Tribalism

What Sarah Gill calls 'tribalism' ('Hope for a mad world', The Age, 1/9) has greater importance and more beneficial nature than she admits. For example, quoting lunatic fringe comments during and after the Brexit referendum does not negate the obvious truths that very many  Britons value their membership within the British people and justifiably feel that their group identity is at threat from excessive immigration of relatively unassimilable others.

Loyalty to Britain in the past and in the present was and is a profound driver of cultural and political achievement. The same can be said of the 'tribalism' of many other peoples from the French to the Japanese.

'Tribalism' is really 'big family' and is just as much an ineradicable part of human nature as family.
By contrast, 'thinking as a common people' is artificial and flimsy. Yes, the world's troubles do require 'solutions', but this does not require the homogenisation of humanity. The co-operation of peoples is the answer.
NJ, Belgrave, Victoria