Independence for Yorkshire

As a Yorkshireman myself, I fully support this proposal.  Independence for Yorkshire! I will leave you with the Yorkshire National Anthem, which your Yorkshire branches had better learn if The World's Greatest County is finally to achieve independence… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUsQ9Qs2DQo

If that happens, the least I will expect is to see SPGB members on the barricades to defend the Yorkshire Working Class Socialist National Democratic Independence Revolution, and not to side with that other treasonous lot in the Yorkshire Democratic Independent Social Workers Rebellion.

We can argue over the semantics of what is an 'idealistic social model' and what isn't, but it's probably better if I clarify more fully what I meant by the phrase. I start with a basic dichotomy (which I accept is a simplification) between, on the one hand, a society that develops organically and consensually, and in which changes are mostly bottom-up, and on the other hand, a society that develops non-organically and in which changes are mostly top-down and are imposed whether the population likes it or not. I believe the former is good and healthy and reflects natural circumstances, while the latter does not.  I accept that capitalism will tend to favour the latter, while a socialist society (or something broadly similar, like a distributist society) would favour more organic arrangements.  An organic society, as I would have it, could take on various forms and could include hierarchy and still be 'bottom-up' in nature: indeed, a hierarchy might help conserve certain traditions that hold society together.The changes imposed in a top-down society are often rationalised idealistically, whereas in a bottom-up society there is no need for idealistic rationalisation, instead change happens that reflects human needs and that is all the excuse needed.If the Japanese government has traditionally tended to discourage non-Japanese ethnic migrants from settling in that archipalego, that is not something that is being 'imposed' on the Japanese, it simply allows the status quo to evolve at its own pace and it reflects what the ethnic Japanese want.  If that weren't the case, then the Japanese government has plenty of reasons to allow all-comers into that country, but that hasn't happened.  Naturally, the Japanese wish to retain those cultures and identities that we call 'Japanese' and that would be threatened by the import of workers who do not share this meta-ethnicity.  However, I am sure if the Japanese government decided to fall in line with other neo-liberal Western governments and allow mass immigration, then support for mass immigration and its consequences would grow among the Japanese people.  But then, all that demonstrates is a mass psychological phenomenon with which we are well-familiar.  One need only consult reports of the Stanford Prison Experiment or the Asch Experiment for an explanation of why Japanese people would fall into line, just like your Scots miners fell into line and accepted the Lithuanians, and for the same reason your work colleagues say nothing about what most of them are probably really thinking.  No doubt the probability that you would scream 'racist' at even the mildest utterance of non-obedience also helps dissuade them from letting out their likely true feelings.  Such is "democracy".Of course, you may disagree with my axioms and instead hold that human beings are non-tribal.  You are entitled to your view, and as such, I accept that that would lead you to quite different conclusions.

Regarding tribal/non-tribal, I would argue that all human beings have an innate need to want to be part of an in-group.  [An academic ethologist would put it less clumsily than that, but it should be more or less clear what I mean].The in-group could be the local chess club, a political party, a philosophical allegiance, an industrial association, a consumer group, an ethnic group or a nation, or whatever.I would say that the Tribal Imperative (if we can call it that) acknowledges that human societies are in fact multi-dimensional communities of over-lapping self-interested groups.An anti-tribal position would deny this in all or part and assert either that no self-interested groups exist in the first place, or if they do exist, they are relatively unimportant to human behaviour (or a related position might be taken that even if they are important, human societies can still exist without some or all of them).According to this definition, most people (including yourself and most other people on here) would accept the Tribal Imperative to some degree while borrowing some of the anti-tribal position as caveats.  Only a modern type of classical liberal or free market anarchist or other kind of extreme individualist might perhaps deny the Tribal Imperative altogether and adopt a purely anti-tribal point-of-view.Tribal-ism (and in an agglomerated form, nationalism) would be the position that affirms the Tribal Imperative and regards it as a good thing and sets out to base a society on it to the fullest extent.  In doing so, nationalism identifies and prioritises a particular sub-set of tribalism: allegiance to a nation.  This is because the nation is thought to be the most adaptive form of social organisation: it embraces people of all types within a given ethnic group, and ethnic homogeneity allows personal freedom to be maximised.