Caemgen, I wholeheartedly agree with these notions; however, the age in which we currently exist (the electronic/digital age) will only further continue to direct members of society on a path towards social incohesion. That is, it has become so easy to hide behind this screen; to limit our communication with others to this virtual geography of simulated reality.

I'm someone who has longed for a tribal way, I've strived to make it happen, but that was my ideal and I no longer am an idealist. I am, indeed, a cynic.

One of the things that in my attempts to find some way to "form" a tribe was something I learned when I was in college studying tribal cultures, something I thought that conviction and unity through something like cultural and religious interest could over come. That thing was brought up in pretty much every text I was reading. It was the fact that tribal cultures used to thrive because of interdependence. The tribe needed its people, the people need their tribe. To be exiled was worse than being put to death, because it meant a horrific, drawn-out death. As soon as this is no longer a factor, tribal cultures have to struggle to maintain their existence. This is why the ones that exist today are dying out. Those of us from cultures that lost this sort of a system centuries ago can really only dream of it coming back (although some pretend that their SCA household or NeoDruid grove are their tribe or that their roommates that will only remain while it's the best financial option are their tribe or to talk about how into the Tribe their kids are when said kids are all over the web talking about everything but the religio-cultural interests their parents claim they have or whatever)...at least without a major upheaval (I will say that I'm optimistic about that upheaval....uh, most consider me grim due to that LOL).

We live in a "culture" that values independence while actually producing co-dependence but is clueless as to what interdependence is. This is killing us, but it's an odd sort of killing....where many see us as actually thriving and having it better. While some of us see through it, ask most people in the US and other "First World" nations, and they'd say that we are far better off now. Yet, I think you and this lecturer are really on to something about the health factor.

While much of the world starves, another segment eats itself to death and spends millions of dollars to try to overcome what their "better life" is allowing them to choose to do to themselves. One of my favorite WTF?s on this is a exercise fad that many I know got into the past couple of years called shovelglove www.shovelglove.com/ where you're supposed to pretend for half an hour a day that replicating movements that manual laborers do for hours a day will make you look like such a worker while you can sit on your ass the other 23 1/2 hours. To me this is a serious example of how far we've gotten from, well, anything real. (sorry if I'm insulting any reader who is into this, but as someone who does sometimes weld a sledgehammer to actually set posts or break up concrete and even more often shovels, well, often literally shit, and STILL runs, lifts weights, spars and goes around with a heavy bag, oh, and walks a mile several times a night for work.. it just....I don't know, become a source of irritation for me)

Um, anyway...so after years of striving to form something like a modern tribe with people I shared religious and cultural interest with, but who I always found where easily, well, distracted by...whatever. Who had no desire to take personal responsibility, some who considered a date more important than an obligation to the group, others who felt that the group should do for them but they didn't have to lift a finger....I decided to opt for the land and ancestors part.

Moving back up here removed me from an area where there were enough people I might find those with these common interests. There is ONE other person besides my mate and I that I know share this...and life does keep getting in the way (she works two jobs along with the full-time one of being a mom, my hours are weird...but now that I'm through with a class I was taking I am hoping we might find some time to start hanging together again). I doubt it will grow into anything similar to a tribe.

However, I am just a short few miles between where both my parents grew up...a bit closer to Mum's side than the other, where some parts of the families have been for generations. I was able to be here for my Mum's last years and hold her hand while she died in her own home, I'm here for my Dad in his last years and will do everything to see he gets to stay home too (unless he wishes to be at my sister's, which I understand might be better for him as this place is often hard for him right now). It's not tribal to shuttle your old folk off to a home for strangers to take care of...I might not have a huge living tribe around me speaking Gaelic (or French..my father's native tongue) but to me it's more tribal to be here for my parents than to be hanging out with a bunch of unrelated peers going "Argh! we is tribe!" while my blood elders rot away in a home.

Uh..yeah...sorry....I get worked up sometimes. LOL

This particular piece of land my mate and I will be struggling to support for some time...I am hoping to find ways to make it less of a struggle, but taxes here are steep and it's a good bit of land and far too much house (one day tearing some of that down is likely...but as it will be part that my Mum loved and she died in that's not going to be easy). I was introduced to this land when I was 8 or 9 and I feel it called me back very strongly. We are trying to homestead, although keeping the land means that we're doing that while both working full-time. But we'll continue to try to live as naturally as possible.

And it's WEIRD. In a world where everyday there is a new "instant something" and a new product to help fight the fat that the instant somethings help put on considering, say, chicken soup as something that starts with a live chicken or even that breakfast means going out to the hen house first makes us a bit different than other people. There are others here, of course, who raise their own food...sadly, we have little else in common.

I'm not an isolationist, so I maintain a community connection...often through service like CERT and, in bit more than a month, EMS. It's not Tribe, but theres a sense of tribal philosophy behind at least my reasons for doing it. And in my job of taking care of what is, seriously, an Outsider band. LOL

I tend to have a live and let live attitude about the folks who continue to live a totally consumerist life. Although a lot of the ones I used to hang around with I don't so much anymore...I find it's easy to live and let live from a distance. I know it's not going to last, anyway.

At the rate we're going the shit will hit the fan...what sort of shit, what size fan and what speed the blades are going is the only question. But as a whole people are not in a sustainable situation. I just feel that what I'm doing might allow my family to survive certain types of shit hitting a certain size fan at a certain speed and give us a chance to continue after...if it doesn't allow us to survive in the first place, I suppose the problem is solved. I'll never have the Gaelic tribe that is my dream, but I might end up with another sort that would have to be interdependent. Or not...it might happen after I'm already gone.

So, that long ramble of what I'm doing, and how I came from idealist seeking a tribe to this cynic before you who probably is far more living the reality of it than that idealist was comes down to, is that it's REALLY hard to find others to form the connection we seek with. But the Land and our Ancestors are often there. And we can find something of it if we really try...or if we really let go of what we think it should look like.

Or something.

"Other things found in indiginous cultures such as honoring ancestors
and having aliances with other tribes are very difficult for most
moderns to wrap their heads around. Without going into detail,
there's a reason for each of these and they all speak to the body."

Cáemgen, I am intrigued with this whole dialogue and concept! I was wondering if you might 'go into detail' about this last part about how honoring ancestors and having tribal alliances 'speak to the body'? I'd love to hear about that; especially the ancestors part, since, as one member pointed out, if the tribal part is difficult to manifest, there is always the ancestors.

Thanks much for sharing this.