The Value of Tribalism

There are those whom, after hearing me talk about tribalism, assume that I am some sort of romantic advocating that we leave our cities behind and go back into the “wilderness” to live in tribes again.  This is in no way what I’m about.  If there are those who feel that this is what they need to do I leave them to it; and I wish them well.  What I very much do advocate is that we look at tribalism and see what exactly about it works, and has worked for millions of years, and learn from it.  It is very essential that we do this.  For ten thousand years we have been philosophizing and conquering and revolting and law-writing in an attempt to replace tribalism with a civilization that works just as well.  We have failed at this, and it is no surprise, discarding a social structure than evolved over millennia and starting over from scratch with a mindset fundamentally opposed to the Law of Life was simply never going to work.  It’s time for something different; it’s time to move beyond civilization.

Changing Minds

For a start, people need to have a mind change about some key things; certain memes of our global culture need to be removed.  The first and most important meme that needs to go: there is only one right way to live.  There is no one right way to live.  The most fundamental mechanism of our planet is diversity.  If we as a species are to survive—if the world itself is to avoid ecological failure, we must stop trying to force everyone and the world itself to follow a “right way”.  This idea must be abandoned.  Second and just as vital to be dropped: the world was made for Man, and it is his destiny to subdue and rule it.  This meme has severely damaged the biodiversity of this planet and threatens to destroy it; this meme too must be abandoned.  In the absence of these two toxic memes, the core beliefs that drive civilization begin to unravel.  People will naturally begin to move on to something different.

A Different Kind of Revolution

We need only look at the last ten-thousand years of Taker expansion to see what happens to those who oppose Takerism directly.  Its opponents are usually surrounded and assimilated or destroyed outright.  Leaverism now exists only on the fringes where Takerism has not yet infringed yet.  Taker culture is a juggernaut that simply cannot be brought down by force.  What we need is a different kind of revolution; a revolution that takes the mechanics of Takerism and uses them against it to fuel the revolution.  We can use the very girth of the Taker world itself create a schism within it, and in that schism we can begin to let a new story take hold—one that moves beyond civilization into a future where more than just a sliver of humanity is not at war with the planet.

Occupational Tribalism

Daniel Quinn describes Occupational Tribalism as a group of people who come together in a tribal way in the pursuit of a business venture.  Each person contributes equally to the venture, usually because each person has a deep passion for the venture being pursed.  Examples include local newspapers or theatre troupes, and people who come together online to put together web casts.  Usually the members of the numerous little occupational tribes hold additional jobs because the venture they pursue together cannot provide them the security they need, with one notable exception: circuses.  Traditional (non-corporate) circuses are a perfect example of the potential of an occupational tribe.  All of the members of a circus contribute with vigor to the running and solidarity of the circus.  From the simplest concessionaire to the flashiest trapeze artist—every member of a circus is equally important to the continuation of the circus.  Everyone has a job to do, and each job is equally as important as the other.  Even for the boss of the circus, his job is just another.  Traditional circuses do not have a class system.  The performers do not look down on the animal handlers, the boss does not rule over them with impunity.  This is because the members of a circus are organized very much tribally.  The security of each member is dependent on every other member.  Aside from circuses, occupational tribalism has not been up to the task of providing the security that people need.  I have an idea on how to change that.

Occupational Tribal Network: A Variation on a Theme

Imagine a world were you only had to work four to six hours a day, four days a week.  Imagine that your every need was taken care of.  Imagine that you didn’t have to work yourself ragged in pursuit of the security that is so seldom found in the world of work.  Imagine knowing that from the cradle to the grave you were secure.  Imagine a world where the food isn’t under lock and key and life isn’t a struggle against the class system to get by, to speak of getting ahead.  So, what am I talking about?  Some idyllic utopia where everything is perfect?  No.  I am talking about taking occupational tribalism to the next level.  Imagine many different occupational tribes confederated together for the purpose of increasing the security of each occupational tribe’s members.  Each occupational tribe makes its products or services available free of charge to all members of the confederation.  The surpluses that aren’t distributed to members of the confederation are sold into the general Taker market and the profit therein is used to enrich the confederation and increase the security of its members.  Now I understand that trying to enact a new vision within the Taker system that surrounds us is extremely difficult.  I have thought on this and I have an idea of how it might be done.

A Brief Word on Capital

First we need one person, or several, dedicated to the vision.  They will need to first use the workings of Takerism to generate a sizable sum of money.  For illustrative purposes I will refer to money as Taker capital.  The idea of buying security is a Taker concept.  This kind of security is precarious.  The goal here is to convert Taker capital into cradle to grave security, which I will call Leaver capital.

New Vision Implemented

The sizable sum of money that will be required will have to be attained using the methodology used by Takerism.  Remember that we are in effect using Takerism against itself to battle it.  The Taker capital can be generated in the places where it is least substantial, such as the foreign exchange market, the stock market.  Chunks of Taker capital can be generated there and then fed into something like real estate speculation on tax sale properties.  These transactions can be cycled repeatedly to generate an enormous amount of Taker capital by the savvy, which we must become.  When enough Taker capital is generated, the process of converting it into Leaver capital can begin.  First a few or just one of the occupational tribes will need to register as a corporation.  I know that corporations are capable of doing a large amount of harm and many cringe at the idea of “going corporate”, but the legal status of a corporation is in fact the greatest weapon we have against Takerism.  Here is where the buyout begins.  Other small companies are now bought out, I mean companies across the board that produce the necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, recreation, etc.  These companies are then restructured as follows: all of the products and services created by the companies under the new corporate umbrella are available to all employees in the corporation free of charge; all surpluses produced beyond that are sold out into the general Taker market at a reduced markup.  This will achieve two things: first it will raise the overall security of the members of our budding occupational tribal network, second the reduced cost of products and services being sold into the general Taker market will attract the purchasing power of Taker consumers—Taker capital brought in this way can then be converted into Leaver capital as it will be used to enhance the occupational tribal network.  Over time the corporation grows to include the capacity to produces the entire range of products and services.  Everything from food to healthcare, automobiles to entertainment, all of it free of charge to members.  Does this mean that members of the network still have to break their backs toiling to enjoy these benefits?  No, why would it?  There will be no need to produce dizzying surpluses to sell off for profit, the network is self sufficient.  So how much time will members need to work to enjoy this cradle to grave security they now enjoy?  I’d imagine no more than twenty hours a week.  But how will such a vast network of people be managed?  This is the most elegant part: the corporate officers of the corporation will have the task of making sure that the network runs smoothly.  Not like in Taker corporations, they won’t rule over the network.  They will be tasked with keeping track of the assets of the corporation and the legal side of the corporation and organizing things in very much the same way as the boss of a circus does.  It’ll be just another job, like all the others.  I’ll talk more about the possible mechanics of an occupational tribal network at a later time in greater detail.  I’m still thinking about some of the particulars, and I’d love any suggestions anyone may have.

The Outcome: Opening the Prison Gates

What would the spread of such a network of occupational tribes mean?  First and foremost it will give people the kind of cradle to grave security that people in the Taker world have not known in ten-thousand years.  It will provide an alternative for all of those who are disenchanted with Takerism, people who previously felt locked into the prison of Taker culture and saw no way out of it.  The occupational tribal network will open the gates of the Taker prison.  People will see this alternative and I believe many will flock to it.  Think also of the efforts that can then be made to reduce the footprint of Man on the earth.  First, since the network isn’t producing the incredible excesses of Taker industry, there will be that much less industrial waste.  The industry within the network can “go green”; removing a sizable amount of annual pollution, the best minds within the network can work on alternative fuel development and quite possibly manufacture the first production automobiles that do not run on fossil fuels.  And do it cheaply.  There is absolutely no limit to the progress that can be made.  The network will be a catalyst for the move beyond civilization.  Crime and poverty will vanish where the network has a presence.  People with cradle to grave security have no impetus for crime, look at tribal peoples who survive today.  It will be a new age, and the possibilities will be limitless.

A Final Word

This is my vision, in a three page nutshell.  I will continue to post periodically on concepts presented here in greater depth.  In the meantime I am attempting to start generating the Taker capital that will be needed to give my vision form.  Anyone who wishes to post comments of ideas is more than welcome to do so.  We can indeed change the world.  Let’s do it.  Be well, friends. 

Yes, that is exactly correct.  I have good news.  Here it is:

We are not Humanity.

All of you, who are reading this, turn on the television and find a news station.  I don’t care which one.  Watch for a moment.  See all of the strife and war and economic shamble and starvation and political corruption and bigotry and terrorism?  Do you see them?  They are not caused by Humanity.  Go outside and look at the entire urban and suburban sprawl; look at all of the pollution and garbage.  Do you see them?  They are not caused by Humanity.  Come back inside and look at the television again, flip through the channels and view all of the corporate consumerism and wastefulness.  Do you see them?  Neither of them are caused by Humanity.  Sit back, take a deep breath, and let that sink in.  Now react to the statement: we are not Humanity.  Are you cheering?  Are you dancing in the street?  You should be.  Why?  Because this is the absolute best news we could ever hear.

If all of those things were not caused by Humanity, what did cause them?  The answer is this: a single culture, a culture that has spread itself across most of the planet, but a single culture nonetheless.  Why is this so significant?  Because it means that in all of the other cultures that have ever existed since the beginnings of mankind to this very moment you are reading this only one of them has overrun the planet.  Only one of them has wantonly driven thousands of species to extinction. Only one of them created and perpetuates Totalitarian Agriculture, war, famine, plague, crime, persecution, slavery, revolution and genocide as institutions and machinery in their story. In some three million years that humanity has existed, these things have only happened once.  It started ten-thousand years ago and has proceeded up until this moment in time.  And yes in that time the planet has been brought to the brink of an ecological disaster and our global culture teeters on a collapse that will mean the death of billions; but it also means that in the millions of years before that, humanity lived as a part of the world rather than at war with it.  What does that mean?  This is the most important bit, it means:

Humanity is not by its nature a blight on this planet.  Humanity is not by its nature evil and destined to destroy itself and the planet with it.  Humanity is indeed just another species among billions, in a world that is all of a piece.  We are no more or less vital than any other life here.  Humanity is not doomed, we are not specifically cursed.  The state of the world is the result of a single culture gone amok.

That’s right friends.  We don’t have to change people and make them better, that is what Takerism was about.  It has spectacularly failed.  All we have to do is change a single culture, not change human nature itself.  If we had to change the very nature of humanity, if humanity was itself inherently the cause of the state of our world, we truly would be doomed.  If that were the case then nothing, and certainly not this web community, would be able to stop our flow towards destruction.  But we don’t and we aren’t.  We just have to change one culture; by no means will this be an easy feat to accomplish, but it is certainly better than being an impossible one.

Okay, that’s all fine and dandy, but what now?  What do we do?  That is a fantastic question.  I have an idea, but I’ll hold off on it for a little while.  In the meantime, please post comments with some ideas of your own.  I would love to hear them.

Until next time; be well friends.

From the time we were all children we have all been taught a version of events and human destiny by our own Mother Culture:  Humanity was born striving towards civilization and that it is his destiny to rule over the Earth; Mankind is inherently a farmer, city builder and conqueror; at Mankind’s beginning he was a cave dweller who lived in squalor, fighting to scrape by in that dark time known a prehistory; Man wanted to be civilized, he simply had not discovered how yet; when he did figure out how to subdue the earth and the beasts and build cities he was on his path of destiny.   

This is all codswallop.  What I will do here is present an alternate viewpoint of how things became as they are.

Recently aired on the Discovery Channel was a two part special titled The Rise of Man.  This special presented the evolutionary transition of Homo Erectus to Homo Sapien.  This special depicted early Man as being an extremely ignorant creature, frightened by the very world around him.  For instance: there are scenes depicting these individuals as being horrified by thunderstorms, death, and the process of birth.  This is utterly absurd.  From the beginning of the evolutionary process that has come to man, from the earliest ape to Homo Erectus, the very basic elements of the world were always there.  Homo Erectus and then Homo Sapiens came to be in a world full of weather, death, and females giving birth.  The depiction of early humans as hapless and constantly frightened idiots is baseless simply because you do not see the other creatures of this planet running around like hapless and frightened idiots.  They do not drop to the ground writhing and whooping, during a rainstorm as early man was depicted in this special.  Nor are they perplexed and frightened by death and birth—these things are just as much a fixture of life as rainstorms.  Now I will present a much more logical story of the rise of Man.

Man evolved into Man over a very long period of time.  He also evolved in the world, so it is safe to assume that the memories of the ways of the world were transmitted to each new generation.  This makes it impossible for Man to have come into this world ignorant of its basic workings.  As the mental capacity of Man developed, he learned to begin to fashion tools to aid him in his daily life.  What is known as the “hunter-gatherer” lifestyle emerged.  Humans of this era are depicted as wretched creatures who spent all of there time fighting for their survival against starvation.  This is simply not the case, as is evidenced by the remaining hunter-gatherer peoples in the world.  These people usually spend no more than twenty hours a week in the pursuit of food.  They aren’t starving; in fact they have better nutrition than most in the civilized world do.  Assuming that early Man began practicing hunting and gathering some two million years ago and also spent approximately twenty hours of the week feeding themselves, what did they do with the other one-hundred and forty-eight hours?  They spent it doing whatever they wanted to do.  The beginning of Man was not a time in which people fought for their very survival, it was a time of leisurely discovery in which language and the first forms of art developed.  It was also the time in which the fundamental social structure of Humans developed.  It was the rise of Tribalism. 

As Man continued to evolve into hunting and gathering and greater intelligence they very naturally began to organize themselves much the same as all social animals organize themselves.  The social organizations that Man developed were tribes.  Each separate tribal system either continued or disappeared according to the evolutionary process that has always dictated life on this planet.  At this point in time the whole of Humanity lived in accordance with the Law of Life.  The Law of Life is essentially the universal set of evolutionarily stable strategies.  Humanity had come into being following this law and its subset, the Law of Limited Competition.  The Law of Limited Competition is as follows: You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food.  Now, these people did not choose to live this way for any moral reason, I’m not talking about the concept of the Noble Savage.  Humanity didn’t live in harmony with “nature” by choice.  There very concept of nature is a construct that civilization uses to separate itself from the world he has subjugated.  Humanity at this time and tribal peoples surviving today lived and live in accordance to these laws for two reasons: they evolved in accordance of these laws and this way of life had proven itself over the ages (if it hadn’t people would no longer be here).

We now come to that watershed of humanity, that time known as the “Agricultural Revolution”.  This name is in itself a misnomer.  Archeology has shown that this wasn’t the advent of agriculture; agriculture had been around in some form for ages.  So what exactly happened here, what is the significance of this time?  Let us begin with talking about what did not happen.  It has been postulated by historians that the movement from hunter-gathering to agriculture was a response to starvation caused by overpopulation.  This makes very little sense.  First of all, the population of any species is regulated by the amount of food that is available.  If there is a shortage of food, there will not be a growth in population.  Furthermore, agriculture as a response to starvation is as likely as a drowning person building a boat.  If you are starving you simply do not have the energy to spend tilling soil and planting crops, and you certainly don’t have the time to wait for them to grow until harvest time—because you’re starving.  I will again approach this from a more logical angle.

Around ten-thousand years ago, the many tribes had spread to the four corners of the earth and population of humanity numbered at around ten million.  A great many were dabbling in agriculture and had been for a very long time; agriculture itself was by no means anything new.  Then something happened.  A tribe in the fertile crescent began an experiment.  Human’s are by their nature inventive, this is by no means new.  This tribe (which I will borrow again from Daniel Quinn and call them the Tak), had a method of agriculture that was new.  The Tak invented Totalitarian Agriculture.  There was much more food available and they didn’t have to move around with the food they consumed.  Permanent settlements were built by the Tak, the first towns were born.  The Tak soon faced a problem.  As their population and food production began to rise, they got caught in the positive feedback loop inherent to Totalitarian Agriculture.  They needed the crops to sustain their every growing numbers, and that meant protecting their crops from other animals with impunity.  Soon enough again the Tak faced a problem that had never been faced before ever in the entire span of Man’s existence: they didn’t have enough room for all the people and agriculture where they were.  They looked to their neighbors’ territory and said to themselves: “look at all that land, those people are wasting it”.  The territory of the Tak grew outward.  Now surely there was some peaceful territorial spread, but other tribes that would not give up their land would soon be taken by force.  The Tak certainly had the superior numbers to force cooperation from their immediate neighbors. Freshly expanded, the Tak took stock of themselves and saw that they had become powerful.  It was here that the greatest and most costly cultural fluke in human evolution occurred.  The Tak began to believe that their way of life was the best and only right way to live; that it was in fact human destiny to live this way.  The Law of Life and of Limited Competition did not apply to them, for their destiny was to conquer the world.  The Tak had become the Takers.  The rest, quite literally, is history.

As Takerism began to spread, its conventions began to develop.  For starters, food was put under lock and key.  In order for Takerism to spread it’s superiority across the land it could have been no other way.  If you have an enormous surplus of food that people can take from freely they would have no reason to continue laboring for the majority of the day farming.  They could simply take from the food surplus until it depleted and then at that point grow more food.  That wouldn’t do, not if Takerism was to convert the world to its one right way to live.  So the storehouses of food had to be locked up and the food had to be doled out.  Someone had to dole out the food.  The class system had now been born.  The key holders of the storehouses were busy doling out food, so they certainly didn’t have any time to waste actually producing the food.  And they also needed someone to watch over the ever numerous storehouses of food, to guard them.  And someone needed to make weapons to outfit those who guarded the food.  So now we have a class of rulers, military, artisans, and peasants.  The classes become further specialized, war becomes an institution; crime and law come into being.  Slavery also becomes and institution.  The march of Takerism continued and (in the blink of an eye compared to the entire life of humanity) has spread to the four corners of the earth. The Takers then began turning on each other in competition for resources and over whose one right way to live was superior.  History is brimming with war, famine, plague, crime, persecution, slavery, revolution and genocide.  In ten-thousand years the spread of Takerism has raped the planet and destroyed its biodiversity.  It has left the very planet bleeding at its feet as the human population numbers in the billions and hundreds of species become extinct daily. 

People have begun to look at the world and they question, for the first time in ten-thousand years they question Takerism, though very few could put it into words.  They look around and they see the state of the planet and they doubt the sustainability of our global lifestyle.  They look at the world and think that it may be doomed, all the while Mother Culture replies: “Things are great, things are great, things are great…”  People are beginning to not believe it anymore, they wonder if the destruction of the world promised by the world’s religions is indeed upon us.  People are disenchanted, especially the young.  They look toward the future and doubt its security.  Some of them are afraid, many of them are angry and don’t know what to do about it.  They have become cynical as the conventions of Takerism are visibly failing and obviously won’t hold out for the duration of their lives.  They look around and are constantly confronted with bad news.  They’re used to it, have come to expect it.  Bad news is just another fixture of life.

Hold tight friends, good news is on the way.

Hello again my forward striving compatriots!  As I mentioned in my last post, this one will be an overview of a number of terms that will pepper my upcoming posts.  This is again an overview, all terms will be discussed in much greater depth soon.  And here we go!


Culture:

A story; specifically it is the story being enacted by a group of people.  That story and its enactment determine the culture of a group of people.

Mother Culture:

The collection of memes and other influences that maintain the overall identify and story of a culture.  Basic examples are the folk-tales, traditions and conventional wisdom of a culture.  Overall, Mother Culture is all of the things both apparent and subliminal that enforce culture.

Tribe/Tribalism:

Tribalism is the fundamental cultural system of humans.  Tribal systems developed evolutionarily.  Tribes whose ways of doing things worked persisted while those whose did not faded and disappeared.  The variety of tribal systems is as large as the number of tribes that have existed; each has its own way of doing things.  All tribes share three major things in common:  they all exist to provide cradle to grave security for all of their members, all members have an equal stake in the security of the tribe, and they all enact Leaverism.

Leaver(ism):

Leaverism is the cultural story found amongst the world’s remaining tribal peoples.  Leavers are people whose cultural story is that Man belongs to the world, created by the “gods” just as every other living thing was created all of a piece.  Because they’re cultural story puts them in accordance with the Law of Life and the Law of Limited Competition, they leave the ruling of the world to the “gods”; hence, Leavers.  All tribes have enacted Leaverism.

Taker(ism): 

Takerism is the cultural story most prevalent in the world, both East and West.  Takers are people whose cultural story is that the world belongs to Man, that they are rulers of the world.  Through their attempt to control and order the world around them, most noted in the form of what lives and dies (in violation of the Law of Life and the Law of Limited Competition), they take the power of the “gods” for themselves; hence, Takers.  All extant civilized cultures enact Takerism.

Totalitarian Agriculture:

A form of agriculture predicated on the notion that all food on the planet belongs to Man, its rules are as follows: food dedicated to human use may be denied to all other species, any species that would compete for human food may be destroyed at will, food needed by other species may be destroyed at will to make room for the production of human food.  Totalitarian Agriculture creates such a surplus of food that a positive feedback loop of both population growth farmland expansion occurs. This decreases biodiversity in the ecosphere, as more and more of the ecosphere is converted to the production of human food.  The advent of Totalitarian Agriculture and Takerism sparked what is known as the Agricultural Revolution roughly 10,000 years ago.

Good day to all of you fellow potential world changers.

I was initially drawn to the site by the scholarship.  I set up a page and submitted my entry, then got dragged back into the flow of everyday life.  Then I got an email with an update on the scholarship and decided to take the advice there and set up my page.  So let us begin.

A little about myself:
   
I grew up the son of an Air Force pilot who like most Air Force pilots has been deployed to the four corners of the Earth.  In his travels he learned a lot about the different views and philosophies of the world, he transmitted his knowledge to me.  I am very grateful.

Like a good number of Americans I have some Native American background, mine being Chiricahua Apache on my father's mother's side.  Her mother was a niece of the famous warrior and seer Goyaałé, known as Geronimo.  This heritage has long been important to me and study of that heritage has influenced my worldview, particularly in how I view mankind in relation to the community of life at large.

From just about the time I became aware of the world around me, like many others gathered here I am sure, I felt that there was something very wrong with the world we live in today.  The answers and reasons for things that are accepted as "conventional wisdom" did not satisfy me.  So I began to read; I was a twelve year old boy with stacks of books that graduate students would read.  I had to figure things out, I was obsessed.  I studied as many things as I could get my hands on and in the process a picture began to focus.  It was something that for years I could not nail down.  It was not until I came across the works of author Daniel Quinn that I gained the terminology for things to crystallize.  His books are listed on my bookshelf, they should be read.  My subsequent posts will explain and use much of his terminology.

I have a vision.  This is a community of people who have vision.  I will share my vision with all of you, share yours with me.  It is with hopeful anticipation that I look forward to seeing how things here pan out.