Obviously, the word is susceptible to over-simplification. I tend to take it as a complex construct with layers of scoping. And it's not even orthogonally based. E.g. I'd suggest that your innermost tribal scope is your variety of intra-personal needs and motives. Your math homunculus might disagree a *lot* with your poetry homunculus. Together, they are useful to each other. However, your poetry homunculus may break the intra-personal scope and be more tightly coupled with, say, the other members of your poetry circle than it is with your math homunculus.
The same is true of inter-personal scopes. E.g. I'm fairly loyal to Renee'. But my nerd herd will usually win in any conflict with her family. I'm *very* unlikely to move back to Texas because all the members of my nerd herd are elsewhere, here, Seattle, New Mexico, California, Virginia, Sweden, Ireland, Canada!, etc. Beware anyone who tries to over-simplify "tribe". But this is mostly a rarefied point. The larger obstacle, before anyone's ready to have the complexity of tribe conversation, is to think of oneself as a *tool*, a means to an end, not an end in yourself. I've always been confused by the "tool" insult, not least of why because they're one of my favorite bands. 8^) I've always been a tool; and I'm proud of it. I fear the day I'll no longer be a tool ... even a dull one. There's nothing sadder than that old, broken, wooden-handled hammer, that sits there unused in the garage. On 01/22/2018 11:26 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Is a company a tribe? Is a (e.g. married) couple a tribe? Is a political > party a tribe? Are anonymous contributing members of a non-profit > organization a tribe? Is any group of people that orient around some small > but similar set of features is a tribe? Is a group less tribal as the > features advanced by any member is overlaps relatively little with other > members? What if the relative overlap of features is small, but the > absolute amount is larger than another group with higher relative overlap? > Is tribalism just the preoccupation with the group over the purpose for the > group? When people say everyone is tribal (which I guess includes me), I > feel insulted! I want a way out of this madness. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
