Heart of the Tribe
If all of your friends decide to jump off a bridge, are you also going to jump? This is a question I heard multiple times as a child. It was my mother’s way of getting me to analyze my thought process so I would render in my mind that some decisions have grave consequences. Hive minded thinking —while socially acceptable— can eventually lead to decisions that could ruin your life, especially if not properly grounded.
In today’s world there are many hives occupied by like-minded individuals that share the same system of beliefs as their ideas are transported across neural networks. Each person deeply connected to one another which triggers a sort of calm to set in, instigating the parasympathetic nervous system. Everyone wants to belong as everyone seeks belonging. To belong is instinctively human as the very idea of desiring relationship is intrinsic to the entire species.
What does it mean to “find your tribe”? How exactly does one find their tribe in this modern world? What exactly is a tribe? The proliferation of social media apps over the last two decades have delivered a powerful answer. Long gone are the days of rich, intimate social clusters called communities. In their place now stands extremely vapid echo chambers built on emotional foundations. Every echo chamber has their own rules but the rules are precisely the same for each chamber. Agreement at all costs is the price that is demanded. Reject the price of admission and you’ll find yourself outside looking in, left either to change your position or to seek another chamber’s acceptance.
Today’s tribes are powerful. Not in the sense that they accomplish much but, that their grip on the human psyche resembles a sci-fi movie where people’s minds have been taken over by a shadow group of elites. Those within their tribe believe it’s the other tribes that have been brainwashed. Tribal members are often hyper-emotional yet believe it’s the other tribes that aren’t operating with common sense intact. Each tribe believes it is smarter than the other. Tribes of today believe their tribe is the most civil despite their inability to exercise civil discourse concerning disagreeable topics. While these concerns are troubling, it’s not what we should be worried most about. The most disturbing is the gravitational pull tribes of today often have despite their lack of any meaningful depth.
Modern tribes are much like plants with dead and decayed roots —easy to extract from the ground. Yet, despite this phenomenon, it can become near impossible to leave a tribe.
Leaving a tribe can mean isolation and lack of validation. Many people find their identity within tribes. In the ancient world this was a good thing as a community’s shared identity was rooted in something much deeper than the physical world. Before the age of social media members of a society had to meet one another, face to face and have a conversation to understand each other. This social interaction —now considered crude and practically taboo— forced a mutual level of respect between the two parties. You could read facial expressions to discern the depth of someone’s belief. This interaction encouraged civil discourse to avoid creating unhealthy tension or physical confrontation unnecessarily. You were forced to look someone in the eye and see them as a whole person instead of a digital avatar expressed through a cold screen. It took effort to truly find your tribe. Today, that has all changed and the effort is left wanting.
All that is required today is to simply check off the list each tribe presents at the door. Your ethnicity…check. Your religion…check. Your political affiliation….check. Your gender…check. There’s no nuance or context. There’s no conversation or debate. All that matters is that you co-sign whatever the tribe adheres to at a high level to gain acceptance. In fact, your ideas, your thoughts, and desires which could present opposition to the hive way of thinking are not wanted and can get you ostracized. Each tribe, while believing they’re grounded in the richness of the soil are instead, still void and without form.
This conundrum leaves a very rare breed of individual on the outskirts of society. The misunderstood, the outcasts, the lonely hearts in the middle of a crowd, the thinkers, the philosophers, the wisdom poets, the heralds, the grounded, the not easily deceived or distracted and those who can see through the simulation and powers of darkness. These individuals are few but, they walk among us all in search of their tribe. Their tribe is not easy to find because there are not many of them left and they’ve been scattered. This tribe attempts to hold on to the sacred much like the Native Americans did when they saw their land being desecrated and their people being fattened up like cows on sugar diets to be led to slaughter.
The inability to find one’s true tribe has led to many people acquiescing to today’s tribal fabrications of community, belonging and social warrior justice. They’ve had to bend their beliefs or morph into new characters in order to operate within modern society. In their heart of hearts, they know that if the world was different they wouldn’t throw on such a cloak of deception masking who they really are in front of the world.
Humans are relational beings. While some of us may often operate in isolation due to a lack of a true familial tribe, our greatness and contribution to the world can only be maximized by being connected to our tribe. The modern world has worked hard to fracture the familial and communal bond we as humans once shared within many of our societies. This is on purpose as humans are stronger together. Families are stronger together. Societies are stronger when its people are together.
If you’re looking for your tribe and are unable to find it still… look more deeply. Change from searching for minds and instead, search for hearts. There are not many of us, but we are still here, strong, resilient, and are carrying out the most important human mandate. We must. The survival of the entire human race depends on this tribe’s ability to stick together.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, please restack and share it! Feel free to leave comments as I’d love to hear your thoughts. - Gideon
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