Our Aching Tribal Roots
We want to be wanted. Where that fails, we want to be needed.
We want to be a part of something.
We live in a disconnected world. By and large, whether we love what we do, or hate what we do, we work for disloyal employers – corporations and institutions, not people – and corporations and institutions do not have our backs.
This lack of connection underlies our anxiety. It makes our lives feel wrong.
We are a communal species – despite ourselves, we are more dog than cat – and we crave connection.
We fight and die in wars over loyalty to the nation state (patriotism). We stay too long in bad relationships – and often, do not leave them until or unless we find another – because to be alone is to be disconnected, unplugged.
We are supposed to have family – and when we actually do, when it sort of suits our ideals – we pretty much feel okay.
But what we all actually want, even more, is the communality of the tribe.
Whether you believe we were spontaneously created by a Higher Power, or slowly evolved out of the primordial ooze, or both (as in Theistic Evolution), as a species we were not made for the way we live now, here, in this disloyal, winner-take-all, capitalism.
And sometimes, for some of us, the struggle seems like more than we can bear.
We are a species that gravitates toward connection – arisen, no matter our “race,” out of tribal backgrounds.
If we go back just a few hundred years, around the globe, our ancestors (even in Europe) were born into families that lived together in large extended clans – and they had a lifelong sense of connection – of belonging.
Tribal society was not the nuclear family, and it certainly was not the lone ranger on the prairie. It was communitarian, not individualistic. It was a web of relationships. It was multigenerational. It protected youth and honored elders.
Now, it was not perfect. It was not Utopia. This is nuanced, but it could be oppressive to the individual, in that communitarianism can demand a certain level of conformity – especially to its sexual mores and taboos (communitarian societies were sometimes, but not always, good places to be lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/or gender nonconforming. It depends on which society and in which time frame.) Even today, communitarian societies vary from one to the other in their willingness to accept sexual difference, or even, to allow their members to make their own life choices in regard to spouse.
But on the good side, along with being interwoven with connectedness, communitarian societies, also, often, encouraged individual talents – allowing a range of creative expression, especially if that expression contributed to the group – like storytelling or making functional things beautiful (which was appreciated for its aesthetic value, as demonstrated by surviving pottery excavated worldwide.)
You, me, here, today – often feel disconnected. We have lost our roots, and our society has no real room for the seasons of life.
We (as a society) fail to protect our children's innocence, even as we pressure them into the performance of displays of precocious adulthood, so that they crack under our demands.
We (as a society) cast off our elderly and our ill, dishonoring wisdom and deserting those who can no longer perform.
And we (as a society) disdain those who do not (cannot) “make it” and thrive in a dog-eat-dog, cutthroat, competitive, “free market” economy – justifying “survival of the fittest” over “doing justly and loving mercy"” (Micah 6:8), over “loving our neighbor as ourselves” (Mark 12:31), over “undoing the heavy burdens” and “letting the oppressed go free” (Isaiah 58:6).
And we (as a society) worship and exalt the narcissist who pathologically gleans and hoards wealth, crowning the rich for whom money is power, while the earth is raped and the masses made destitute. We fill our archives with print and film that honors the robber barons who made/make millions (or billions) abusing their laborers, then gave/give a pittance back in ‘philanthropy.’ We rehearse the narratives of the majestic “Lifestyles” of the Rich and Famous – re-enshrining them as American nobility – because in our struggle for simple, sane, stable, subsistence, rather than blame them (#there are no victimless billionaires), we (consciously or subconsciously) hope someday, by some twist of fate, to join them in their opulence.
And it is all because we have lost our tribe – our sense that we are part of a greater whole that has our back if we, again (we were all dependent in babyhood), become the one in need.
We “want to be a billionaire, so f_ing bad,” BECAUSE we feel so close to the edge – and so alone in our fear – all the f_ing time.
Tribal peoples (indigenous to allcontinents) did not feel this way.
They did not have these levels of anxiety. They had their own troubles to be sure (weather, illness, death, raids by neighboring tribes, laying up sufficient food stores for the winter), but they had a sense of sharing their struggle for survival with those who knew them best and loved them most.
You don't have to be out there alone.
You are genetically encoded with thousands, to millions, of years of collective human history to be part of a larger group – an extended family, a clan, a tribe. Our individualistic culture has robbed us of those connections.
How can you best build, rebuild, for yourself that sense of connection – your own “tribe” with whom you share the struggle?
Let's talk about it (in person, by phone, by Skype). Write, call, or text Rosechild@ChestnutHillSpiritualCounseling.com, Sullivan at 215-704-4264 or .
© 2017 Nadine Rosechild Sullivan, Ph.D.