As a sociology major in college, mariner studied many types of society. There are many reasons for a unifying culture to come into being. When the age of agriculture gave way to industrialism around 1760, the information age around 1960, and now the globalization age beginning around 1914 with the League of Nations, economics has become the measure of worth even to the value of a human being. Today, the world around, philosophy of life and its scruples are measured in dollars.
Where does tribalism fit into this?
First, mariner must update the anthropology of tribes. Do not think of Native American tribes with about 100 individuals. Native American tribes had a two-tiered culture consisting of clusters bound in size by terrain and environment and a larger tier consisting of politically related tribes whose individuals could number in tens of thousands. A good example is when Native Americans gathered for a bison kill. Also observe that an individual Indian did not need food stamps to acquire some bison meat. Native Americans distributed the kill equally among tribe members – a tribal characteristic.
What defines tribe behavior is a strong commitment to a common member value. The attacks today on groups of people who are in defiance of the dominant economic power structure are considered to be organized “tribes” and enemies of the state. The relationship between the state and defiant groups is acknowledged but mariner takes issue with the judgment that tribes are a bad thing. In fact, vocal dissent is a good thing, a healthy thing and is key to evaluating the inherent worth of citizens.
Tribalism is a level of organization that occurs when the group is relatively small and comparatively vulnerable to outside circumstances. As a consequence, a spirt of common good prevails that equally protects all tribe members.
Think about the Amish. The culture has a tier comprised of small congregations each free to describe its own values as long as the basic premise of their religious heritage is followed. On the higher tier is the entire Amish movement which holds to a given theology, economy and anti-secularism that existed in Europe in the late 1600’s. Today, a middle tier is growing that represents different flavors of the Amish faith; think of Christian Protestants as an example. A loyalty exists across tiers of tribes that sustains the common good.
These models of tribalism are, more or less, based on geography as a natural restraint to size. Mariner lives in a small Iowa town of less than 1,000 citizens. During the era of agriculture, the town behaved as a tribe would behave. The common ethic was sustaining family wellbeing. In fact, most of the virtues even among local merchants were family-centric, assuring that families with misfortune were taken care of by everyone. This behavior often is referred to as ‘the common good’, reflecting the desire to support survival of the tribe.
Then industrialism changed the focus from tribal self-sustenance to economic collaboration with its steam and oil machines. John Henry died proving that the value of a human being was no longer inherent; it was the economy that was more valuable.
In the United States today, with its priority toward economic objectives rather than the human condition, government policy has isolated many citizens to the point that it is obvious citizens are no longer important enough to be sustained by the economically driven government. The ethic of sustaining families or for that matter any common human value is absent.
The prevailing economic polity sees tribal behavior as a populist movement – consider governmental and corporate reactions to tribal resistance by the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux Nation to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The word ‘tribe’ is misused in this respect. Further, it is true that economically supportive classes are exclusive in nature and foster prejudicial rejection of societies that support the tribal virtue of equality among members.
The strength of a common ideal over other idiosyncrasies explains why Donald’s base does not care about Donald’s behavior; it is Donald’s interference with the economic establishment that is the overarching value. Unfortunately, commitment to Donald and his personality disorders is a high price to pay even for his base.
As the world migrates toward globalism driven by economic values instead of human values, many scholars have reservations. At some point, society must reconstruct the inherent value of a human being. Otherwise, they believe, humans are well on their way to a life of human meaningless – to be nothing more than a battery in a coffin in a Matrix world.
REFERENCE SECTION
Mariner’s wife, a complete, forty year professional librarian, often is a silent partner in mariner’s posts. She provides the following source of a writer of similar persuasion albeit many magnitudes more in importance:
John Ralston Saul, CC OOnt (born June 19, 1947) is a Canadian award-winning philosopher, novelist and essayist. He is a long-term champion of freedom of expression. Saul is most widely known for his writings on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good; the failures of manager-led societies; the confusion between leadership and managerialism; military strategy, in particular irregular warfare; the role of freedom of speech and culture; and his critique of contemporary economic arguments. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ralston_Saul#Non-fiction for his nonfiction bibliography.
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Yes, Virginia, there is the word divers.
Mariner thinks sometimes a more accurate count of viewers can be had from using a fine but little used word. He does admit that he is a bit of an archivist when choosing words that have precise meaning instead of using a simpler word augmented by a preposition. To bear witness, he provides a reference from the Grammarist[1]. Nevertheless, in deference to his readership, mariner went back and added the ‘e’.
Ancient Mariner
[1] For entertainment derived from language and grammar, see: http://grammarist.com/