by Jim Linder
· Civilization is humanity’s ultimate invention and can never be surpassed.
· Civilization must continue at ANY cost and must not be abandoned under ANY
circumstances
· Ours is the one right way for people to live and everyone should live like us.
These memes are what is destroying the world as a human habitat. In addition, our society has a prison ambience because workers have no way out. There is nothing innately human about wanting to make something of yourself, to get ahead, or to have a career.
We have tried to justify our destruction and unhappiness as something that is just supposed to be this way. We have tried to transcend it with religion to give us hope that it will all be better in the future. And, we have tried to overthrow it. But revolutions merely cause the hierarchy to change hands and go on as before.
The people of the United States epitomize our culture in which all members are dedicated to attaining the high point of maximum affluence, and to forever raising the high point of maximum affluence. It does not occur to most people that living unsustainably as we do now means giving up very important things like security, hope, lightheartedness, and freedom from anxiety, fear and guilt.
We are also in the midst of a food race that is causing diversity to disappear as it rapidly converts our planet’s biomass into human mass. However, it is beyond us to solve this as this subject engages our cultural mythology at the most profound level. Our goal now is to focus on our culture’s pending demise.
It’s a fundamental tenet of our cultural mythology that the only thing wrong with us is that humans need to be kinder, gentler, sweeter, more loving, less selfish, more far-sighted, and so on. However, the flaw in our civilization is not in the people, it’s in the system. We need a whole new vision. By creating a new vision, we make programs superfluous. It will never even occur to anyone to create programs.
Unfortunately, we can’t imagine the end vision. We must achieve change one meme at a time. The first meme we must destroy is “Civilization is humanity’s ultimate invention and can never be surpassed “. We will do this by introducing another meme: “Something better than civilization is waiting for us.”
To go beyond civilization is to go beyond hierarchy. We do not need to destroy civilization, just find something else for those of us tired of building pyramids. Hierarchy maintains no defenses against abandonment. We are not ready for the infrastructure of civilization to disappear. We still need the potholes filled, the sewage and water treatment plants running and so on.
There is no need for global change. Always keep in mind there is no one right way to live. Diversity, not conformity, is what works. Any move away from civilization represents a move away from the culture of maximum harm and therefore reduces your harmfulness. No move beyond civilization will ever result in greater harm because it automatically limits your access to the tools needed to do harm.
Our problem is not that people are living a bad way, but that they are all living the same way. The earth can accommodate many people living in a voraciously wasteful and pollutive way, it just can’t handle all of us living this way. We shouldn’t focus on the ten percent who live the most harmful way, but instead on the other ninety percent who are hoping to live the most harmful way. We need to give them something else to strive for.
That something else is a tribal life. Ethnic tribal life is a gift of natural selection, a proven success, as ecologically stable as lions living in prides or baboons living in troops – not perfection but hard to improve on. We are not suggesting we return to the tribal way, as it was known here during the first three million years of human life. Those were closed ethnic tribes. What we need is a world of open tribes. The tribal life is not about spears, caves, hunting, or gathering. These are ways of making a living, lifestyles. A tribe isn’t a particular occupation; it is a social organization that facilitates making a living.
Tribes enable ordinary people to make a living together with a minimum of stress, year after year, and generation after generation. Tribes exist for all their members. Tribes are not hierarchical. They have leaders, but being boss is just another job. The members do not keep the tribe going to make a living; they make a living to keep the tribe going. What a tribal people transmit to the next generation is not a ready-made fortune but rather a reliable way to make a living. I am not saying the tribal way is the one right way, just a way that worked for millions of years. People like the tribal life because it works well for all members not just the rulers.
What is needed for an occupational tribe at a minimum is a group of people who:
1. Have all the competencies among them needed to start and run a given business.
2. Are content with a modest standard of living.
3. Are willing to “think tribally” – that is to take what they need out of the business rather
than to expect set wages.
Occupational tribes will still be effective even though they will exist alongside a world that is going on as before. A thousand will inspire a hundred thousand, who will inspire a million, who will inspire a billion, and ultimately billions of us living a new way will save the world.
Undoubtedly, the greatest benefit of the ethnic tribal life is that it provides its members cradle-to-grave security. While it is well within the scope of an occupational tribe to provide food, clothing, shelter, and the same sort of attention provided in ethnic tribes to elderly people of the tribe, they will not be able to offer this level of security instantly. And it may end up making little sense anyway in a world of open tribes. It’s perfectly conceivable that a husband and wife could belong to different occupational tribes – and their children might want to belong to different tribes as well. Indeed, this openness to diversity is the whole point.
The good news is we don’t have to wait for everyone to agree on what to do. We don’t need the support of an organization, or to belong to a party or a movement. We don’t need new laws to be passed or permits, or a constitution, or tax exempt status. We probably should be prepared, however, for the outrage of our neighbors.
The point is not to go somewhere and start an intentional community. Civilization and beyond civilization are not geographic territories, but social and economic territories. This represents a profound misunderstanding of where the space of our freedom is to be discovered. We want the kind of freedom people have when they live where they please. You don’t have to go somewhere to get beyond civilization. You have to make your living a different way. This is not to say that intentional communities cannot be tribes, but they must have occupational interests and skills in common in order to make a living together, and this is often not a concern when intentional communities are started.
As you discuss the ideas found in this book with your friends, you’ll be able to spot the old minds easily. They’re the ones who are always playing devil’s advocate, proposing and concentrating on difficulties, always nailing the progress of your dialog down to problems. Focus instead on what you want to happen, rather than on all the things that might keep it from happening. You don’t have to have all the answers. It’s always better to say, “I don’t know” than to fake it and get into hot water. Make people formulate their own questions. Don’t take on the responsibility of figuring out what their difficulty is. Never try to answer a question you don’t understand. Make the askers explain it; keep on insisting until it’s clear, and nine times out of ten they’ll supply the answer themselves. People will listen when their ready to listen and not before. Don’t waste time with people who want to argue. They’ll keep you immobilized forever. Look for people who are already open to something new.