Pilgrimage Wk 9 and Tribalism

The Pilgrimage continued on New Year's Eve with a vibrant group and a spirit/sense of hope and moving forward. We don't quite apprehend its origins, but here it is, so we'll try to be moved by it. The table was one of our best, and that's saying something.

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While thinking about music for my friend Ben's visit to St. Peter's on Jan. 21, I ran across this blog draft from October. I thought it was worth our time, though it's not as timely to Pope Benedict's remarks about Muslims as it was then (still, what he said is worth remembering).

Orson Scott Card, from the short story "Teacher's Pest"

"...I've set up the criteria for measuring the key components of long-lived
civil societies, and the triggers that collapse a civil society back into
tribalism. Is it possible for a civitas to last forever? Or is breakdown an
inevitable product of a successful civil society? Or is there a hunger for the
tribe that always works its way to the surface? Right now it doesn't look good
for the human race. My preliminary assessment shows that when a civil society is
mature and successful, the citizens become complacent and to satisfy various
needs they reinvent tribes that eventually collapse the society from the
inside.'

"So both failure and success lead to failure."

"The only question is whether it's inevitable."

"Sounds like useful information."

Bob Somerby on the Pope's recent (October) comments;

"Benedict has been shedding tears about a fairly deliberate, sweeping insult.
Here at THE HOWLER, we won’t waste your time noting the fact that this doesn’t justify riots or shootings. But read Benedict, or read David Brooks today, and understand where our world is headed. The west is full of angry white males who have long been spoiling for a good tribal fight. They want to pit “our” tribe against theirs. They’re the people who call talk radio to bitch about all that “political
correctness.” They’re the people who lodge deliberate insults, then say that
they’ve been misunderstood. And yes, because they’re angry and dumb, they’re
going to get the fight they want—and, quite sadly, the rest of us are going to
get that fight along with them."

And this, after Jody and I have had a positive conversation about tribalism and the KC Chiefs. Our world could use some more ritualized conflicts, and less real ones. Something tells me
neither al-Qaida or the neocons will settle for a soccer match, though. (Maybe it's history, biology, and those pesky facts.)

If you're not familiar, here's a resource;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism

Some good examples, application, and discussion:

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/06/altruistic-horizons-our-tribal-natures.html

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/04/hardwired-tribalism_14.html

And an interesting tangent;

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2005/06/networks-and-netwar.html

I hate the idea that my decisions could come from a part of me dominated by caveman-era social dynamics. Maybe you do too. When I first encountered this stuff (via Robert Wright's The Moral Animal) I was pretty distressed, but I also felt like a veil was lifted.

If you're like me, you enjoy freedom and the more, the better. The first step to transcending tribal dynamics is learning about them; then we can choose how we let them influence our actions. Where's Jesus? The human Jesus felt the pull of tribalism, same as everybody. Yet he also lived in ways that were universal; that took the tribal traditions and stories he knew and fashioned them into something transcendent. There's an example for us. I can't help but think that the more we know about these relationships, the more possibilities we'll have for following faithfully. -h