Tribal societies can be totalitarian but they need not be. They can be relatively free. Control of the individual can be more cultural than political, although the political is always a factor. What I wish to point out here is that the tribal premise is intrinsically anti-self-esteem. It is a premise and an orientation that disempowers the individual qua individual. Its implicit message is: You don’t count. By yourself, you are nothing. Only as part of us can you be something. Thus, any society, to the extent that it is dominated by the tribal premise, is inherently unsupportive of self-esteem and more: it is actively inimical. In such a society the individual is socialized to hold him- or herself in low esteem relative to the group. Self-assertiveness is suppressed (except through highly ritualized channels). Pride tends to be labeled a vice. Self-sacrifice is enjoined. One encounters the tribal mentality again in the technologically advanced society of George Orwell’s 1984, where the full power and authority of a totalitarian state is aimed at crushing the self-assertive individualism of romantic love. The contempt of twentieth-century dictatorships for a citizen’s desire to have “a personal life,” the characterization of such a desire as “petty bourgeois selfishness,” is too well known to require documentation. Modern dictatorships may have a better grasp of individuality than did primitive tribes, but the result is that the hostility is more virulent. When I attended the First International Conference on Self-Esteem in Norway in 1990, a Soviet scholar remarked, “As Americans, you can’t possibly grasp the extent to which the idea of self-esteem is absent in our country. It’s not understood. And if it were, it would be condemned as politically subversive.” My point is not that the Japanese culture in its entirety is unsupportive of self-esteem. The culture is far too diverse and contains too many conflicting values for any such proposition. The elements alluded to above are indeed inimical to self-esteem. There is much in Japanese culture that discourages autonomy, as is generally true of tribal cultures.
But there are other elements whose psychological effects are positive. A high regard for knowledge and learning. An understanding of the importance of being fully accountable for one’s actions and commitments. A loving pride in work well done. In cultures of high diversity, it is more useful to think of the implications for self-esteem of specific beliefs or values rather than of the culture as a whole.
What one can say as a generalization is that tribal cultures discount individuality and encourage dependency and to this extent may be characterized as unfriendly to self-esteem.