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The Tribes of New Orleans
Ran posted a link to an interesting article about an even more amazing event in New Orleans: the formation of tribes in the French Quarter.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming “tribes'’ and dividing up the labor.
As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.
While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods - humanity.
“Some people became animals,'’ Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White’s Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. “We became more civilized.'’
Definitely worth reading in it’s entirety.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
it is interesting that it is a shock to some that people like to exist in groups. the idea of individualism is a product of the printing press and has existed as a social phenomina for about 400 years. there are those such as marshall mcluhan that have suggested that the internet will retribalise the globe.
the printing press created the ability for an individual to take on the roles of the tribe via learning contained in books, therefore diminishing the necessity for the group as a clearinghouse for information. printing made education, religion, government etc. a clone function where everyone got the same message at the same time the same way. it allowed people to go away and learn on thier own, futher diminishing the need for centralised information.
the splitting the man from the group has allowed suburbia, with it`s clearly marked property lines and privacy as a prime commodity.
when this mechanism breaks down, for whatever reason, the tribal social mechanism re-emerges and crosses income and educational and religious and political boundaries out of necessity for the survival of the group.