The Line

I've been thinking lately about the whole construction of conservative and liberal, and what it means to us today.  The apparent tension between the two seems to motivate much of the political energy in this country of ours, making both concepts important to understand.  So I've learned about economics, history, and anything else in which I could interest myself, hoping to understand where these dominant philosophies stand on the Important Issues(tm).  And I could tell you about Goldwater-style conservatism, and New Deal liberalism, but neither of those really apply today, do they?  Or I could talk about neoliberalism, and it's bastard child, neoconservatism, and I'd be getting close, at least relevant, but still, how do you define those terms, and do I actually know one solitary person in my every day life that could be described by one of them?  

Those and the bazillion other questions that could be asked simply just to make sure that everyone is on the same page before starting to have an insightful, relevant political conversation have all led me to one thing.  It's all utter horseshit.

Over the flip and far away...

I'm not trying to Broderize here - he's maybe the most horseshittiest of them all - but I think we've got to look at it differently.  The whole liberal/conservative construction has been handed to us by societal institutions (media, political campaigning, history class) that we no longer fully trust.  I dug the two-axis construction that divides it up into liberal/conservative and authoritarian/libertarian, as it was a little more relevant, but it was still missing something.  

The something missing was the ability to describe the incredible complexity of our society.  Really, as much as we condescend (even us progressives, at times) to Africa and Africans, we're not so different.  We have our tribes and conflicts and banana republics (here's looking at you, jeb) and the rest of it.  We also have our freedom fighters and humanitarians.  We just mostly call these things by different terms.  So I've got a term that I haven't heard before - but I apologize if anyone's already come up with it - neotribalism.

Basically, it's my hypothesis that we are all divided into different tribes and our interaction is that which happens between tribes.  Tribes include, but are definitely not limited to: Baptists, Harlemites, Black Southerners, White Southerners, Evangelicals, and so forth.  Something new about our situation is the freedom to belong to more than one tribe - for the Oblivion geeks out there, think of them as factions.  So you can include tribes like: pro-worker's rights, cat lovers, video game fanatics (seriously!), the list could go on forever.

But I think that by compartmentalizing the neotribalism in our society, and understanding it as such, we could more effectively diagnose and deal with our many ills.  The big thing is communication.  See, every tribe has their own way of describing things and talking about things.  It's own dialect and language.  So to communicate between tribes, one must know the language of the other tribe(s) to understand what the others involved are saying.  And if we understand each other, we'll find that we're not really all that different from each other.  We just have our tribes.

•  Sunday morning

  And I'm slant-eyed writing, procrastinating on the inevitable lawn-mowing that must soon take place.

  by Aethern on Sun May 06, 2007 at 09:17:28 AM PDT

•  the tribal premise

  In almost any traditional tribal society, world wide, the language of that tribe will describe tribal members as "(the) People".

  It starts with that root. "We are the (real) people and  other tribes aren't."

  Helluva burden to be working under.

  by claude on Sun May 06, 2007 at 09:44:58 AM PDT

  •  I was a longstanding member of

    the Hippie Tribe and still claim tribal identity, although I live way off the reservation and, in fact, pass as an old white guy.

    Being a member of a tribe, one learns about community and most tribal members, whatever the tribe, are communitarian to some degree towards their fellow members. The evolution of this is to learn to extend this sense towards those outside the tribe.

    by claude on Sun May 06, 2007 at 09:52:07 AM PDT