Tribal Identity

I have a feeling, and I may be totally wrong, but I wonder if in “traditional cultures” (however broadly you want to define that) the notion of an “individual identity” even existed. It may be that you were first and foremost a member of your tribe or clan and then your lodge or your family and then you yourself were merely a link in a chain between ancestors and descendents, and your “identity” was more a matter of how well you fulfilled your societal role. I’m probably wrong, but that sounds basically right to me. One possible proof of that might be how in some cultures, the surname (family name) comes first and the individual name comes second. I feel like that says a lot…

It seems like that is basically the opposite of how the average American perceives themself nowadays. We start with the individual and then MAYBE work outwards in concentric spheres {See also: 8 Dynamics of Scientology}. Most of our cultural identity (our reaching towards other people - if done at all) is composed of likes and dislikes for media artifacts: movies, music, books, magazines, clothes, etc.

I don’t necessarily think either way is right or wrong. I think how people are is how they are and people have the ability to develop awareness of themselves and their relationships with other people and actively change them. That’s probably the most important point.


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7 Comments

  1. Posted May 9, 2008 at 2:33 pm | Permalink

    I think that is how it was Tim, and that could be good or it could be fucked up.

    Probably it was both at the same time. Like for example within the tribe it was loving and magical and then for the neighboroing tribe that got killed an eaten, or absrbed in other ways not so much.

    Or maybe even then it wasn’t so bad. Probably animals being lesss verbal don’t suffer as much as people. Because our internal language can make us suffer, so back in pre-literate culture people didn’t suffer as much. Maybe we have to go back a really long way to pre-verbal.

    But anyway, here is where it gets really bad: when a hive mind tribe sits atop a pyramid suking the vital energy from people subjagated below.

    Here is a link to the founder of transitioner.org which I got from your Tumblr page.

    http://www.noubel.com/blog/archives/6-...collective-intelligence.html#extended

    Here is what I think it is Tim, I am actually on a similar wavelength as you on this stuff, but I am naturally contrary by nature when engaging others intellectually.

    But anyway, there are a lot of really screwed up evil types of colective intelligence.

    I also think that going back to self mastery, you need to have some of that to engage in the good kind. its not enough the be merely innocent. if such a state exists.

    Which you have achieved self mastery and are achieving it further, but not everyone is.

  2. Posted May 9, 2008 at 2:35 pm | Permalink

    But anyway the article is about building the good kind and why some other structures can’t be reformed.

  3. Posted May 9, 2008 at 3:23 pm | Permalink

    Original Collective Intelligence

    Pyramidal Collective Intelligence

    The pyramid structure tries to give people an identity to fit them in to the pyramid. I tend to think that outside the pyramid you aren’t just an amorphous mass. You have an identity. Maybe its partly formed by getting pissed off at the pyramid.

    But I don’t idealize the original structure. I think under that people were kind of amorphous. My hope is that we are evolving to somthing better and not just an amourphous global tribal identity.

  4. Posted May 12, 2008 at 8:15 am | Permalink

    I stayed up till 2 in the morning last night reading Buckminster Fuller and early this morning as I kept waking up and pushing the snooze button over and over again and falling back to sleep I was apparently downloading some pretty important information.

    Something about an equation related to the number 8 and 44 that is related to “universal prosperity” and this other thing was a type of syntax used by some non-violent primitive tribes that have some different way of looking at themselves in relation to the World as a whole.

  5. Posted May 12, 2008 at 9:39 am | Permalink

    What’s your take on the whole “downloading information” thing you mentioned? I feel as though that happens to me on such a regular basis that it’s a bit wild. It especially happens in the hypnopompic state, but also wide awake - I will get these sort of word jumbles and keyphrases that spontaneously pop into my head.

  6. Posted May 12, 2008 at 10:02 am | Permalink

    Well, Here is what I think it is-

    Its info that is being compressed. I mean its not compressed where it comes from but it gets compressed as we download it. Or something like that.

    I think I should work on recalling dreams and also learning how to process information faster, like speed reading or somthing. If this downlaoded info was like a mandelbrot set, it wouldn’t lose anything but I think some of it gets lost in translation.

    Real actual info is hard to comprehend, because it is vast and complex. There needs to be some way to compress or encode stuff and then decode it without anything being lost. I tend to think that if I got more into mathmatics I could make better use of this stuff. A lot of this stuff invloves math.

    I remember reading about PKD downloading plans to design complex inventions and him feeling like he was totally inadequate to make sense of it having no background in engineering.

    But anyway, self mastery in the age of globalization involves being a polymath. I think the Universe response to PKD would have been: “You aren’t an engineer? Well become one then. That’s not our fault.

    Bucky Fuller said the World for a long time was ruled by pirates. Pirates have generalized knowledge because they have seen the World from a global perspecticve and know how to connect the dots.

  7. Posted May 12, 2008 at 10:32 am | Permalink

    There is no one at the helm, Tim. That is the point. The Universe is looking for people to step up to the plate.

    Here is a comment I made on my blog:

    “Yeah, He’s hard core because he was several magnitudes smarter than everyone else, so he kind seemed to run up against the limits of language.

    But anyway, one idea I take from him is that pirates onced ruled the world the world up until around WWI when science got really into physics.

    The pirates were global thinkers and divided and conquered by getting all the other smart people in the world to specialize. The Pirates then ruled by connecting the dots. But then after science got so complex the pirates could no longer get their head around what scientists were saying. World Government, according to Fuller is Centuries old. But for a while now there has been no one at the helm. But all the global networks that the pirates put in place have been self perpetuating more or less mechanically and deterministicly.”

    Bucky Fuller was a great downloader because he was a mathemetician. But still trying to speak english he ran into problems.

One Trackback

  1. [...] An interesting conversation developed in the comments to a recent post which I wanted to bump up into the mainstream here. Ted talks about how after reading Buckminster Fuller late into the night, he subsequently spent a major portion of the evening asleep and dreaming fitfully, as though he were “downloading” a massive quantity of information directly into his brain. [...]

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