Bitter struggles deform their participants in subtle, complicated ways. The idea that one should speak one’s cultural allegiance first and the truth second (and that this is a sign of authenticity) is precisely such a deformation.
Zadie Smith
Bitter struggles deform their participants
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But, you know, consider the life of the very small social group, evolutionarily.
In any within-tribe experience, truth makes for group survival (common goal). In any tribe-to-tribe experience, tribe allegiance makes for group survival (us vs them) – truth can wait. Even ants know this.
The reaction is built in, like so much else we find distasteful at a larger scale. Evolution is too slow and survival too chancy for the level of altruism we desire in civilization. We can only partially tame ourselves – in nature, it’s not the tame that survive. We might be able to pull it off as an artificial construct, but the jury is still out on that.