which is quite different from the ways in which, for instance, Nazis attacked Jews (or, for that matter, Americans attack Nazis or Communists) whereas “immune response to the much more powerful American state’s interventions in predominantly Muslim countries” is a start—for one thing, it predicts (when combined with a more granular model of the relevant strengths and weaknesses) that a lot of the violence will be ultimately targeted for domestic propaganda to create more in-group cohesion. Individuals who just hated Americans would have killed quite a bit more of us, in ways much less traceable to radicalized Muslims.
I agree, “Jihadis act as if they hate American intervention in Muslim countries” or “Jihadis want to consolidate power and support in their communities” is a better model than “Jihadis act as if they hate Americans”. My point was that all three are way better models than “Jihadis hate our freedom (tm)”.
I think I’m trying to say something else too—that “what do Jihadis want” can be composed into “what does the culture that produced Jihad want out of it” and “what are the motivations of individual Jihadis” (where the latter is very often going to be, simply, to fulfill the expectations of the people they see as their tribe’s legitimate authorities, or climb one of their tribe’s internal credit-allocation gradients).
This post seems like it’s assuming methodological individualism when discussing the formation and perpetuation of tribes. This is an unfortunate limitation. Societies are often complex enough to respond to circumstances with articulated changes in their memeplexes and approved behaviors, even if most individuals in that society or even participating in that response couldn’t tell you the decision tree. For instance:
This fails to explain the ways Jihadis tend to attack Americans—which is quite different from the ways in which, for instance, Nazis attacked Jews (or, for that matter, Americans attack Nazis or Communists) whereas “immune response to the much more powerful American state’s interventions in predominantly Muslim countries” is a start—for one thing, it predicts (when combined with a more granular model of the relevant strengths and weaknesses) that a lot of the violence will be ultimately targeted for domestic propaganda to create more in-group cohesion. Individuals who just hated Americans would have killed quite a bit more of us, in ways much less traceable to radicalized Muslims.
I agree, “Jihadis act as if they hate American intervention in Muslim countries” or “Jihadis want to consolidate power and support in their communities” is a better model than “Jihadis act as if they hate Americans”. My point was that all three are way better models than “Jihadis hate our freedom (tm)”.
I think I’m trying to say something else too—that “what do Jihadis want” can be composed into “what does the culture that produced Jihad want out of it” and “what are the motivations of individual Jihadis” (where the latter is very often going to be, simply, to fulfill the expectations of the people they see as their tribe’s legitimate authorities, or climb one of their tribe’s internal credit-allocation gradients).