Build your own tribe

[Cain]

Via John Robb:

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/03/manufacturing-fictive-kinship-.html

If you are like most people in the 'developed world,' you don't have any experience in a true tribal organization.  Tribal organizations were crushed in the last couple of Centuries due to pressures from the nation-state that saw them as competitors and the marketplace that saw them as impediments.  All we have now it is a moderately strong nuclear family (weakened via modern economics that forces familial diasporas), a weak extended family, a loose collection of friends (a social circle), a tenuous corporate affiliation, and a tangential relationship with a remote nation-state.  That, for many of us, is proving to be insufficient as a means of withstanding the pressures of the chaotic and harsh modern environment (D2 in particular).

The solution to this problem is to build a tribe.  A group of people that you are loyal to you and you are loyal in return.  In short, the need for a primary loyalty to a group that really cares about your survival and future success. 

So how do you build a tribe?  A strong tribe, in this post-industrial environment*, isn't built from the top down.  Instead it is built organically from the bottom up.  A simple tribe starts with cementing ties to your extended family, a connection of blood.  The second step is to extend that network to include other families and worthy  individuals.  A key part of that is to build fictive kinship, a sense of connectedness that leads to the creation of loyalty to the group.  That kinship is built through (see Ronfeldt's paper for some background on this):

Story telling.  Shared histories and historical narratives.   
Rites of passage.  Rituals of membership.  Membership is earned, not given due to the geographic location of birth or residence.
Obligations.   Rules of conduct and honor.  The ultimate penalty being expulsion.
Egalitarian and often leaderless organization.  Sharing is prized.   
Multi-skilled.  Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among parts). 
Two-way loyalty.  The tribe protects the members and the members protect the tribe.   If this isn't implemented, you don't have a tribe, you have a Kiwanis club. 

The development of fictive kinship will likely be key to the development of resilient communities (as it is already for global guerrillas).  We can already see this process at work in the UK's Transition Towns movement with their story telling, honoring elders, re-skilling, and leaderless approach (see the 12 steps).


*Nationalism is a form of fictive kinship manufactured/bent to serve the needs of the state during our industrial phase of economic organization.

[Kai]

Yes.

Yes yes yes.

[Thurnez Isa]

my first reaction is that this ignores the complexity and vastness of the 21st century human societies, the increasing population, and the weight this population is having on the environment world wide
But as I said that is my first reaction... I would have to think and research more on this

[Cramulus]

Great find, Cain. Definitely food for thought - like what is a "tribe" in this crazy modern world?

Though all that ritual will probably do the trick, I think the most important formative factor is stress. You and your tribemates have to experience stress together.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Me and a group of my long-term friends call ourselves a tribe, or a family. It's pretty fucking tight, and it's been that way for about 16-17 years.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

In Prometheus Rising, Wilson likens the various religious groups to 'tribes'. 'The Catholic Tribe', 'The Mormon Tribe' etc.

I think those would meet most of the requirements set:
*check* Story telling.  Shared histories and historical narratives.   
*check* Rites of passage.  Rituals of membership.  Membership is earned, not given due to the geographic location of birth or residence.
*check* Obligations.   Rules of conduct and honor.  The ultimate penalty being expulsion.
*no check* Egalitarian and often leaderless organization.  Sharing is prized.   
*depends* Multi-skilled.  Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among parts).
*depends* Two-way loyalty.  The tribe protects the members and the members protect the tribe.

I think a rise of non religious tribes would be very interesting.

[Richter]

Me and a group of my long-term friends call ourselves a tribe, or a family. It's pretty fucking tight, and it's been that way for about 16-17 years.

I think this happens a lot currently.  Members may be living across a wider area as opposed to a small cluster of huts, and help each other traversing job, finance, and human obstacles more than natural ones, but the idea is still very relevant.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Interesting.

I can't help thinking this board and others like it might conform to the idea of a "cybertribe"

[Tempest Virago]

This is very interesting.

It sort of reminds me of the way that I know a lot of people who claim their good friends as "family". This originated as a street kid/traveller thing, people who don't have families watching each other's backs on the street/while traveling, but a lot of punks, etc. have adopted it in a way that is arguably appropriative - but that's neither here nor there.

My best friend decided two years ago that I was his "cousin", and we treat each other as family, closer than many of my real cousins, and definitely above and beyond what I'd do for somebody who I didn't consider family.

[Richter]

Same here.  Just the way things went down, and the way society is, I was never exactly tight with my own extended family.

I know plenty of folks though, through SCA, internet, etc., who I'll offer space, food, and help to at the drop of a hat, and who offer as much to me.  You show up, you hang out, and you end up helping them stack wood, rearrange heavy stuff, or work on projects without hesitation.  Just what you DO.  It's kind of an extended network working on the idea of "If you've walked through the door 3 times, you're family.  Help yourself, don't expect to get waited on.  If you don't make the cut in the first place, or abuse it, you won't walk through that door again."

[Verbal Mike]

I had very similar thoughts before, so it was nice to see Robb post this. My thinking about this originally started from trying to figure out if and how the form of social organization found in democratic schools can be applied to society. It seems to me that any group that fits certain criteria basically becomes a tribe in the ape mind; religions are a good example, as are nations, except that both - and especially the latter - are granfalloons, i.e, the ape mind is mistaken in assuming the ape is really connected to the others in the group. But in smaller groups, or generally in groups whose membership is not automatic (like virtually all citizenship and most religions) or irrevocable (like virtually all citizenship and some religions), group identity is actually very meaningful and can be both powerful and useful.

It has also occurred to me that PDCOM is a kind of tribe, but I don't think it's the kind of tribe that means very much IRL. Online I think this is undoubtedly a tribe, reluctantly and tentatively, with very fickle cohesion, but a tribe nonetheless. This tribe is, however, almost entirely meaningless in meatspace -- so far. But activities like ColbertGASM are changing this. Kind of. Who knows to what extent.

Anyway, what Robb is referring to is something that really only makes sense in a more contracted space with more pressures than exist in cyberspace. The space the tribe exists in doesn't have to be physically contracted, but it has to be contracted in some sense or another. For instance, a secret network of Jewish bankers, spread across the world but all subject to the pressures of the same global financial system, I could imagine forming quite a formidable tribe in every way. Of course it also makes sense for a tribe to exist in a physically contracted space - a tribe in a city, comprising of people of all sorts (some may even be evil Jewish bankers!), makes sense because their geographical proximity makes it easier to assist each other, and to assist the tribe as a whole, and also because it means they are subjected to similar pressures. I definitely agree with Cram that this is a defining factor.

It seems that in any situation where a collection of individuals are subject to common stress factors, they are also likely more able to be of mutual assistance. I was going to say that the reverse is not necessarily true, but when thinking of an example I realized that in a sense, the reverse is true as well. The example that came to mind was that we can all help PDCOM by sending money for the server, but this immediately highlights the fact that we are subject to the same stress factor, namely the need for money to maintain communications with the other members. Here's a thought, maybe too tangential for this thread: common stress and potential for mutual benefit are intrinsically related. To tie this back into the topic, these two connected factors are the basis for any meaningful survivalist collaboration, i.e. tribal life.

Brain too mushy. End stream of consciousness.

[Telarus]

to verb. So, which of our common stress factors can we monetize to cover said server bill and maybe start a OperationMindfuck petty cash resource?

[Requia ☣]

Also I've now got Eastern Standard Tribe running through my head.   

[Reginald Ret]

heh, anybody who wants to give something to pd now just needs to click on some of the ads at the bottom of pd.com/forum.
c'mon make faust happy.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

heh, anybody who wants to give something to pd now just needs to click on some of the ads at the bottom of pd.com/forum.
c'mon make faust happy.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=20120.0;topicseen