Tribalism as Analgesic: Escaping the Pain of Cognitive Dissonance

Intellectual experience is not painless. To think earnestly is to suffer. Every serious encounter with ideas risks a jolt of dissonance: the humiliation of being wrong, the anxiety of uncertainty, the dismay of finding that a cherished conviction cannot withstand scrutiny. The mind resists this pain instinctively. It clutches at evasions, seeks counterexamples, invents excuses. To be forced into contradiction is to be wounded in one’s identity.

And yet, this very pain is the discipline of freedom. Isaiah Berlin, reflecting on the clash of human values, insisted that “the collision of values is of the essence of what they are and what we are” (Four Essays on Liberty, 1969). Liberty is never comfortable. It means enduring the collision of justice with mercy, loyalty with truth, equality with excellence. Without such collisions, freedom decays into slogan.

But here lies the temptation—acute in our age of fractured, polycentric identities. Tribalism of thought offers an analgesic. It numbs the agony of dissonance by enclosing us within the warmth of group affirmation. To belong to a thinking tribe is to be spared the ordeal of contradiction. Opinions are met not with challenge but with applause; adversaries appear only as caricatures. Pain is anesthetized, and conscience grows dull.

To belong to a thinking tribe is to be spared the ordeal of contradiction. Opinions are met not with challenge but with applause; adversaries appear only as caricatures.

The university was once a crucible of dissonance, a place where students risked contradiction—by their peers, their professors, even in the exposure of their own written work. Today, the evidence points in another direction. A 2025 survey conducted by FIRE and College Pulse, covering 68,510 students at 257 institutions, found that the majority regularly self-censor, avoid contentious topics, and doubt their administrations would defend free expression. Another study by the Knight Foundation in 2024 revealed that two in three students admit this climate of caution has limited valuable conversations, particularly on issues of gender, race, religion, and sexuality. At universities such as Oklahoma State and the University of Oklahoma, nearly half of students report silencing themselves monthly or more often, fearing social or academic repercussions.

The analgesic here is not argument but avoidance. Silence, exclusion, and curated consensus provide relief against the sting of dissent. The ordeal of contradiction, its intellectual pain is anesthetized.

The analgesic here is not argument but avoidance. Silence, exclusion, and curated consensus provide relief against the sting of dissent. The ordeal of contradiction, its intellectual pain is anesthetized.

The cost, however, is high. To refuse dissonance is to refuse thought. Raymond Aron saw this clearly when he wrote that ideology offers “the comfort of a total explanation” (The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1955). The seduction lies precisely in its comfort: it rescues adherents from the torment of uncertainty. Tribalism does the same. It sells solidarity at the expense of conscience, belonging at the expense of thought.

The seduction [of ideology] lies precisely in its comfort: it rescues adherents from the torment of uncertainty. Tribalism does the same. It sells solidarity at the expense of conscience, belonging at the expense of thought.

Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), traced how such evasion hollowed out responsibility. Eichmann, she later observed, was not a demonic figure but a man who hid behind clichés, “thoughtless” precisely in his refusal to confront contradiction. Tribalism, seeking the comfort of an echo chamber, is of a different order, but its logic is parallel: it spares individuals from the anguish of reflection, and in doing so, erodes moral seriousness.

True pluralism, by contrast, requires suffering. It demands that we allow ourselves to be unsettled by others, that we recognize the legitimacy of competing values even when they disturb us.

True pluralism, by contrast, requires suffering. It demands that we allow ourselves to be unsettled by others, that we recognize the legitimacy of competing values even when they disturb us. Tocqueville foresaw the danger of refusing this discipline: in America, he wrote, “the majority draws a formidable circle around thought” (Democracy in America, 1835). To step outside is to invite punishment. Today, both left and right enforce such circles.

“In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever dares to go beyond them. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fé, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution.”
(Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835, Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 7, Reeve translation)

The practice of liberty is precisely the courage to step outside. It means listening to what wounds us, engaging what unsettles us, testing our convictions against their sharpest adversaries.

The practice of liberty is precisely the courage to step outside. It means listening to what wounds us, engaging what unsettles us, testing our convictions against their sharpest adversaries.

This flight from dissonance is not only an intellectual impoverishment. It corrodes politics itself. When tribes refuse confrontation, compromise becomes betrayal. Citizens cease to see opponents as partners in a shared republic and begin to treat them as existential threats. The rhetoric of annihilation replaces the discipline of debate.

The reaction to political assassinations and violent attacks illustrates the danger. When Charlie Kirk was killed in 2025, the tragedy was compounded by the public reaction: not only grief, but currents of schadenfreude. “Karma,” “good riddance,” “he had it coming”—phrases that spread across social media and commentary. The tribalist palliative numbs us to the humanity of the other, allowing us to mistake dehumanization for moral clarity.

The temptation to escape suffering is as old as humanity. But liberty has never been compatible with comfort.

The temptation to escape suffering is as old as humanity. But liberty has never been compatible with comfort. To practice freedom is to suffer dissonance, to endure contradiction, to resist the anodyne seductions of tribal belonging.

Alasdair MacIntyre, reflecting on the nature of moral life in After Virtue (1981), observed that “a living tradition is an historically extended, socially embodied argument.” By this he meant that traditions—whether religious, civic, or intellectual—endure not by suppressing dissent but by absorbing it, testing themselves against challenge, and reinterpreting their principles in light of new circumstances. A tradition without argument is not alive but fossilized.

If we abandon that argument for the analgesic comfort of consensus, we do not preserve our tradition of liberty—we betray it. Tribalism spares us the ordeal of contradiction, but in doing so it robs freedom of its substance. What it promises is ease; what it delivers is decay. The pain of intellectual confrontation is not a pathology to be treated, as though it were an ailment, but the very condition of liberty. Only by enduring that pain—by consenting to live within the clash of rival convictions—can we remain citizens of a plural and free society. ◳