Can Fashion harness evolutionary biology to create a better future? 

The story of human life on Earth, from its ‘Once Upon A Time’ to the determinant of whether we enjoy a ‘Happily After Ever’, is decisively shaped by people’s evolutionary-adapted desire to belong to a tribe, according to David R. Samson, associate professor of biological anthropology at the University of Toronto.

In Our Tribal Future: How to Channel Our Human Instinct into a Force for Good, Samson defines a tribe as ‘a nested group of groups that uses symbols as tokens of identity signalling group membership within a shared imagined order’. We know of and exist within many tribes…. A tribe can be a group of friends or colleagues, a nation, a religious community, a football squad.

No amount of dispassionate language can hide the fact that humankind’s ‘tribe drive’ (as Samson terms it) is responsible for some of our worst characteristics and behaviours, including genocide. Observing that people ‘are fantastic at justifying [their] behaviours but bad at truly understanding their underlying causes’, Samson invokes the Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem (FBT) coined by cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, to explain the unvarnished fact that human genes have evolved to prioritise fitness over truth. 

People’s experience of the world is based on perceptions that are framed by an evolutionary imperative to survive and reproduce. In essence, humans perceive the world in a way that will increase their chances of living longer and passing their genes onto another generation. This seems startling, but how people understand and perform their identities is strongly connected to their perception of truth. 

Think of yourself. Whenever you feel vulnerable within your tribe, or fear for the survival of your tribe, because of the challenge posed by an external set of beliefs and behaviours, the immediate, apparently subconscious, and vehement emotional response you experience is an evolutionary-informed prompt telling you that you might be physically and psychologically imperilled, and to do something about it. 

One sobering implication of this fact is that there can be times when ‘disbelief in science can be rational. And a belief in mythical, tribal false-hoods can be just as rational’. If this seems a stretch, consider how the rise of popularism within mainstream politics continues to cause global fragmentation and fuel sectarian violence, both physical and psychological. The rioting that occurred recently across the United Kingdom and people’s entrenched positions in response to the presidential campaigning underway in the United States, are responses from tribes that feel under threat. 

Humanity’s tribal drive, which encourages ‘wilful unreason’, can be deeply problematic, but Samson’s book makes the case for tribalism being essential if we are to enjoy a fairytale future. Observing that humankind’s evolutionary preference for tribalism compels people to belong to something larger than themselves, he suggests that tribes could be fundamental in helping us overcome evolutionary mismatch, which is at the root of many of the grave global challenges we face.

Evolutionary mismatch occurs when a species exists in circumstances for which it is not sufficiently adapted. The results of humankind’s evolutionary mismatch are multiple and varied. For example, the epidemic – or pandemic – of loneliness that now effects much of the world is, at a base level, a consequence of changing patterns of human living and socialisation; chiefly, living alone in large cities and engaging with others through screens and avatars, rather than in person.

This misalignment could be overcome – certainly lessened – if we were to acknowledge and embrace our evolutionary histories and adopt patterns of living that were more in tune with them. In essence, this means pursuing the Social Suite, a concept defined by sociologist Nicholas Christakis, which articulates the necessity of human interdependence. Christakis argues that the success or failure of human societies is determined by eight ‘social laws’: (1) Individual identity; (2) love; (3) Friends; (4) Social networks; (5) Cooperation; (6) In-group bias; (7) Mild hierarchy; (8) Social learning and teaching. For Samson, these eight laws, which reflect humankind’s tribe drive, can be facilitated through ‘camp-crafting’, which is essentially the active commitment to build a community of people with whom we live in ‘intentional proximity’. 

So, where’s the Fashion connection? As I read Samson’s book, and reflected on his observation that ‘ours is the only species that uses symbols to signal coalitionary alliance’, it struck me that dress and appearance are among the oldest, most persistent and prevalent methods by which humans across chronological, cultural and geographical divides convey their tribal drive and identities. 

This got me to think: If tribes can create a better present and a surer future for humankind, could people’s engagement with Fashion be harnessed to support their understanding and engagement with the Social Suite and camp-crafting?  

Linked to this, and perhaps more fundamentally, Samson’s book made me wonder if we are currently pursuing the most effective approach to find remedies to the Fashion industry’s problems. Reports that tell us how the Fashion industry pollutes the world, marginalizes people and discriminates against people, etc., tend to focus on nations, even global regions. These problems often seem too big to contemplate and respond to. By addressing consumers and brands at a marco-level – as global citizens – and asking them to change behaviours for the good of all, these reports might be missing a trick and falling foul of people’s tribe drive. Consequently, instead of galvanising action, these reports and their widely shared conclusions could inadvertently stoke resistance to change. 

Samson’s book made me realise that academics and campaigners might do better to persuade consumers and brands to reappraise their behaviours and actions if we switch our focus from the global to the local. In short, to the tribe. After all, whilst Fashion is rooted in, and perpetuates, ‘western’-centrism, its appeal and understanding are ultimately tribal and local, rather than global, which complicates attempts to make change. As consumers, we tend to conceive of and create fashion through our tribes – a group of friends or colleagues, a nation, a religious community, a football squad – rather than through larger, more physically and emotionally distanced groupings with which we have little to no experience. It is through tribes that the stories told through dress and appearance about individual and communal identities derive meaning and help us to create the social. Consequently, if we want to change the narratives of the Fashion industry, and work towards a better future, perhaps we ought to give more attention to humankind’s tribe drive.