When does navigating difference within a community shift to ostracizing for the sake of homogeneity?
Tribal theory suggests limits to group cohesion (Dunbar’s number, about 100-150). Still, civilization relies on shared narratives that allow us to transcend local (individual) comfort for symbolic cohesion and grand survival strategies. And yet, these stories fracture as a spectrum of deviations that no longer intersect or overlap: justice, suffering, and rewards diverge into antagonistic beliefs.
While tolerance is a spectrum, it requires a center and only expands so far.
After that, a mutual process of marginalization occurs: the fringes refuse to come to the center, self-ostracizing in a complex model of maintaining freedom, agency, and authenticity the tolerant center cannot stomach.