Tribe, Tribe, Tribe

(To the tune of "Dream, Dream, Dream"...)

I have a slight problem with my chosen life's work. It does not hold up very well; in fact, it posits itself as rather frail. I fear my rallying cries falling prey to grave misinterpretation (since I myself get lost in strange loopholes--more like strangleholds!--of extreme conservatism with it often enough). I also feel queasy about the assumptions written into the basic vocabulary itself, held together by nearly interminable threads in the etymologies stretching back thousands of years. Not to mention queasiness over the proliferation of interpretations and co-opt-ings of such a critical, central word as "tribe"!

Last month, I finished reading the intriguing sociological creative nonfiction called Urban Tribes, written several years ago by Ethan Watters (Check out the Urban Tribes website!). I quite enjoyed the two-hundred page work, but there were some rather unsettling aspects to the text, as well. I felt disappointed that Watters did not go further with the tribal metaphor he drew. I thought he did an exceptional job illustrating how groups of relatively well-to-do young urbanites are banding together and marrying later than ever before (what he calls the demographic of the "never-marrieds," apparently an official U.S. Census Bureau term). Why would they put off marriage; what's so great about singlehood? (I think I'll get into this later since there is just so much to say about Watters's work.) Anyway, Watters has a very specific picture of what he means by urban tribe. For several years before I'd even heard of the book's existence, I had been advocating for urban tribes, dating back to 2006, when I moved back home with very pressing intentions of pursuing neo-tribalism in a city environment (more on these visions later, too!). Watters's urban tribes, however, are very constricted. They span the post-college years into the early-forties but sometimes longer, depending on the eventual marrying age of certain late-blooming individuals. And then they're done. For perhaps a twenty-year interval of their lives, these tribes coalesce, and then, just as quickly as they came together, they disband and disintegrate, fall apart, dissolve back into the nuclear family, or at least married couple, units that are the American norm. This, then, is not a true tribe, the sort of unit that is supposed to last, to support itself in perpetuity for generations.

Afterwards, I finally got around to watching one of Seth Godin's TED talks, entitled, "Why Tribes, Not Money or Factories, Will Change the World" (Great title; apparently misleading!). He uses tribe in a very loose way, as a stringy image of group structuring to inspire leadership by massive social networks of strongly and not-so-strongly connected individuals, tribes in this sense being the main force behind mass movements and social change, even programmatic activism, precisely the kind of thing to which changed vision in Quinn's work stands in stark contrast.

As I just stated (somewhat prematurely, according to my intended outline, it seems!), Daniel Quinn's use of the tribe concept, under the banner of Neo-Tribalism, is rather different. It follows more closely what most students educated in public school systems and elsewhere in the information-saturated "omniverse" have encountered about famous tribes such as the Navajo, the Iroquois, the Kung!-san, the Aborigines, the Bedouin, etc., etc.. It mimics in meaning the same perpetuation pattern and unique cultural elements that people tend to expect the term "tribe" to carry. One problem, however -- these days, Neo-Tribalism, seemingly embedded with
the component of "tribalism," tends to get confused with the very contrasting and contested realms of that movement. See this article on "The African Paradox: The Tribalist Implications of the Colonial Legacy" for some of the key themes in this strange ideology, pitting tribal sovereignty against the struggle to industrialize and turn human-scale cultures into just more satellites of an already monstrous mega-culture, using a spiky distancing-from-the-legacy-of-colonialism strategy for inspiring a virulent strain of African nationalism(s).

Beyond this, the etymology of tribe, compliments of the Oxford English Dictionary, is absolutely wrapped up in agriculture-based cosmopolitanism. See below:

"[In earliest form, ME. tribu, a. OF. tribu, Sp., Pg. tribu, It. tribù, tribo, a. L. tribus (u-stem); but as the OF. has not been found in the sing. before 14th c. the ME. tribuz of 1250 may directly represent L. tribs pl. The later tribe may have been f. L. tribus on the usual pattern of derivatives from L. ns. in -us.

L. tribus is usually explained from tri- three and the verbal root bhu, bu, fu to be. It is thought by some to be cognate with Welsh tref town or inhabited place.

The earliest known application of tribus was to the three divisions of the early people of Rome (attributed by some to the separate Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan elements); thence it was transferred to render the Greek , and so to the Greek application of the latter to the tribes of Israel. This, from its biblical use, was the earliest use in English, the original Roman use not appearing till the 16th c.]"

As such, I wonder if it would really be so strange a development if I had to craft a new vocabulary to represent the aims of the Neo-Tribalist movement? I have some scribblings, as well as some suggestions on new thinking routes or thoroughfares from my thesis advisor, on how this might be done. I fear it will be impossible to accomplish, as just about every potential word that presents itself is also intricately linked to our culture's Cyclop-tic history by way of etymology. Meh. Thoughts?

P.S.: Dear reader, yes, I intend to return with a vengeance. End-of-summer, beginning-of-school-year lull has faded, and I want to be blogging every day. Also, my good friend pointed me to this spectacular blog post about ending the year with a bang, which challenge I very much intend to embrace with the slightly-less-than-a-third-of-a-year remaining. Would you care to join me? :D

Keep reading: Tribe, Tribe, Tribe...

Baobabs and Toubabs! (An Irreverant Introduction to Colonialism?)

Yoff, Senegal.

This is only the beginning of what will (I hope!) be a much longer paper or project, perhaps integral to my thesis (no, not Honors Thesis; the Rock requires 8 credits of thesis work to graduate). I so like the sound of this particular rhyme (and usually rhyme just annoys the hell out of me!)!

Actually, I'm not sure where to start, but the idea is to trace the decline of animism (hence the baobabs) and the ascent of salvivic religions in certain places in recent centuries...Here I'm trying to distinguish between so-called "Taker" culture--very useful shorthand, but that has its problems--in the Fertile Crescent for millenia and in places like "the New World" and "l'Afrique" for only a handful of centuries. As such, the decline of traditional human societies, the tribal configurations, that is, and all the beneficial aspects and elements that go with them (this clearly includes animism) can be woven in with questions of colonialism (and here the toubabs, or white people, the people known here very acutely for their ugly history as colonists and enslavers and tormenters and rulers, etc., enter the picture) and its detrimental qualities, commodifying and transforming "the Other" with that capital "o."

That's the snapshot. To be continued...

But I must say, it`s been incredibly fun having people here ask me about my religious "persuasion" and be able to answer "animist" and have people not only understand what I'm talking about but have some idea how it is lived. Of course it's weird being one of those attempting to be part of "Taker-Hohokam," but I am perfectly willing to accept and affirm the integrity of my directionality in coming to animism--counter to most people in the world moving from traditional spiritualities into the salvivics, I'm going from Christianity and spiritual tumult to clarity and substance. La!

Keep reading: Baobabs and Toubabs! (An Irreverant Introduction to Colonialism?)...

Turning Twenty, Turning Pages

Two weeks ago I turned twenty. I wrote about it a some days before the event, and my writing then is still indicative of the feeling of urgency I have about it:

I’m turning old, as in twenty, soon. For the last four and a half years of my life, somewhere between one fifth and one quarter of my life, my days have been, in a way, side-swept/cheapened by a peculiar phenomenon called, I suppose, not getting over myself, not accepting incontrovertible forks in the road. It has got to stop. I cannot live any more of my life in that way. If nothing else, apparently I must make some kind of way for myself in the world, must have an outlook that builds me up as I go rather than undermining me at critical moments or multi-dimensionally.

After all, I have spent my adolescence fearing that I would be lonely forever. As it turns out, this is an unlikely prospect. I have dated three rather interesting and mostly pleasant guys (when dating them, at least) in the last five years, nevermind that two were related. I have no idea where I go from there, where the threads of various relationships will take me, but at least I've learned a lesson in the extremism of self-pity.

I want the next, mirroring twenty years of my life to look entirely distinct from the last, tragic set. It has taken a rather protracted amount of time to make that observation, but it really has been tragic, and it is not surprising I have suffered much melancholy as a result in that time (Ahem. Editor's note: This pronouncement is obviously pre-birthday biased in favor of emphasizing the negative). Many unhappy circumstances have shaped my life up 'til now; I have made a great many mistakes/social blunders, stepped on people’s toes, insulted many, lived my life in somewhat socially unacceptable ways…and I cannot forgive myself.

I have bitten my nails to the brink of extinction; I haven't done as well in academic situations as I might have wished; and as I said, I have made many choices differently than many people expected me to make them, the social unacceptability of which, of many of these behaviors/actions, constantly calls into question my justification for doing so.

I have challenged my worldview many times, feared and tried to avoid solidifying my views by the time I maneuvered out of my teens, but instead I do have some solid views, including some solid views on perpetually questioning those views, a quirk that might at least, for some time yet, help to carry a younger person's lack of stubbornness with me for several more years, at advantage to me against my less open-minded peers. I’ve had some strange, half-fortuitous, spectacular, entertaining, though mostly unusual, moments in my life, but the cumulative effect is utterly unfulfilling. And that overall tenor to my life is precisely what I wish to break with for the next twenty years.

So what exactly do I want to happen in those two decades? I want to return to Brasil, to work and live there. I want to have children and raise them unfailingly continuum. I want to travel again. I want to publish different kinds of works (as in different genres, for different audiences). I want to provide for other people the kind of hope, support, care, attention, love, assurance that I felt resentment for not having in mine, and why not? How great is it if I can create that which doesn’t exist, if I can take what dissatisfies me and do something with it to enhance the lives of others, making mine better in the process, especially in the satisfaction of knowing that some of my behavior helped to steer others away from the paths I’ve been down in the urban landscape of melancholy?!

I want to complete a triathlon. I want to be happy for the most part, counter to the emptiness (though not really sadness) of the last twenty. I want to defend my views/statements well, solidly. I want to love. I want to finally be able to cook delicious meals. I want to write something that I can be proud of. I want to stay on top of things. I want to be successful, productive, but not because I am in search of success. I want to design nurturing, restorative, life-changing landscapes. I want to be a role model, mentor, important person in people’s lives. I want to create communities and ecovillages. I want to bring people together. I want to heal places like Omaha. I want to forgive my family for their failings and then avoid them and their deleterious powers in my life. I want to feel at peace in my own skin, in my own world, with my own decisions, with how things turn out. I want to live fully, simply, joyously.

I have edited and changed some of that writing, but the bulk of it still defines how I feel and what I am striving for or towards. I still feel the same. The last twenty years were mostly not up to me but rather up to my family, which experiences for a large chunk of that time I resented for that very reason. But now it is clear, the next twenty are certainly up to me.

I don't have to go to school if I don't find it valuable or worthwhile. I don't have to move across continents constantly if it seems to me a peculiarly wasteful habit. I don't have to adopt my parents' misanthropic view of their neighbors, their acquaintances, their peers. I don't have to visit random places sporadically, erratically. I can build genuine, lasting connections with people and places. I can break a cycle of familial gloom and dysfunction because I can harness a knowledge unavailable to my mother and her mother, or my father's mother and father, because I can use an inner sensitivity my parents and their progenitors seem to lack. I can create something affirming, beautiful, vibrant, something they are not capable of, something that no mellifluous tinkerings and breathy pipings could--except, of course, if used in ways for good, for something beyond individualistic projects, avenues that they would never think to use. I sound so pessimistic and flippant, and of course there have been pleasant moments with my family, but the recurring attitudes and indications of their beliefs and priorities have seared into my memory. I think of all my mother's scowls, my father's jarring tones, my grandmothers' insensitive words, my aunt's superficial goals, and I see that this need to break off and protect myself from their vapid negativity was decided long ago. It's kind of like getting stuck with the wrong family for your entire life so far. And though I've been jealous of other people's family bonds in recent years, especially their ability to deal with the people who life brought together into socially-recognized families, I have found my surrogates and, more importantly even than having my own semblance of such a socially-recognized family, will create my own tribal family over time. I simply can't give up, which I'm liable to do off and on in the somewhat lonely interim.

The "I'm not getting any younger" mentality is really getting to me. I'm filled with a kind of power surge to get everything done now. Why not? To read voraciously, an art I've never mastered--my readings always slow, pained, and meticulous, and therefore intermittent, infrequently sustained; to write intensely, constantly, spilling my ideas out of my cluttered head; to create what I want to see in the world not forty years from now but at this very moment...I didn't expect turning twenty to be much more than a lamentable aging milestone. Yet here I am, uncovering an energetic potential for manifesting goodness and hospitality that wasn't accessible to me before. I just don't know how long it will last until I crumble into a paralysis of indecision all over again. I mean, I expect that from myself, to move cyclically through my tumultuous emotions. My only hope, then, is that the energetic periods sustain themselves longer and occur more frequently than the fretting, immobile ones.

So...how did I actually spend my birthday, you ask? Well, the day before my birthday, a Sunday, my boyfriend took me to a restaurant serving Portuguese/Brasilian cuisine. The decor of the place was exquisite! There were brilliant (as in brilla - Spanish; brilhante - Portuguese) murals on the walls, depicting social dances, fishermen at sea, couples at dinner. They were painted in very earthy hues, but the dancers had bright clothing in reds and whites. Just a lovely surrounding to situate myself for a birthday dinner. I had sardines (which I tried to share with Peter, but he's a picky eater!), caldo verde, beans and rice, and mariscada (Peter took a hilarious snapshot of me on his iPhone, with me wearing a silly and childish plastic bib with a goofy lobster printed on it). I've tried being a vegetarian before, but I struggle with finding a way to balance my anthropological interest in meat and fish and an ethical position about animal rights and shrunken ecological footprints (because apparently the greatest environmental actions we can take in our society are renouncing cars and meat, a view I'm starting to find more than a little problematic!). What I can say for myself is that Peter and I looked up on the iPhone Safari the list of good, bad, and so-so fish to eat/not to eat. Check it out here. Apparently, the Monterey Bay Aquarium keeps more detailed guides by region. Also, if you're ever in the disgustingly well-to-do Westchester County, definitely make sure to dine at Aquario.

I spent much of the week of my birthday working on a brand-new Bookstore Blog for my favoritest bookstore ever, aside from fixing up the bookstore's website pages (not updating time-specific information, however, since I'm so far away and no longer involved in the daily life of the store; though perhaps I should have made some long-overdue information changes...but I barely had enough time that week, as it was!). My favorite part, of course, being the visually rich Holy Hardware page. Buying local (even if local is a long-distance loyalty) definitely adds up. Buying from Amazon, not so much. I'm really excited to have some more time to add other fabulous features to the website, such as a mini-catalogue of our incredible selection of meaningful children's books, a record of our resources for those interested in simple living, as well as adding even more photos and product information to the site. The thing is, I'd have to go home for that (to take photos, to come up-to-date with changes at the store and with new titles and items, to hang out in one of my favorite spaces in the world, with some of my favorite people and dog, etc.), and oh, how much I would like to do so! I just don't know when that will be possible. And I crumble in jealousy for those well-off folks who don't even have to think twice about arranging flights home, for vacation, etc.. Maybe I'm beyond hope, maybe I actually can't change for the better?

I'll try to keep up my spirits, my momentum and live within the exhilaration of having a hand in the crafting of the next twenty years of my life. If I'm lucky, I won't even recognize my current self, my current sour attitudes and sulking moods, my habitual languor and mediocracy, when I get there. I hope this new-found energy overtakes that prevalent sluggishness and that unnecessary pity-partying. And so a toast: To luck and momentum!

Keep reading: Turning Twenty, Turning Pages...