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Insane
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Quote:
People are fascinated to learn why a pride of lions works, why a troop of baboons works, or why a
flock of geese works, but they often resist learning why a tribe of humans works. Tribal humans were
successful on this planet for three million years before our agricultural revolution, and they’re no less
successful today wherever they manage to survive untouched, but many people of our culture don’t want
to hear about it. In fact, they’ll vigorously deny it. If you explain to them why a herd of elephants works
or why a hive of bees works, they have no problem. But if you try to explain why a tribe of humans
works, they accuse you of “idealizing” them. From the point of view of ethology or evolutionary biology,
however, the success of humans in tribes is no more an idealization than the success of bison in herds or
whales in pods.
Our cultural excuse for failure is that humans are just “naturally” flawed—greedy, selfish, short-sighted,
violent, and so on, which means anything you do with them will fail. In order to validate that excuse,
people want tribalism to be a failure. For this reason, to people who want to uphold our cultural
mythology, any suggestion that tribalism was successful is perceived as a threat.
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Quote:
Tribal life is not in fact perfect, idyllic, noble, or wonderful, but wherever it’s found intact, it’s found to
be working well—as well as the life of lizards, racoons, geese, or beetles—with the result that the
members of the tribe are not generally enraged, rebellious, desperate, stressed-out borderline psychotics
being torn apart by crime, hatred, and violence. What anthropologists find is that tribal peoples, far from
being nobler, sweeter, or wiser than us, are as capable as we are of being mean, unkind, short-sighted,
selfish, insensitive, stubborn, and short-tempered. The tribal life doesn’t turn people into saints; it enables
ordinary people to make a living together with a minimum of stress year after year, generation after
generation.
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Quote:
People who dislike what I’m saying will challenge me this way: “If you’re so crazy about the tribal life,
why don’t you get a spear and go live in a cave?”
The tribal life isn’t about spears and caves or about hunting and gathering. Hunting and gathering is a
lifestyle, an occupation, a way of making a living. A tribe isn’t a particular occupation; it’s a social
organization that facilitates making a living.
Where they’re still allowed to, gypsies live in tribes, but they’re obviously not hunter-gatherers.
Similarly, circus people live in tribes—but again, obviously, they’re not hunter-gatherers. Until recent
decades there were many forms of traveling shows that were tribal in organization—theatrical troupes,
carnivals, and so on.
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Daniel Quinn in "Beyond Civilization"
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One day there will be so many houses, that people will be bored and will go live in tents. "Why are you living in tents ? Are there not enough houses ?" "Yes there are, but we play this Economy game"
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