The Tension Between Past and Future
The conflict between an idea and the demands of the stomach
I've previously discussed the limitations of our consciousness where we rely only on closed systems. For example, no one seems to connect the influx of racism to Covid-19. Have you ever pondered how it is that we have experienced such an increase in racism-related issues worldwide, coinciding with the emergence of Covid-19? In the US, this was marked by BLM protests and calls to defund the police.
I’ve written numerous times that it would be much much healthier if humanity started looking at what is deemed as global viral/bacterial infections as mutation, rather than pejorative things that need to be prevented at all costs. Mutation is neither good nor bad. Every mutative change brings new information and conversely, a closure of old one. What happens is that humanity cannot identify evolutionary changes when they occur, and have the necessary context to see them (w)holistically.
If there is no connecting factor between everything, the information itself is more of a disadvantage. Instead of understanding it leads to disconnection. This is hazardous because by trying to prevent it at all costs we actually cause further damage. It creates disconnected decision-making.
This is the paradox.
In fact, one of the major traits we are losing, as a byproduct of the evolutionary mutation in the solar plexus, is the genetic marker that codes in us for interdependence. The humility to sense the interplay between unrelated phenomena and the wisdom to accept it before there’s rational understanding.
This post aims to reveal the underlying mechanics of the tension between globalism and nationalism. It will explore the information payloads these ideologies represent, their origins, why society gravitates back to fundamentalism and the coming conflicts and the great wars that arise as a byproduct.
To find some mutual basis, I'd like to introduce a crucial mechanism for understanding human nature, particularly when it comes to sociology and anthropology.
A human is composed of three interconnected layers:
The Individual Circle: The first and innermost circle represents the person alone in their own world. Even when we are with others, we are always alone within the confinement of ourselves. This circle speaks of selfhood and empowerment.
The Tribal Circle: The second circle represents the familiar world—the relationships we have with others we know. We all come into the world as individual entities but are always absorbed into a group, usually our family and friendships, formed over a lifetime. This circle speaks of material needs and support.
The Collective Circle: The third and outermost circle represents the external world—the world of strangers, people outside the tribal circle whom we do not know. This circle speaks of sharing and equality.
Understanding these three circles helps to contextualize human behavior and social dynamics, revealing how human beings navigate their personal identities, their immediate relationships, and their interactions with the broader society.
Since everything is built on a scale in which so above as below, as within so without, biologically speaking, these three circles represent the three germ layers from which the human body is formed: the endoderm, the mesoderm and the ectoderm, respectively.
The tribal circle is the center of the "sandwich." It acts as a bridge between individuality and the collective—the larger world outside. So within our bodies. The mesoderm germ layer is predominantly correlated to connective tissue proper; a term describing the multitudes of variations of collagenous material (fascia, ligaments, tendons, epithelial a tissue, cartilage, synovial fluids, gums, blood and more) responsible for forming the support base on which all other organs and body systems depend. This is the glue. This is what connects between everything within our bodies. Therefore, the same is true within the outer body - humanity, as a society. To show that what takes place within us, its “chirality” manifests outside of us, and vice versa.
On the other hand, the ectoderm tissue forms the raw material from which the largest organ in our body is built, namely our skin (epidermis). And our skin is the first thing that "meets" the outside world. It is also the most “homogenized” tissue. There isn’t much of a difference between skin cells throughout different locations in the body.
Sociologically, the tribal circle represents familiarity and includes elements like bloodlines, friendships, tradition, customs, trust, nationality, values, family, work, and principles. These aspects organize the tribe, with familiarity and trust at its core.
Conversely, the tribal imperative is inherently discerning. It’s a form of a boundary line between the inside and the outside. Without a defined boundary, there can be no distinction between what is included and excluded. Consider what defines a country. A line is drawn to separate one area from another, reinforcing the belief that this particular piece of land belongs to one tribe, while everything beyond it belongs to another. These distinctions are rooted in our genetic matrix and are not easily altered by philosophical ideas.
Internally, this significant aspect is akin to the theme of a threshold between one set of material and space and between another. These internal boundaries are often composed of collagenous material, commonly referred to as fascia. In this way, the glue speaks not only to the physical organization of our bodies but also to the deeper, fractal patterns of how we perceive and structure our world.
In the subsequent weeks I’m going to dedicate an entire post just on the functions of the fascia, its role and what changes take place in its inherent properties, as a result of the mutation.
Consider the psychological impact of a borderline. It’s remarkable how much of our sense of identity and perception of who we are is shaped by it. Roles themselves are a byproduct of boundaries. Without this, the derivative roles that define our existence cannot come to fruition. Each family distinguishes itself from other families and each tribe differentiates itself from neighboring tribes through clothing, tradition, customs, food, and language.
Language is deeply connected to our tribal identity. It’s a form of a boundary line. The moment we hear a different language, it automatically sets up a boundary line in us for some illusion of differences. Even if we hear someone speak our language, but with a dialect or an accent, it automatically triggers a sense of difference. Moreover, The moment we are in a foreign country, unable to speak the local language, automatically sets in us a sense of inferiority and limitation.
We come into the world without any "hat." We don't even know that we know. We don’t know that we are a male or female. We don’t know that we are a Jew or a Christian or an atheist. As we age, we begin to accumulate all kinds of "hats" that we will continue to “wear” for the rest of our lives: the gender hat, the nationality hat, the race hat, the religion hat, the language hat, and more. All these "hats" are derivatives of the tribal font in our genetics. They are derivatives of the borderline function.
Put differently, as a result of the transformation in the solar plexus, we are becoming more porous and therefore, without defining “borders”. And so the world becomes more porous as well. We can see it evidently around us, as no country does not face issues with migrants and ”leaky” borders. When you have a sharp influx of migrants coming into your country, you are in danger of losing the cohesion and identity of your communities, and in that, the entire makeup of your country.
On tribal imperative and human organization
Historically, humanity was predominantly organized through the tribal genetic imperative. When we are born, we cannot survive alone. It takes time to develop adequate intelligence to survive independently. Studies on feral children have indicated that around seven years of age is the threshold for being able to survive somewhat alone. Therefore, we are designed to be born into a supportive environment that provides for our basic needs, enabling the development of essential intelligence.
The smallest tribal unit - the clan - has always been represented by the family. It serves as an initial support base—the first group we encounter in our lives. As individuals, we often sacrifice a significant part of our individuality for the family. In return, we receive various forms of support: nutritional, self-preservation and emotional. Therefore, as evident by biblical stories, the value of sacrifice is an essential part of the integrity of the tribe.
The tribal genetic imperative is structured by strict hierarchies. At its core, the nuclear family unit is inherently non-democratic. If it were, it wouldn't survive. This hierarchy extended to all other aspects of life. Every human group is organized hierarchically, having a clear leader, whether it is a priest, a prime minister, a parent, or a company boss, and last but not least - the tribal godhead, which has always served as the ultimate form of authority.
The tribe is all about survival and support—ensuring continuity of bloodlines and the expansion of the genetic pool. Families historically expanded through marriage, increasing genetic diversity and ensuring prosperity, economic survival, and food security. Over time, families merged to form communities, counties, and eventually nation states, competing for control. Individuals were born into fixed roles—shoemakers, farmers, warriors—with no expectation of upward mobility. Social pressure ensured adherence to these roles, reinforcing the established order. And so the entire human organization engine was predominantly facilitated by the tribal imperative which is all about ensuring the continuity of our species.
Each of these traits reflects nuances of a specific genetic marker that, over the course of human evolution, became codified as the laws that hold tribes together. The word religion is derived from the Latin word ligare (meaning to bind), reflecting this binding force that ensures the adherence to common principles and values (this is akin to the glue—the biological structure of collagenous material within our bodies that hold everything together). Without this adherence, the survival of the tribe is at risk.
The Tribal Imperative is Deeply Visceral
The tribal genetic imperative is deeply visceral. It is expressed in the basic human need for physical connection and intimacy. This imperative is fundamental to human connection, relying primarily on smell and touch as primary sensory mechanisms. In the smallest tribal unit—the family—members often share the same smell due to similar diets, reinforcing this bond. In the past, tribes competed with one another, or differentiated themselves based on differing smells.
Moreover, the need for touch is evident in various customs such as: hugging, the handshake, symbolizing an agreement, and in communal gatherings around meals or for a prayer. These rituals foster a sense of gratitude and solidarity, which are emotional values which have been crucial to maintaining the tribe’s cohesion and viability.
All our religions are flooded with temples. But in reality these are places of mass gathering, where the prayer and the godhead are not the focal point, even though they are. What I mean by that is that these are just the background cover, in the sense that it’s all part of the genetic program.
The main premise of these gathering places was how tribes stay updated. Think about gossip for instance. We mostly see gossip as a pejorative, but gossip is, and always has been, tribal news. It’s how tribes stay informed. Gossip is the way we pass information within the familiar circle.
In the past, before the development of collective journalism and mass media, to stay informed was not something feasible. Most of the community members were busy in their inner world of labor and homesteading during the week. Therefore, the temple served as a place of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. It provided the members the possibility to know what was going on in everybody else’s lives. When everyone knows what’s going on with everybody else’s lives, it creates a form of an invisible guarding rails. They guard against transgressions by individual members that would otherwise pose a threat to the tribe’s cohesion.
And the information passed is not only discursive or articulatory, but biological. That is, tribes need to be infected from time to time to stay "up to date" in terms of immunity. This is where the term 'herd immunity' stems from. This is the byproduct of the ‘stickiness’ of the tribe. People huddle and touch each other all the time. And all of this was done as soon as everyone met in the temple.
It’s very important to see that when Covid hit, the directions given to humanity to cease all physical contact and maintain distance from one another, as well as the prosecution of all religious congregation points, is basically a reflection of the void within us that the shutdown of the tribal imperative leaves.That is, humanity has no affinity anymore to tradition, to intimacy and human bonding, as it used to, and it comes out in a very skewed and distorted way.
The beginning of the rise of the collective
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.” Albert Einstein
The human evolutionary process can be likened to the concept of compounded interest. For example, if a piece of printer paper with a thickness of only 1mm (1/250 of an inch) is folded on itself 42 times, it would reach the moon. Initially, there is little noticeable progress, but the final steps result in a significant leap due to the compounding effect. Similarly, the progression of human intelligence has followed a comparable pattern.
Our capacity to share information with strangers was significantly limited throughout history. Illiteracy was the norm for thousands and thousands of years, with the writing revolution beginning only about 5,000 years ago. It took considerable time for literacy to become widespread among the population.
If we begin 90,000 years ago with the mutation that brought the dropping of the larynx, which enabled the expansion of our neocortex to be able to experience self reflected consciousness, it’s not that a thousand years later you get Einstein. It’s like 95% of that timeline was a very slow progression in which most of it was not even noticeable. It wasn’t even about the development of intelligence, but about providing a secure basis for a continuity engine as the production line of our species. All, until it reaches a stage where everything explodes.
A variety of studies have suggested that humans have a limited ability to be present in the lives of those around them, and it seems that this limit amounts to around 150 people. Above a certain threshold it is no longer possible to create an inclusion of all the members by everyone else. As a result, abstract frameworks are created that take the place of human connection and integration. This is the point where the collective begins to take charge
About 400 years ago, the early stages of mass urbanization began. Following the major developments of the Industrial Age years later, have led to the massive construction of metropolitan cities. More and more people began to migrate from the countryside to the city, reaching an unprecedented predicament today in which more human beings live in cities than outside of them. Cities around the world emerged as melting pots for different tribes with clear and defined identities.
Throughout that time, humanity has experienced a rapid thrust towards collectivization, also known as globalization. For the first time, the collective started to become more dominant than the community. This convergence acted as a conciliatory and civilizing factor, leading also to an accelerated increase in collective intelligence.
The collective is the unfamiliar. It’s the world of strangers. It is the outside world where one tribe meets another. We don't behave the same way when we are with people we don’t know, publicly. We don't behave as freely and openly as we do with our family members or with our friends.
Our behavior changes automatically. In the world of strangers we can share ideas and opinions, but it isn’t “sticky” like the tribe. There’s no intimacy, no loyalty, principles or values. It’s just ideas and opinions. It doesn’t fulfill the needs of the stomach. It doesn’t protect us either.
Conversely, the collective is the conciliatory factor. It is the thing that brought us democracy. It is also the thing that invented relatively civilized punishments. It’s the very thing that has brought us the themes of equality and inclusion, and all these organizations for human rights, animal rights and soon enough inanimate rights too! It’s the very thing that invented political correctness—a means to find a consensual language for every topic.
The collective is all about normalization. It is the very thing that always tries to reach an egalitarian formula in every field of life. If it weren't for the collective we wouldn't have been able to develop globally, to develop our technologies, our global supply chain and accelerate our intelligence.
Conversely, the collective is the conciliatory factor. It is the thing that brought us democracy. It is also the thing that invented relatively civilized punishments. It’s the very thing that has brought us the themes of equality and inclusion, and all these organizations for human rights, animal rights and soon enough inanimate rights too! It’s the very thing that invented political correctness—a means to find an consensual language for every topic.
The collective is all about normalization. It is the very thing that always tries to reach an egalitarian formula in every field of life. If it weren't for the collective we wouldn't have been able to develop globally, to develop our technologies, our global supply chain and accelerate our intelligence.
The Decline of Communal Fabric
Today, many small towns, particularly in Europe, are on the verge of becoming ghost towns. Birth rates are substantially low. Those who are born in these towns and villages often abandon them for brighter futures in big cities, by the time they reach their twenties. Very few are interested in continuing traditional ways of life. Agriculture and farming are on the decline because there are no next generations to continue the tradition.
Family values are dissolving. The modern family has an average of one to two children, whereas in the past the average family had seven to twelve. Children are born to separated couples or single moms more than ever before. Overall, we are slowly reducing more and more human contact. Intimacy - a significant tribal construct - has been metamorphosing to a different kind. Human interactions have diminished in exchange for intimacy with machines.
Today, family members can inhabit the same space, but each occupies an isolated bubble of their own. The sharp rise in divorces over the past 50 years and the breaking down of the nuclear family are all derivatives of the degradation of the tribal genetic imperative from within. The family glue is under constant threat for disintegration.
Today, we don’t need to meet one another to gossip. Our friendships and communities have become virtual, void of the touch of the tribe. Our future generations are going to be extremely different from us in the sense that having a family, maintaining a community, or following tradition are not going to be important to them at all. This pattern is already evident around the world.
The collective, through internet culture and constant connectivity, has aggressively invaded the boundaries of the tribe. With everyone having smartphones and constant access to the "outside," the connection with family members and the close familiar circle is constantly interrupted for a renewed access to the collective.
The transformation has created a vacuum between past and future values, with no clear guiding principles. The loss of tribal hierarchy has led to undefined roles, values, and principles. In today's world, hierarchical mobility is no longer restricted by birth or role. A 20-year-old can become a billionaire by developing code, effectively becoming the "king" of a new technocratic feudalism. Today's modern “feudal lords”, like Tech oligarchs, lease virtual "land" in the form of cloud services, establishing a new form of economic control.
The Story as Defining Memory
It is important to understand that every tribe needs a story. Without a story, there is no heritage, and heritage is communal memory.
The story forms the basis of the tribe's specific memory, distinguishing it from the tribe at the other side of the valley. Over time, the tribal story takes concrete shape through customs and principles that become laws, through particular food (cuisine), and through language. Our defining symbols—flags, hymns, and clothing—are concrete markers through which we preserve our tribal identity. This process can take hundreds or even thousands of years to formulate.
So what happens when humanity starts to migrate from villages into large cities? Suddenly, it becomes exposed to different ideas—different forms of telling the same story from what it has been conditioned to see and identify as absolute. This shift means one no longer has to maintain provincial beliefs from the 12th century; they can adopt ones from the 20th century.
"Wait a minute! Are you saying that as a woman I can be a rabbi?"
"Wait a minute! Is it really possible to make Tunisian couscous with gluten-free dough? And can I even put a scoop of ice cream next to it?"
So once we moved into big cities and began to develop industrially and technologically, having this new ability to create sophisticated communication systems, suddenly we were able to transmit ideas and opinions from a wider spectrum. This blending of ideas and the subsequent questioning of traditional beliefs marked a significant shift in our cognitive and cultural evolution (the more ideas we have—i.e. variations to express differing perspectives—the further our intellect is honed). On one hand this movement helped to expand our intelligence and the development of civilization as a whole, but on the other, it began to erode the tribal glue.
In other words, for millennia, the tribal imperative was the organizing force behind human development. But over the past 250 years, the collective—a whole greater than the sum of its parts—began to supersede the tribe. This shift, fueled by the rise of cities and urbanization, moved the tribe to a subordinate role and in turn, gave rise to democracy.
In contrast to tribes, where hierarchies are based on bloodlines and age, democracy is an organizing system that transcends these limitations, albeit only as an illusion. That’s what’s so important to grasp. We are still deeply organized by the tribal imperative “under the hood”. Behind closed doors all human organization is strictly based on the tribal imperative. That’s why at the end of the day decisions for an entire organization, as well as countries, are made by a few or one person alone. It’s nowhere ”democratic”. And this is where it gets conflicted.
In 2000 with the establishment of the internet and in 2008, with the release of the first smartphone, the collective really began to leave its forever mark and its undisputed control. We really passed a point of no return that only later, if at all, looking back, we might be able to understand that it was a point that established the beginning of the end.
Nowadays, each of us has the possibility that allows for immediate expression. And not only is it immediate, it is embedded forever in the collective cloud. Every statement, photograph and recording is saved on the cloud, and as a result can be extracted at any point in time for the creation of a new narrative, completely different from the circumstances in which they were created in the first place.
It’s the first time in the history of our species that the Internet and the smartphone have given the individual the ability, at the push of a button, to directly access the collective and bypass the tribe. This is the first time in human history that our thinking could be translated into instant communication, accessible to masses of people simultaneously from which everyone can choose which variation of the story suits their emotional climate, which they then adopt as their exclusive reality.
This creates a continuous generation of offshoots of secondary and tertiary ideas to the main one. As we have developed this ability to create a platform for sharing all stories into one giant cornucopia, we are in danger of losing our cohesion. If in the past the main story was that Columbus was a folk hero, now there are variations that he was a rapist, a homophobe, a vegan transgender, and a murderer.
In the past, any personal contribution, such as freedom of expression, had to go through filtering steps that acted as buffers. If you wanted to contribute your point of view and access the collective, you could only do so through bridging means: being interviewed on radio, television, or in a newspaper, or by writing a book (and even then you had to find a publisher interested in your words).
In this way, the tribe had smoother control over the information spectrum. Any idea that went against the principles of the tribe would be omitted and shelved, hence the marker of censorship that exists in humanity. This was mostly for the sake of order and smooth organization.
Today, however, we no longer have these intermediate stages through which society flows in one direction. Any person can bypass them with the push of a button and share their "benevolent" internal climate without any bridging means. Simply because everyone has a "weapon of mass destruction" in the palm of their hand. This in turn creates tremendous pressure on the communities in the field, which actually maintain the foundation on which the collective is built.
Currently, humanity is being overwhelmed by different frameworks of ideas about how things should look like, while there is a complete disregard for the needs of the body—not just the individual body, but the body of humanity as a whole. This is evident by the huge gap between the mundane reality and between the virtual one, or as I like to describe it as the huge dissonance between the raving about the future of AI, as a global ordering facility, while in the field governments can’t fix a pothole.
Each of us, through our personal, virtual conduct, maintains an information cloud that is no longer under our control. These, in turn, create and sustain the new collective: Collective 2.0, which is a melded virtual place for a variety of ideas and opinions about how things would, could and should need to be, irrespective of the underlying reality. The cloud has become more dominant and in control of the individual parts that make it.
Humanity makes decisions based on ideas and descriptive formulas that do not correspond to the reality on the ground, while trying to align everyone accordingly, believing it is suitable for everyone. There are no nuances in the collective. The collective is only interested in finding an egalitarian formula that can be implemented on everyone, and in every area of life. But life itself is full of nuances.
This is why we struggle with bureaucracy as it does not allow for the inclusion of nuances. Bureaucracy is the collective's means of asserting its control. That’s why statistics have become more important and superior than the individual in the field. That’s why linear formulas have become more important than practice.
We have reached a schizophrenic predicament where countries and entire organizations make policies and decisions based solely on theoretical ideas, which are increasingly disconnected from reality due to the virtual model.
The more we can transform and manipulate information and datasets, the more we fantasize about all the possibilities inherent in the model. You know, that we can lower the carbon footprint with the push of a button, or go to war but not kill innocent civilians, or flatten the curve by locking ourselves at home for two weeks (and then some).
As a result, it generates double standards and opposing viewpoints that constantly shift (a Kafkaesque universe of contradictions). This creates a huge gap—an abyss—into which more and more people fall.
So for instance, if you're a farmer, you're now supposed to grow your crops according to a formula devised by bureaucrats in an ivory tower. If you go to war, you’re now supposed to conduct yourself by a formula devised by a bunch of bureaucrats in an ivory tower. If you are fighting a pandemic, you’re expected to conduct yourself based on a formula devised by a bunch of bureaucrats in an ivory tower, and so on and so forth.
Every aspect of human life passes through a bureaucratic, sterile filter which the individual has no access to, but unconsciously is helping to promote through their virtual conduct. This filter determines behind closed doors how people are supposed to conduct themselves, based on an idea of “equality and inclusion” within the relevant sphere of life. But from the point of view of the tribal imperative—in terms of the “nuts and bolts” within the mundane plane—this is a death sentence.
The tribal imperative underpins our support systems, ensuring food security and the infrastructure for protection and support, such as the army, police, healthcare services, education, agriculture, and foundational communities. Our entire organizational structure is not inherently collective, which hints on the root of current disarray. It’s tribal!
Institutions are collapsing because humanity has lost the ability to unite and agree upon shared principles, which is essential for forming cohesive groups. This is the craziness we face.
Distorted Binary Perspectives
Today we are on the other side of the fence. The collective really stepped up in establishing its unquestionable power and influence. With our expanded ability to manipulate data, we fall into believing we can outsmart everything. We have reached a common belief that as a species we have really progressed. That we have become more civilized and enlightened. That we have proven our abilities to neutralize conflicts. That we can reach everlasting peace and prosperity.
We developed conciliatory measures; various organizations that allow each tribe to express their opinions freely, where heads of states, dressed in the same suits, can speak nicely behind podiums in air-conditioned halls. We’ve created "cleaner" destruction systems, where we can push buttons behind remote-control offices that will activate precise tools to destroy our enemies, without harming the innocent.
This has given us the illusion that we can use clean and civilized means to solve conflicts. In reality, however, we only further harm ourselves. Because beneath the surface, the tribal imperative within us is enlivened by memory. We are still concretely organized by our "physical" communities and the hierarchies that underlie them.
This belief that we have moved forward and left our tribal past behind; and that we are currently much more civilized - all of these are a double-edged sword. They make us feel enlightened and special. And specialness is a disease. The illusion that we are special, enlightened and progressed, does exactly the opposite. It intensifies the lack of awareness, which in turn intensifies the killer beast within us. This marks an unprecedented new reality, and a dangerous one.
The result is a distorted view of the world, where history and society are painted in binary terms: rulers versus subjects, oppressors versus victims, colonizers versus colonized. This oversimplification creates a black-and-white narrative, with one side portrayed as absolute evil and the other as pious.
We no longer possess the inherited understanding that both ruling and being ruled are acceptable roles. That slavery was a natural part of the engine, and that we are still slaves, merely wearing a different costume. As this foundational knowledge fades, society’s perception of these concepts becomes entirely subjective, distorting our view of history and current events.
In other words, the obsession nowadays with racism is actually not racism, but the byproduct of the dissolution of our tribal genetic imperative. What’s being espoused as racism is basically racism in the eyes of the collective. From the worldview of the collective, everyone is equal, everyone has the same status, everyone has the same rights. And this is very different from the tribe. The tribe has clear defined hierarchies and classes. Not everyone has equal rights.
If we really think about it we are all racist and there’s nothing wrong with it. Every time one says to himself "I am American and he is French; I am Jewish and she is Christian,” they circumscribe their race and nationality - derivatives of the tribal imperative - from one another. We can’t escape it. We’ve always been racist and always will be, as long as we are in these bodies. And there’s nothing wrong with it.
Some readers may say, “well it’s not racism, it’s nationalism.” It doesn’t matter how we explain it to ourselves and how semantically we package it. All I’m trying to show is that we can’t escape or deny our need to belong to a group and drape our identity by tribal keynotes. Because it’s a visceral thing. That’s the key here. It’s in our intimacy. It’s in our senses. It’s in our language. That’s why we have this dumb confusion where we can’t escape defining one another by tribal markers, such as skin color or gender, and yet, in certain instances it’s called racism. We can run jokes on Polish, Muslim or white people during dinner, but at the same time, in our life mediated by our gadgets, Twitter and Facebook, we all speak in the same cheap shopworn politically correct clichés.
Even now with a relatively new community—the LGBTQ— it’s still defined as a tribe with a name, flag, certain values and principles as distinctions from other tribes. This clearly shows that there’s no way around it.
No matter how intellectual and sophisticated we think we have become, we all “play” by the same (genetic) rules. We cannot define ourselves any other way. We cannot deny the need to belong by shared principles. We cannot escape our tribal imperative even if philosophically we can manipulate it within our minds. This inherent communal imperative is a fundamental aspect of human nature. And yet, it’s shutting down.
Conclusion
We need the collective.
This is the imperative in us that protects us from the humiliation forces within the tribe (corruption, grifting, politics, a friend brings a friend, etc.). It is the one that brought us human rights, women rights, animals rights and so on. And yet, the collective doesn’t really exist, if you catch my drift. The collective is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The collective represents an idea. And an idea cannot be eaten. It cannot satisfy an empty stomach. It can't protect you either.
Then, perhaps, one begins to realize that the root of the conflict is within. Everything we see in the world is a manifestation of the inner tension that percolates within us. The tension is the byproduct of the dissolution of the tribal genetic imperative in order to fulfill the next step of the evolutionary process.
But we don’t know that. We get caught in the illusion that the breaking down of the glue that sustains our civilization is the responsibility of something outside our lives. As a result, modern society experiences an exponential increase in hypersensitivity and a lack of balance. As society becomes more emotionally sensitive, yet repressed, the tribal imperative for emotional resolution—often manifesting as vengeance—grows stronger in response to any inkling of a conflict.
Conversely, it breeds the rise in fundamentalism. This is expressed as elevated nationalism and patriotism. It reflects a backlash response to the dissolution of the tribal imperative. As communities, states and countries feel that their values, principles and identity are diminishing, and are not respected anymore, there’s a panic wave that takes over. It’s a form of resistance to change based on the fear of losing integrity.
In the following post I talk about the fact that there is no more political left and right, about the reason for the rise of the far right, which is not really far right, and that we currently don’t have a language to explain and describe the change objectively, which then leads to further confusion and polarization.
What that s reveals is that the great coming conflicts, world, civil and ethnic wars that bloom in the horizon are the result of such transition. A crevasse has emerged between an idea and the needs of the body, and the accompanying forgetfulness which is the dominant of the two.
But contrary to what’s espoused all over, there isn’t them vs. us.
We are all it. And it is us.
Thank you for reading for supporting this publication. It would be interesting and refreshing to know your thoughts on this subject matter, as I always welcome comments and questions.
Thank you for an excellent piece of writing and perspective. I've shared the heck out of this one!