Joining the Tribe
When I go to work, I do what I can to add value there. When I am home, I do what I can to be a good husband and father there. These two areas of focus take significant effort — as they likely do for so many other people like me. But in the back of my mind and deep in my heart, I am a philosopher. I think a lot — presumably more than many of my peers — about mortality, about finding purpose, about what it even means to be alive in the first place. I don’t often talk about this big part of me to others — in large part because I simply don’t get the impression that many of the people around me are interested in these topics to the degree that I am.
Over the last few years, this deep-thinking has helped clarify and fine-tune my understanding of many issues. I’ve come to finally admit that I do not believe the religious beliefs that I may have believed at one point in my life. That was a big one for me. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time thinking about how I understand race in America and I see things differently on that one too. I’ve always been a big science-fiction-type person and fascinated with the extent of the universe and the idea of infinity. Thinking more about this has forced me to recognize again how precious we each are as life on this small planet.
I’ve recognized that all these things seem to have one common thread… the idea of tribalism, so I’ve been thinking about this lately in particular. I’ve partaken in several a Facebook debate over the last couple of years about US politics, about Black-Lives-Matter, about jihadist Islam, and about gun control. I see tribalism in each of these debates.
We are tempted — and likely biologically wired — to focus on being part of a tribe. Tribe members tend to subscribe to a certain grouping of core beliefs. Way back when, it may have been a belief and agreement that we would protect a certain area of farm-land from other tribes. Now it is — in some cases — subscription to a belief that a person fitting characteristic ABC is lazy (or manipulative) and therefore a suck on (or threat to) our tribe’s ability to provide for itself and our families. There is a general and unspoken agreement that the tribe will adhere to this default position. I am very interested in the strength of that adherence in the face of conflicting evidence.
Some tribe members will defiantly hold on to the tribal default position regardless of fact, while others will reluctantly — finger-by-finger let go. Many though will seek what they think to be a middle ground, saying “So I thought John Doe was an ABC because of XYZ… OK, so I am wrong in this case, but this is a rare exception and the default position still stands for me.” This is simply letting go with one hand only to then double-down and grasp tighter with the other. Again, I can see that there is an evolutionary and biological reason for this being the case.
Ultimately though, I’ve come to believe that our ability to increase our chances of survival as a species hinges very much on our ability to step beyond our tribalism. Tribalism used to ultimately lead to the killing of some tribes with others surviving. But now, we are doing stupid things that can negatively affect all of us. Some of us join the “climate-change-denier” tribe. Some of us join the “Sharia Law-should-be-tolerated-and-even-respected-because-it-is-tied-to-religious-beliefs” tribe. With the world as connected as it is, the result of tribal warfare impacts the entire world now. We need to think differently.
We need to each simultaneously be in tribe of ONE and in a tribe of ALL… not a tribe of some.
As a tribe of one, we need to think for ourselves — honestly and openly — about each issue on its own merit. We can and should listen to the historical teachings of our tribes, but we need to be able to recognize the valid points vs the bullshit… and we need the courage to act accordingly.
As a tribe of all, we need to first recognize that we have always been a single tribe in a very real sense. At this point, life on earth is the only life of which we are aware in the universe. We have a duty to life itself to protect it from self-annihilation. And yes, we certainly do have infighting within the tribe — and some of it is fully justifiable and needs decisive correction (i.e. stopping ISIS killings), but it is important to recognize that even these ISIS murderers are still part of our tribe. Of course something inside us seeks to run from the idea that we have any relationship whatsoever with people that can do such evil things, but we do.
If you have never read the poem “Pale Blue Dot” by Carl Sagan, here it is below. It is about a video image of the Earth as seen from a space probe 3.7 billion miles away.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” — Carl Sagan.
I have already confessed that I am a philosopher at heart, but I am a practical philosopher. I do not expect that words alone — even those as perspective-changing as Sagan’s — will magically get us to a “Tribe of One/ Tribe of All” communal understanding of the world and each other. There are many realities that impede this. But it is still important to state it — and to call it out as a goal. It may be a societal / philosophical version of a moon-shot — seemingly unrealistic and achievable, but indeed realistic and achievable. It may take centuries or millennia, but I do believe we can get here at some point. It will require sacrifice, a continued awareness of the goal, a focus on the details, and real work.