Finding a "Tribe" — Transcript

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1. 0:01[Music]
2. 0:15Street
3. 0:17[Music]
4. 0:28Bab
5. 0:30there is a Fascination out there about
6. 0:34being a tribe and it's a bit of a weird
7. 0:37thing because I think this wish to be a
8. 0:40tribe Springs from a yearning for
9. 0:42belonging and in a sense it's a healthy
10. 0:45inclination I think and if people can
11. 0:47use the concept of tribe to build
12. 0:50connectivity you know perhaps then fine
13. 0:53but I also want to give a little word of
14. 0:55caution about this whole idea of
15. 0:57tribalism tribe is an old word that goes
16. 1:00all the way back to how ancient Romans
17. 1:02classified some of the peoples that they
18. 1:04were fighting but it also uh has become
19. 1:08a scholarly classification of a specific
20. 1:11form of social organization the tribe
21. 1:14belongs in a specific place in an
22. 1:17anthropological ideas of increasing
23. 1:19levels of social organization and
24. 1:22complexity The American Scholar Illman
25. 1:24service classified human communities
26. 1:26into bands tribes Chief stom and States
27. 1:31bands are egalitarian hunter gatherers
28. 1:34tribes have emerging social hierarchy
29. 1:37Chief Thoms are even more hierarchical
30. 1:40and so on this is an evolutionist idea
31. 1:43of human organization and that is
32. 1:46problematic in a number of ways partly
33. 1:49because it tend to place us contemporary
34. 1:52civilization as the best of all worlds
35. 1:55So speaking in strictly anthropological
36. 1:57terms a tribe is a group
37. 2:00that can rest on a variety of factors
38. 2:03kinship language cultural identity
39. 2:06location group identity religion it can
40. 2:10rest on them but it doesn't imply all of
41. 2:12them a tribe is a specific
42. 2:14classification of ways of social
43. 2:17organization an important feature is
44. 2:19that tribes are typically led by what
45. 2:22has been labeled a big man a
46. 2:25particularly important person in the
47. 2:27group and you find this uh particular
48. 2:30form of organization particularly in
49. 2:33Melania and Polynesia typically such a
50. 2:36leader figure doesn't have formal
51. 2:39Authority like an inherited status or
52. 2:42something like that but rather a tribal
53. 2:45leader has a position as a function of
54. 2:48Charisma and acknowledged wisdom and
55. 2:50generosity different big men will
56. 2:53typically be competing for leadership in
57. 2:55a tribal society and this is sort of the
58. 2:58scholarly view of of what it means to be
59. 3:00a tribe but I think and this is just an
60. 3:03intuition I think that people use the
61. 3:07word tribe in a way that sort of tries
62. 3:10to mean an indigenous like kind of sort
63. 3:14of human Community perhaps leaning into
64. 3:17the original uh use of the word in Latin
65. 3:20where tribus means an ethnic group but
66. 3:23then I think people idealize tribalism
67. 3:26um probably imagining that such ethnic
68. 3:30groups would have a very high level of a
69. 3:33feeling of togetherness and belonging so
70. 3:35that being part of a tribe would perhaps
71. 3:38feel less fragmented that living in a
72. 3:40modern State and this is what I suspect
73. 3:43that tribe looks like inside people's
74. 3:45head when they are wanting to be a tribe
75. 3:48and I think there's a problem with that
76. 3:50because more than actually being tribal
77. 3:52I suspect that this is a projection of
78. 3:55an of a different model for social
79. 3:58organization into the idea of tribe and
80. 4:01that is nationalism more specifically
81. 4:04the Nationalist ideal of a coherent
82. 4:07state where people are supposed to be
83. 4:09alike have similar Customs think alike
84. 4:12have similar religions and language
85. 4:14likee and that is being projected onto
86. 4:17the idea of the tribe as a group of
87. 4:19people that are supposed to be very
88. 4:20alike people would perhaps kind of
89. 4:22Imagine That prehistoric peoples that
90. 4:25the Roman name Romans name tribes such
91. 4:27as I don't know Germanic groups like The
92. 4:29akan or the ton or the ingon that these
93. 4:33kinds of prehistoric groups were
94. 4:36internally built like modern States
95. 4:39ideally imagine that they ought to be
96. 4:42built that everybody share a religion
97. 4:44culture and language this Unity you know
98. 4:47a folk a lan a fur this these this unity
99. 4:51and this gives them this would then give
100. 4:53them this feeling of identity right that
101. 4:56they generally are pretty aligned and
102. 4:59March in the same direction particularly
103. 5:01when they're told to march in some
104. 5:02direction or other and I think this is
105. 5:05more of a nationalist myth than it is
106. 5:08probably the reality of these groups
107. 5:10such groups would have been filled with
108. 5:12conflicts and differences and
109. 5:14relations it is quite likely that family
110. 5:18groups could have been more important as
111. 5:21a base of self-image inside this group
112. 5:23and there could have been competition
113. 5:25between different families who would be
114. 5:28navigating for power through alliances
115. 5:30that would sometimes reach out of the
116. 5:32you your immediate cultural group or all
117. 5:36that kind of stuff would definitely have
118. 5:38been there but I think it's very
119. 5:40legitimate to search for connectivity
120. 5:42and to be looking for models in cultural
121. 5:45pasts for how to create connectivity but
122. 5:48I would suggest changing the perspective
123. 5:50a little bit away from this thing about
124. 5:52tribe and perhaps on onto stuff like
125. 5:55Clan kinship groups when you're looking
126. 5:57for connectivity uh culture my
127. 5:59suggestion would be to think in totemic
128. 6:02terms Raven Clan boar Clan horse Clan a
129. 6:06little bit like the Finnish uh neopagan
130. 6:09group The karun Kana the be people a
131. 6:12group of people who perceive themselves
132. 6:15as connected as being connected to
133. 6:18specific others in the land this is a
134. 6:20self-image it's not an identity it's a
135. 6:22self-image that points out of yourself
136. 6:26really and I think this might be a
137. 6:28better way of play Yul approaching
138. 6:31recovery of old ways of uh building
139. 6:34self-image I suspect that this tribe
140. 6:36thing is a proxy for saying Nation
141. 6:39basically so here's a playful idea for
142. 6:41how to start working with this through
143. 6:42social media uh I've actually had that
144. 6:45had the idea of doing this uh making
145. 6:48this H happen myself but I don't have
146. 6:50the time for it I'm already completely
147. 6:52suffocating under the weight of Social
148. 6:54Media communication this idea came up in
149. 6:56dialogues with my good friend the Danish
150. 6:59historian of ideas inclusivity debator
151. 7:01and biodiversity uh lobbyist rre lson he
152. 7:06is working on animalism and has been
153. 7:08thinking about uh the possible
154. 7:10connection between totemic relation uh
155. 7:13and what biologists call Keystone
156. 7:15species basically the physically big
157. 7:18animals the
158. 7:20meapa particularly important for the
159. 7:22ecosystems because they create a lot of
160. 7:25physical circulations in those systems
161. 7:27and that is why bear is a keystone
162. 7:30species while X little butterfly
163. 7:33typically isn't right so the idea came
164. 7:35up uh was to basically make a
165. 7:39transcultural social media groups with
166. 7:42bears with names like bear clan Raven
167. 7:46Clan seal Clan and then people in these
168. 7:48groups could start playfully developing
169. 7:51contemporary totemic culture of kinship
170. 7:54with these others uh further uh we might
171. 7:57learn from the historic except example
172. 7:59and experience of uh indigenous
173. 8:01Americans who at some point uh abandoned
174. 8:05a city state that we today name kokia in
175. 8:10in favor of more
176. 8:12parliamentarism U but also uh in favor
177. 8:15of a transcultural totemic ways of
178. 8:18building SE self-image so like
179. 8:21pre-colombian Americans we are living in
180. 8:23Cahokia we are facing the challenge of
181. 8:26rejecting a
182. 8:28dysfunctional uh system and returning to
183. 8:31more landbased and respect-based ways of
184. 8:34being in the world and I suspect that
185. 8:36tribe might not be a particularly good
186. 8:38way of doing that but transcultural
187. 8:39totem Clans that might just be it just
188. 8:42an idea try it out people see you
189. 8:58around
190. 9:01[Music]
191. 9:28oh
192. 9:31oh
193. 9:33[Music]
194. 9:41oh