Saturday, February 3, 2018

tribeless 1 of 3


TRIBELESS

A lot of electrons had to die as we have discussed ad nauseam the aspects of tribalism, the move towards tribes after the nation state loses the excess energy to stay solvent, the guerrilla war by tribes in the US ( no longer confined to the ghettos-thank you public transportation! ), the anthropologist structure of tribes and blah friggin blah.  I’m sure I’m not done, or anywhere close to it, but today we talk about NOT having a tribe.  As I’ve mentioned before in the comments, I tend to compress events time wise.  More likely, given our average age, none of us will actually see the widespread formation of tribes. 

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Compressing timelines is helpful seeing the big picture.  If you can see the history prior to excess energy, the power structure before and during based on that surplus, you can see the future rather clearly.  But nothing changes overnight, so going from a fast and breezy summation back down to the gritty day by day reality, the mess that is reality also needs to be dwelt with.  It is refreshingly carefree to state “after a short time of spastic ammunition use, the living will tend to husband their remaining rounds, even with semi-auto’s, and abandon tactics such as spray and pray and suppressive fire”.  It is another kettle of fish entirely to live through the several months of lead flying everywhere.

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As is the transition from State to tribe ( with a minority of areas still able to form centralized agricultural empires-very few areas are still naturally fertile, as population growth was only kept ahead of until recently with industrializing and carbon fuel fertilizing.  Most of the globe has denuded soil, only productive with artificial inputs ).  It won’t be overnight, even if you could make a claim its been ongoing for near fifty years already anyway.  Look at the 90’s.  Between the disruption caused by Iraq and our battle over oil, and the last few years disrupted by Y2K and the Tech Wreck, that was our last financial gravy train ( the housing bubble later was all unicorn fart finances, not cheap and abundant oil which was what made the earlier decade ).

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Yet, even in the 90’s, there was much ado about losing control of vast areas of real estate to tribal occupation.  Of course, the Powers That Be blamed everything EXCEPT loss of control.  They blamed drugs, or racism or inequality or under budged police forces or politics.  But really, it was nothing more than the concrete reality that the State was ceding control on the monopoly on violence ( which is the ONLY indicator of power and control.  Nothing else ) in one area after another.  And, I’m sure few would have the desire to admit otherwise, things have gotten oh so much worse since then. 

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Political Correct Thought Police won’t even allow the conversation of the above, but that is just denial by the nation state that the die has been cast ( PC’ers are just the meat puppet of the Elite.  They have as much control as Obammy or Trump ).  Look at the poster child of failed states, Afghanistan, and outside of a few neighborhoods in Kabul there is ONLY tribal control ( warring tribes fighting for control doesn’t change the fact ).  That is our destination.  However, Afghanistan has always been tribal, which is why they have lasted as long as they have through decades of foreign occupation.  In the US, tribes didn’t form until recently.

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Which means there is no fallback position.  That certainly isn’t the family, deliberately killed off generations ago ( Social Security, Bitches Lib, taxing families off the farm ).  Folks can form associations, and survival “families”, but I don’t see coherent tribes being able to form from the wet putrid clay of today’s population.

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There is a lot of cultural deprogramming to do to get tribal material, and since we are evolutionarily opposed to change outside of the application of pain or suffering, that will be a drawn out process.  Yes, I’ve stated in the past “burrow down and hide out during a die-off and then reemerge and join a tribe”, but that may or may not be feasible.  Several minions have said they’d prefer to just hunker down and avoid people since people are so rotten and worthless, and there is something to be said for that, also.  The LONG term associations that have the only chance for success are tribes, true, but the Industrial Oil Age also gives you an interim choice.

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While the surplus lasts, while the petroleum product supplies are still in stock, you can keep your narcissistic individualism attitude and avoid tribalism ( not that tribal dynamics are bad, just that most of us might be too old to adapt successfully to them ).  This isn’t about being a hermit, as nice as they would be in theory, but about selfish folks banding together for a strength in numbers lifeboat hide-out.  But they won’t be a tribe.  Tribes are too communistic and Americans and ilk are too self-centered and consumerist orientated.  In the tribe, everything is ours.  In present day, all in mine.  You can’t mix and match the two systems.

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Even if individual or family wealth is allowed, being tribal means in bad times you share that wealth as if it was a animal carcass and other families are hungry.  The expectation was reciprocation, a built in safety net.  Today, very few have that mentality.  Even if they think they do, giving charity, today one views this as an optional activity with them acting as a gatekeeper.  Tribes don’t make this optional.  You aren’t allowed to build your own safety net.  Our outlook today is that ONLY personal nets will save us.

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That might be a subtle difference, but it is important.  Today, we have the PERSONAL responsibility for taking care of our family ( and sometimes, friends ).  That is the expectation, even if not widely held or practiced.  Tribes have a communal responsibility.  And the simple fact is that cultural programming doesn’t suddenly change.  It will be a violent change over, as all change is.  Most of us will only see continuation of nation state citizen mentalities, husbanding the last of the dwindling supplies.  It might even become MORE dangerous to push for tribalism in this situation, as change is always resisted and sometimes violently.  Next article, we continue on how to live without a tribe.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2Ep8ytX )
 
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8 comments:

  1. Tribes are like any other organisation, they need competent people. If one tribe is not interested in you, the next one is.

    Actually being tribeless allows you to have a choice of who you're associating yourself with.

    Tribes with too much balast (dysfunctional members, stupid management, too many children etc etc) are sitting ducks, especially during hard times. The novel "The Grapes Of Wrath" was about a dysfunctional faamily/tribe from which competent people were deserting.

    I'd say the important feature in the matter is to know the critical people around you and be known by them.

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    1. Anymore, isn't "competent person" an oxymoron? It might just be preferable to go it alone, if feasible.

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    2. There’s a saying, and it goes something to the effect of:

      “Bad times create strong people. Good times create weak people.”

      That describes modern western society to a T, and is probably one of the primary reasons that I lack faith in the successful formation of tribes following the apocalypse. As an adult, I have encountered perhaps no more than a few people that I could form a lasting alliance with, if it were to come down to that.


      As recently as the 1980’s, you might have still been able to find such ethics, and hard working values among the rural class, that would have made for strong tribal alliances. But with the even further disintegration of the family farm, along with the advent of social media and the world wide web, everyone is now hooked up to the same “Borg network” (I couldn’t stand that commi puke Roddenberry, but I couldn’t think of a better example here) and values have been lowered to the lowest common denominator across the board.

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    3. I use the shortcut "tribe" to describe my post-apoc association, but since my neighbor/buddy moved away it will only be family, as things stand now. I'm not even comfortable with that, but at least they are really decent people and I can work with that. All in all, however, I think most of us are better off being semi-hermits with just a few people joining us. It is almost better to just suck off the hoarded surplus and ignore everyone else, if possible. Even the best folks are too self-centered. No ones fault, it was our cultural programming and our financial reward. Even the forming tribes will be unable to make it work because of the kernel of me-ness. Look at the survival groups with individuals only forming loose groupings for self-defense. Not enough-you need a completely different mindset than what our decades of reinforcement have taught us.

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    4. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be a member of any tribe that would accept me as a member.

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    5. The funnier something is usually means its closer to the truth. Murphy's Law, and the above Groucho Moment.

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  2. I agree, our children or grandchildren might form tribes successfully. But I doubt the interim levels between nation state collapsing and tribes will hold together long, and only tribes and individuals will exist for a while there at the end. We should be working on teaching our heirs how to be kind to those that are close and friends, and remorselessly callous to all those who are distant or enemies (while being able to smile to their faces).

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    Replies
    1. Stockpiles and salvage will enable the individual to exist on the margins, should they not have or wish to have a tribe, but then they will fade away to tribes with the odd kingdom/principality where there is centralized agriculture. Reteaching hatred to the outsiders should be natural, but our multiculturalism will rack up quite a body count until we revert to the historical norm.

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