Your social group. Your circle of Family and Friends.
Your sense of cultural heritage.
Your depth of national pride.
The depth of your historical roots.
These all, to one degree or another, define your modern-day Tribe.
These all, to one degree or another, flame the passions of defensiveness.
tribe -- noun
1. any aggregate of people united by ties of descent from a common ancestor, community of customs and traditions, adherence to the same leaders, etc.
2. a local division of an aboriginal people.
3. a division of some other people.
4. a class or type of animals, plants, articles, or the like.
Being of vanilla, white-bread, wrong-side of the tracks, "Roots" myself --
the type of Tribalism that typically emflames me, is the "
Class-based" type.
Having clawed my way from constant poverty, to relative comfort and safety -- I have always identified with anybody, facing the same long odds. Whoever they may be; Wherever they may live. If they are Poor and struggling -- they have my automatic concern and interest.
In my hard-scrabble opinion, Classism -- is one of the worse -ism's, ever exploited by "The Powers That Be."
Classism curtails Destinies. Classism kills those seen as 'Lessor'.
Classism attempts to assign us our "Lots in Life" ... and more often than not, it succeeds.
Tribe
wikipedia.org
[...]
Anthropologist Elman Service presented a system of classification for societies in all human cultures based on the evolution of social inequality and the role of the state. This system of classification contains four categories:
1. Gatherer-hunter bands, which are generally egalitarian.
2. Tribal societies in which there are some limited instances of social rank and prestige.
3. Stratified tribal societies led by chieftains (see Chiefdom).
4. Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.
In his 1975 study, The Notion of the Tribe, anthropologist Morton H. Fried provided numerous examples of tribes the members of which spoke different languages and practised different rituals, or that shared languages and rituals with members of other tribes. Similarly, he provided examples of tribes where people followed different political leaders, or followed the same leaders as members of other tribes. He concluded that tribes in general are characterized by fluid boundaries and heterogeneity, are not parochial, and are dynamic.[5]
Fried, however, proposed that most contemporary tribes do not have their origin in pre-state tribes, but rather in pre-state bands. Such "secondary" tribes, he suggested, actually came about as modern products of state expansion. Bands comprise small, mobile, and fluid social formations with weak leadership, that do not generate surpluses, pay no taxes and support no standing army. [...]
Archaeologists continue to explore the development of pre-state tribes. Current research suggests that tribal structures constituted one type of adaptation to situations providing plentiful yet unpredictable resources. Such structures proved flexible enough to coordinate production and distribution of food in times of scarcity, without limiting or constraining people during times of surplus.
Tribalism -- the banding together of those of 'like mind' -- pushes back against Institutional
Classism.
It is the "angry mobs in the streets," that keep the Rich quaking in their proverbial rhino-skinned boots.
It is the banding together of compassionate-voters in social media, that keep Corporate lackeys, like Limbaugh -- searching for their next exploitive Million-Dollar scam.
"Tribalism" can spur motivation and action.
tribalism -- noun
: loyalty to a tribe or other social group especially when combined with strong negative feelings for people outside the group
But then again the "
struggle to survive" in today's often compassion-less world -- can spur action all on its own.
BUT, it's hard to think about school, and progress, and setting things right -- when ever-present hunger is gnawing at your soul.
This is precisely when "your Tribe" is supposed to step up -- and lend a hand, lend an ear, to lend a meal.
When we fall on hard times, and have hit the proverbial wall.
When our 'forward progress', grinds to a insurmountable halt.
And corporate-nation-states have been exploiting our Tribal DNA -- our need to belong -- for quite some time now.
Every generation they create new "bad guys" -- for us to "band together" against -- out there somewhere ... as the perennial Threats to "Our way of Life."
Nationalism
by Hans Kohn, Encyclopædia Britannica -- Last Updated 11-6-2014
Nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests.
Nationalism is a modern movement. Throughout history people have been attached to their native soil, to the traditions of their parents, and to established territorial authorities; but it was not until the end of the 18th century that nationalism began to be a generally recognized sentiment molding public and private life and one of the great, if not the greatest, single determining factors of modern history. Because of its dynamic vitality and its all-pervading character, nationalism is often thought to be very old; sometimes it is mistakenly regarded as a permanent factor in political behaviour.
[...]
The Other. The Different. The Odd.
The Neanderthals. The latest "bad guys" ... that we must all collectively fear.
Nations have risen up to -- to make our engrained "invisible boundaries" all the more effective, and divisive.
Nations against nations. Religion against religion. Peoples against Peoples.
Corporate-nation-states have used our 'basest instincts', to keep us in check and compliant, for centuries.
The rise of compassionate, caring, and sharing humans -- SHALL NOT infringe on their profit-based system, under the perpetual penalties of "Death and Taxes."
Robert Reich: Tribalism is tearing America apart
Former secretary of labor says Dems and GOP no longer share the same basic values -- and that nationhood is dead
by Robert Reich, salon.com -- Mar 25, 2014
[...]
Before the rise of the nation-state, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them. Kings and emperors imposed temporary truces, at most.
But in the past three hundred years the idea of nationhood took root in most of the world. Members of tribes started to become citizens, viewing themselves as a single people with patriotic sentiments and duties toward their homeland. Although nationalism never fully supplanted tribalism in some former colonial territories, the transition from tribe to nation was mostly completed by the mid twentieth century.
Over the last several decades, though, technology has whittled away the underpinnings of the nation state. National economies have become so intertwined that economic security depends less on national armies than on financial transactions around the world. Global corporations play nations off against each other to get the best deals on taxes and regulations.
[...]
And Nationalism, at its core, is really just recycling of the oldest of fears:
The Fear of the Other.
The tribal-stoked fears of "those Neanderthals" -- over there. Taking OUR Resources.
Nationalism, at its core, is the acceptance of 'blanket condemnations' of the Other -- and all the horrors that the citizens signing-off on, such "national acceptance," then must callously endure.
All supposedly, for the sake of progress; for fostering our "humanity"; for promoting 'civilized' growth around the world.
Economic "Opportunity" for some. Lurking somewhere, out there, in the inscrutable billionaire shadows.
SO, How Big is your Tribe?
What group or ideology, or nation-state platitudes -- serves as the nexus of your motivation ... serves as the reasons, for why we yet 'toil on' ...
Perhaps the ultimate litmus test of your "Tribal" affinity, is this:
“There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.”
-- John 15:13 -- Aramaic Bible in Plain English
That is one tough test to pass. When you see someone in danger -- What do you do?
Do you run towards -- or from -- the source of danger?
If the endangered person is in "your tribe" -- you would tend to run towards them -- to help. (... or at least we "used to.")
If not, you probably cross the street, and side-step 'the problems' infringing upon our individual hurried paths.
But here's the thing --
The wider human species is not 'The Other'. It is Us.
It is hope. It is fear. It is the desire to see the best in others, when experience tells us to expect the worse.
We are the paradoxical human species with 'the Neanderthals', we fear, literally within us ...
We are the modern-day species, that has yet to collectively prove, that we even deserve that second "-sapiens" marker of wisdom, that supposedly defines us.
That spirit of wisdom which would have us consider one last "Tribal" litmus test:
"Who would Gandhi fight?"
Answer THAT sufficiently, and you and 'your Tribe' will have found that permanent home of motivation -- that we were ALL, once destined for ...