Inventing foreigners

The disbanding of a society is a time of reinvention. Any reading of history suggests society breakups mirror the breakup of a marriage. When one can't turn back from a split, years of repressed opinions come pouring out that may express the opposite of what had been professed a month, if not the day, before. As pressures to conform to social norms shift, diminish, or vanish entirely, people on both sides gain the latitude to explore ways of interacting that had been out of favor or considered heretical. Previously unacceptable acts can leap to the forefront, helping each group distance itself from those who are now other, reimagined as outsiders, such that they come to appear ever more foreign.

The evidence indicates that many of the modifications of daughter societies - their character displacement, to borrow again a term from biology - occur in the initial years after they go their separate ways. Their newfound freedom of expression may be a reason why. That's when language - and no doubt many other, less studied aspects of identity - undergoes the fastest rate of change, before settling into a relative stasis thereafter. Indeed, distinctions between societies, often enough, are an outcome not of their ignorance of each other due to geographical separation, but of their awareness of and interaction with each other. This would be conspicuously true after societies split up. The opportunities for independent thought and invention afforded by a newly minted society, leading to a convergence of perceptions around themes the members can celebrate as their own, can make its formative years a golden age. For example, the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution remain the reference points that Americans turn to for guidance when questions about the nation's governance arise. Based on what is known about modifications in identity, I believe this would have been the case over the course of our evolution as it is now.

Yet there would be a deeper psychological impetus for a reworking of identity to bloom right after a division. The sense of being adrift, their fates severed from the meaning and purpose the larger society once provided, would heighten the urgency of the people's search for a strong identity, and essence, that stands apart. Moreover, their identification with each other must actually matter. Certain groups, such as people experiencing homelessness or those who are obese, may be marginalized but don't create societies with identities of their own. Neither do sick or disabled chimps or elephants, even when others treat them as outcasts. These outliers fail to bond since they do not see others with their condition in a good light. They lack what psychologists describe as positive distinctiveness.

Hence the insights of psychologists suggest that the members of a start-up society will toil to distinguish themselves favorably. To achieve this, they improvise cherished attributes or express old ones in a special way. The process is analogous to the development of traits that biologists studying the divergence of species call isolating mechanisms. Whatever commonalities remain with the other society can be denied or ignored. Like divorcees not on speaking terms, the societies can break off contact, which would mean any shared history would be eschewed or forgotten. Regardless, no matter how alike the newbie societies might seem to outside eyes, reunification would quickly be impossible.

From: Moffett, The Human Swarm, pp. 261-262