[quote=“Urban Scout, post:15, topic:513”]haha.
Yeah, I agree with you. I generally use the word family.
But even in a family, not everyone supports you and you can’t count on everyone and there may be people you don’t like even. I think the same is true for tribes. or bands even. I don’t need to get along with everyone in my family, just enough to feel supported.[/quote]
Yeah, I agree with you. I definitely don’t agree with my family members’ view points on a lot of things, but the things we do agree on and interests shared is what makes me want to learn things from them, and work on projects with them, like gardening and such, which my parents know a lot about. But I have different techniques that I want to use, and they are more set in their ways of doing things like they always have…
That's one of the reasons why I don't like the word tribe, because I think most people assume that you have to agree with everyone and get along with everyone, or that you have to work with everyone who agrees with you. For example, there are lots of people in Portland who more or less want to rewild. But I think a lot of those people are assholes. Just because we are a rare breed, us-who-rewild, I assumed that I had to work with them. This always ended badly. Now-a-days I just work with people I work well with. Every time I started a "tribal business" it failed. As soon as we stopped seeing the businesses as tribes, but ships in a harbor, things started clicking. For example, a few ships in my harbor of Portland rewilding are TrackersNW and Mythmedia. TrackersNW is not my ship, but I can sail it once and a while to make some money. TonyD mostly takes care of the ship and takes it out on his own missions from time to time. I caretake the mythmedia ship, which I rarely take out but others have. What I have is a core group of friends who I love and who support each other, though sometimes we can't work together on particular projects, we support each other. Sometimes we sail together, sometimes we let each other sail our ships, sometimes we go to another friend of ours ship who has nothing to do with anyone else.
Not neccessarily, but I understand your concern. I don’t think that everyone immediately assumes that to be a “tribe” or “family” forces all involved to share the same view points and think and act alike. I can definitely understand what you are saying, and in extreme cases that does happen, but those are the groups that you want to stay away from. I think that the most important thing about any group of people that are working towards something collectively is that each and every person brings some different talent, experience, resource, creativity, or skill to the group so that it’s diverse and multi-functional. that way you have several different view points and experiences to draw from when making decisions or planning things, or getting a job done.
The problem I think lies in defining the tribe. Where does the tribe start and where does it end? Like families, where do they start and end? Your cousin has a set of cousins who are not related to you at all. While your cousins are part of your blood family, your cousins cousins are not. Even a family you can't readily define because each individual has a different relationship with everyone in the family and beyond.A hunting band on the other hand, you can define. A crew on a ship, you can define. A team you can define. Because they are a core of people temporarily taking on a job. Everyone has a role in some sense or another to accomplish something.
Team, band and crew all have that temporary feeling that says, “if it doesn’t work, walk away.” Whereas the words “Tribe and Family” carry a kind of wieght that says, “Sorry, your stuck with us forever.”
A pitfall I have made (along with many other friends of mine) was to pick a handful of people and think of them as my “tribe.” That I couldn’t work with anyone on anything outside of the tribe, etc. But where do you limit the growth of it? What if I want to bring my whole family into the tribe? What if everyone wants to bring their whole family? Where does the line end and begin?
I don’t know. I don’t think you can draw a line around a family or a tribe or in cold, hard mechanical terms; a socio-economic network.
True, it could get tricky if you try to define something like this to come up with one simple explanation or definition. Ideas like this need to be flexible and ever changing just like people that are involved… I see what you are saying about a family and being “stuck with” it (I do not do well in situations where I feel like I don’t have a choice or am not free to do my own thing because of other people’s rules, needs, or wants… and I definitely feel frustrated when I can’t do things I want because of obligations I may feel to a certain group or individual.), whereas non-relations are easier to remove yourself from, or take a different route if you need to. I think I am beginining to understand the tribe idea you have given examples of. And I think it’s a good example of the type of thing that I am feeling I need in my life, as I really don’t have anyone close by to share interests with outside of family. I am still trying to separate the important aspects of family vs. tribe relations and activities and differences… maybe if I knew more about social structures or something… do you have any books or something I could look into? I do admit that I dislike textbook-style books, and find it really boring… but I would like to investigate certain family and tribe structures to get a better understanding.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I spent years forming and failing at creating tribes until one day I gave up and realized that I was already part of a tribe; the network of family and friends and their family and friends and so on. And that all I had to do was learn to encourage and support a culture of rewilding among those people.As far as making a living goes, everyone in my family and close friends chips in to help each other out. Where the money/food/support comes in doesn’t necessarily come from us working together (sometimes) but that we form our own bands to make money and than distribute it among our own networks or families.
Does that make sense to anyone? Please help me, I’m still working these ideas out of my head.
I think that happens alot, though, you don’t realize what you have around you is what you need until you try to find it somewhere else, and then come back to the realization that you already had it… which makes you appreciate it that much more.