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Your Tribes
I’ve been thinking a little about the Marshall McLuhan-eque idea that modern technology allows us to sort of re-tribalize. Does anyone know some good links on that? Would like to read more.
Without reading any more about it though, we can easily see this is true courtesy of the internet especially and media in general. People of my generation tend very much to align ourselves socially with other people who roughly like the same or similar media as us. The internet allows us to take that to an extreme, actively seeking out (or creating) obscure or strange subcultures, to find other people who share our fascinations and values.
Which leads me to an interesting question: if you could geographically re-locate to be part of the “tribe(s)” you have become a part of online, would you do so? Why or why not? Has anyone out there actually tried it? For me, this touches on some personal questions, since I more or less did that by coming out to Seattle at the early part of this year. It is a choice which I am ultimately glad that I made, although at the same time it required sacrificing closer membership with my other tribes (friends and loved ones) back East.
The whole thing is fraught with difficulty since online social interactions are very different from real world ones, and you can never predict how the chips will fall once you’re on the ground. It’s a big risk, but also a big reward. I’ve also discovered, consequently though, that it’s a difficult thing to really rationalize with people who may be part of the tribe you are leaving behind. Would be curious to hear about other people’s experiences in this area!
- The 12 Tribes
- The Tribes of New Orleans
- Is “Lost” Preparing Us for the Collapse?
- Stained Glass Blogging
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September 21st, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Well, living in an industrial society I have the delightful pleasure of being a loner and I wouldn’t really want to join a loner’s tribe and be committed to an actual physical place with other loners. A loner is someone who has friends, but deeply enjoys solitude so much it is fun.
Besides from my personal ‘experience’
. It is not so haha funny- but I am often surprised at the number of left-wingers at my community college who abhor my ridiculous penchant for magical beings.
And as a member of the ‘Magical Creatures Illustrative Club’ I am surprised at the people (only 2 other people are in the ‘club’)who abhor my socialist politics. So I wouldn’t want to move anywhere except deeper into my own lil’ world filled with gnomes and left-wing authors and sort out their terriortorial
September 21st, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Opps, I cut my stupid comment off so let me continue abated–Anyways, a spiritland community of Rev Max beings/clones and Tim Boucher s and other assorted Pop Occulturists would be interesting to astrally drive by in an ice cream truck. It would be fun selling tasty yummy treats to all the wonderful ’spiritually convergent’ and spiritually ‘other’ people! “Keep your distance” my distant Uncle always would say I would have to stay in my truck!
September 21st, 2006 at 10:27 pm
I dunno. I have enough trouble dealing with the people in my immediate professional environment. I can’t imagine that it would be any better with 10 others who are intellectual copies of myself.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Will there be Kool Aid?
I’m with Gnomely and slomo, and by that I mean I’d rather not be. I really enjoy this blog but if I had to listen to y’all bickerin and agreein all day and I couldn’t just ‘log off’ I’d spike the punch myself.
There’s a time and a place for everything. The form and identity of a tribe will always be influenced by its particular context.
If we are half as smart and productive and potentially world-changing as we think we are, then we should be distributed as widely as possible among the larger community. One shouldn’t plant seeds too close together. In fact I suggest we stay as far away from each other as possible.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:53 pm
I couldn’t disagree with the above poster more.
When I think about doing “something” about the problems uncovered by blogs such as yours one of the first things that comes to mind is relocating to be with other like minded people.
One of the great advantages the nefarious have is the isolation produced by most things modern. Purposeful or not it has greatly weakened people like us.
I have said it before, here and other places, when I was born into this world one of the first things I started to wonder is where are all the other people like myself. I resigned to finding them at college when high school and my nearby towns didn’t pan out. (Turns out college was bunk, too, though ‘colleges’ yielded better results)
Then when webrings came round I thought wow, here we go. That is how I ended up here. When you moved to Seattle, Tim, I was green with envy as circumstance has not yet allowed me to relocate. Though it is in my future, almost certainly, unless of course, things ’round here pan out.
Relocation to be together is fine but I have thought about the next level, (sort of). A social experiment that has certainly been done but one that does not deter me. There are many dying towns in the US. Some towns with just one or two residents. Towns that will give you land for free if you are a good and decent citizen of said town.
Think about it. The possibilities are grand. It doesn’t even need to succeed to produce some fantastic results. Bouncing pebble to avalanche.
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:29 am
I am going to make an unpopular comment on this matter, because of my own experiences. Perhaps my experiences meeting people online were unusual, but for the most part, No I could never imagine myself in a tribe with the people I’ve met online. Most of the people I’ve met have been very active on the internet, maintaining and posting and commenting to the exclusion of having a real life. The internet becomes their substitute world and experiences, they take comments made by faceless anonymous folks behind internet nicknames far more seriously than they should. So despite having some common interests, I have never found the internet a place to make real life friends or people to whom I’d want to entrust my life and well being via a tribal situation.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:05 am
Naah. I have friends already. I see them enough. I have family already. I see them enough. God luv em. We’re all on this planet, and if u think of the vast space outside of that then we are all as close as we really need to be.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:17 am
I like the question because it makes me realise that my tribal loyalty is to the place where I live, itself. Like Gnomely, I see myself as a loner, or introvert, who does not need a social life but to keep in touch with a few loved ones. The hills and valleys that I now call home, after a lifetime as nomad, happen to be beautiful, but it’s mainly because I have given them my love.
More important however is the point that technology allows us to stay put geographically and put down roots and be part of a local community, to whatever extent we socialize within it or not.
And finally, I am not aware of having become part of any particular online tribe. Some are in Calcutta, some in Australia, some in Texas, California or France. What we have in common is not easily defined and even if I were sociable I would not consider inviting them all to the same party.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
i wouldn’t consider the free state project a tribe, they certainly do have the program of getting like-minded individuals into one small state.
there’s an Urban Tribes blog.
Bruce Sterling’s novel Distraction is about a near-future America after economic collapse, where hordes of homeless rove the country in software mediated scavenger tribes.
Daniel Quinn writes about tribes in the economic sense of a group of people who collectively take care of their living in an egalitarian way.
oh and the Smart Mobs blog sometimes has some good stuff on technotribalism.
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:34 pm
er, no.
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Were you implying that we here on this site are intellectual copies of one another? I don’t really see it that way.
I have thought about this a lot as well. But what if we had something like training camps? Or swap meets?
I really think you overestimate the amount of “bickering” that gets done in real life amongst us all out here. It’s really not like that at all and instead it is actually very energizing. It seems like people are too quick to dismiss the importance of close physical proximity, thinking it would cause some kind of problems… Why? Would it be because it forces you to look too closely at yourself when others mirror you?
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:07 pm
I think that’s an awesome idea, actually and have considered it at some length in the past - moving with a bunch of friends and basically taking over a small town someplace. Revitalizing America from the inside out, making money off the internet and creating sustainable culture wherever we go…. I don’t think it’s a stupid dream at all
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Huh, reading through all these comments, I have to say I am pretty surprised by how unpopular of an idea this seems to be all around.
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Hmmm I don’t see why this idea is so unpopular. If I could live with the people from this site, and we could sit around all day and eat home-grown veggies and talk about wierd stuff, that would be great. This is a more or less respectful, toughtful group with a lot of differing oppinions on stuff. Of course, if I had to live with the idiots from my MySpace friends list, I’d take my poison pill in 2 seconds.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Yes but who would shut up long enough to spread the manure
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:53 am
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. Whatever it is that draws me to this little online community is not enough to make me want to live with or near y’all. The purposes of my involvement with various groups of people are different and context-dependent. I don’t want my life to be Pop Occulture 24/7 no matter how well that’s working out for you. I’d be happy to drop round for a beer and a chat, but I’d be just as happy if I didn’t.
Well I can’t speak for anyone else, but no. It’s because this is a website. That is the purpose it fulfils for me and I want nothing more from it. Just because I read the bible, doesn’t mean I’ll be going to church. While we may all get along famously in real life, that is potentially true for any random selection of 50 people, whether of like mind or not.
My point is that even if we did all hang together in ‘real life’ it wouldn’t be this community any more, it would be that one, with a different dynamic altogether. No matter how super duper that may be, I’m simply not interested in findiing out. No offense.
People get together in different ways for different reasons. That’s why the idea is unpopular.
As for the training camps, sure why not? Will they be in Waco or the mountains of Afghanistan?
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:56 am
Gina, it won’t be me.
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:06 am
One of the things I always look for here is the hidden assumption which is taken for granted. In speaking of tribes the hidden assumption is that a tribe is defined by its exclusivity and exclusion of non-tribe members. The opportunity of the internet is to de-tribalize not re-tribalize. It’s a pity that for one reason or another our conversations are restricted to the English-speakers. There is an opportunity to realize what Bob Marley with his Rastafarian beliefs called One Love. We are one tribe, we have roots in Africa: me too though I am white Anglo-Saxon, English-Australian. This non-tribal tendency or one-tribal tendency (depending on which way you look at it) focuses on not having enemies. There would be exercises one could undertake to de-tribalize: for example to travel internationally, or to seek understanding and friendship within a community that has been demonized by one’s own culture. The BBC, bless it, today ran a programme on Iranian stand-up comics and how they do their best to laugh at the propaganda which portrays them as “the axis of evil”.
This, not tribalizing by narrow interests, makes a practical use of our communications technologies.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Wow, that’s a really interesting thought!
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:49 pm
No, I was being kind of tongue-in-cheek. Truth is that I mistrust deals that seem too good to be true, and one such deal would be living in a community of like-minded people: sounds good on paper but likely to be profoundly disappointing.
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:55 pm
This resonates with me. I’d be up for a “PopOccultureCon” where everybody got together for a week, hung out and had a really great time, then went home. But I would not be willing to uproot my established life to chase a pipe dream. I mean, a permanent PopOccultureTown could work out and be really great, but the history of similar gatherings would suggest that success is not likely. Just human nature.