Joe Scarborough, during the run-up to the 2014 election, spoke about his family and how loyalty was very important to them as a core value. “We were a Crest family,” he pointed out. "We might try Colgate, but we were always a Crest family.”
At first I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. Brand loyalty. Like religion or patriotism. Not bad per se. But not good either. No offense to Joe, an interesting opinionator, but the more we invest in our tribalism, the less we are troubled by thought.
Bland Loyalty = Brand Loyalty + Blind Loyalty.
Bland loyalty applies to products, sports, political parties, colleges, neighborhoods, race, gender, age, automobiles, soda, coffee bars and snacks. Time and again, media hosts and their guests advocate for their side. You never hear: women talk about men’s concerns, one race seeking to energize another, Democrats empathizing with Republicans, employees engaging with management―or vice versa. I’m not taking sides here.
In 1973 George Land published a book (since updated and reissued) called Grow or Die.
He suggests three stages of human development. I’m cutting corners on the complexities due to space:
Accretion: As babies, we focus on having our needs taken care of because we can’t survive on our own.
Replication: As we mature, we band with others like us (e.g.,nerds, jocks, academics, creative types).This gives us validation and, we think, more power. At its worst, this leads to gangs and bullying. Here is where bland loyalty takes root: Because I’m part of this, it’s inherently, unthinkingly, and always good.
Mutualism: Most of us never embrace this way of seeing and being because replication encouraged us to see otherness as less or, worse, as threatening. Mutualism means actively seeking out others unlike us and finding their differences a source of insight, understanding, and creative energy.
Am I knocking loyalty? No. I am merely suggesting that loyalty, left unchecked, can grow like a tumor, crowding out other possibilities. Bland loyalty isolates us in a self-fulfilling, self-aggrandizing way that dehumanizes others’ perspectives. And them. Bland loyalty helps no one. It feels powerful, because it’s energizing and unthinking. Like a mob.
When I hear myself taking sides on anything in a knee-jerk fashion―including something as trivial as who makes the best pretzels―I need to uproot the tendency toward bland loyalty. I do so by acknowledging that I like these rather than these are the best.
Bland loyalty says, “because I like/believe it’s the best or worst, it is so.” Bland loyalty excludes others’ ideas and things we don’t understand. Worst of all, it precludes rational thinking. It locks the door and throws away the key.
“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought,” said John F. Kennedy. When we are unthinkingly loyal, we engage in a comforting and dangerous tribalism that excludes possibility. That might have saved our lives a thousand years ago. It’s no longer appropriate.
Let’s enjoy our tribes—sports teams, bands, restaurants, political parties. But let’s not allow it to evolve into bland loyalty, the hallmark of lemmings.
