Tribalism

Decentralization is not an optimizing process.  Things can be atomized beyond their optimum strength and functionality. Whereas citadelization is a process of optimization because its goal is not to be small or independent but to best contain and fulfill a function required by mission versus outside forces.  The sphere is the natural citadel forced upon groups of similar matter from soap bubbles to planets and stars.

Among human organizations, nature and the nature of man has optimized the perfect citadel as the tribe of a dozen to 150 humans.  Modern industrial cultures have attempted to replace or fulfill the place of the tribe with the nation state, the nuclear family or the corporation by replacing functions such as law enforcement and medical care.  We can now see that while modern culture maximizes efficiency it also reduces the sovereignty and independence of the human or the family or the tribe.

The proof of the tribal structure as the most natural human organization comes not only from pre-Columbian history but also from observing when nation states collapse or become totally corrupted.  When humans must provide all the social functions for themselves they naturally organize into tribes of no more than 150 humans.  Malcolm Gladwell theorizes the maximum of 150 is the upper limit because that is the number of people we can know personally.  I would add that the tribe stops growing at the point of diminishing functionality.  Or maximum citadelization.

Citadels and tribes optimize to fulfill necessary functions dependent upon the external environment.  A hostile human landscape will force a larger tribe to defend itself. A hunter gatherer clan will optimize its size for the type and availability of the food it needs to track and kill.  I once knew a tribal member that had an enlarged spleen because her body was producing misshapen red blood cells requiring a massive home for the macrophages needed to consume all the red cells that could not carry oxygen through the bloodstream. Remember life is the goal the organization adapts to accomplish.

Even in our best run consumer driven cultures and our communistic cultures that tend to homogenize every human to a lukewarm mean, we humans still create tribes within our social circles. Grocery stores, big box retailers, mass media and government indoctrination may attempt to eliminate the need for the empowerment of distinct groupings, there is no substitute for the shared purpose, fellowship, intimacy and trust that is at the core of tribalism.  Nor should there be.

The challenge facing humanity is how to have both the fellowship and shared purpose of the tribe with the size of economy that can build nuclear powered aircraft carriers and rocket ships to the moon?  Great existential struggles like America and Russia during WWII can weld a large group of humans together for a generation or two but no civilization has yet cracked the code like the single human organization has.

Each human has three unique centers of unique capability in body, heart and mind.  And within each center in overlapping function and service are a multitude of organs and two hundred types of cells that have come into the the pinnacle of structural co-empowerment we know as ourselves.  We have the best optimized and most resilient blueprint for humanity imbedded within us waiting for discovery and manifestation.  What are the next steps on this journey to the divine blueprint for humanity?

Today, we need no more centralization by corporations or government or media, the mind of humanity.  Every system that has been optimized by government either by capitalistic or communistic ideology has lost its soul.  The same needs the tribe embody in trust and fellowship, etc. which could not be replaced by large systems are the quintessential soul factors that can only grow beyond the tribe when the greater assembly of humans lives by the same ethos.  Our own ego supports our soul and great trauma in a large group of humans can induce the same.  How do we hope to achieve that for humanity? Is it even possible?

I, for one, love both the empowerment of individuation and how this mass culture has allowed me the widest range of motion for my soul’s journey in this life.  I also love my tribe and the feeling there is a shared structure I live within that I depend upon and it depends upon me.  Why choose?  The trillions of cells of our own body, heart and mind have organized for the purpose of something greater, our soul’s growth.  And the primary organization of humans, the tribe, as the best external organizing of humanity to support our soul’s growth cannot be replaced.

So find your tribe.  Not only does it give great benefit to counterbalance the forces of soulless centralization, it is the fertile ground upon which we can thrive our humanity upon the same principals by which our own beings lives in co-empowerment.

Humanity may find shared purpose by an alien invasion.  Or by just by looking within deep enough to find our common humanity.  Step one in practice is within a tribe.