What makes the Leaver worldview unique is that it is completely community oriented. Our current westernized culture thrives on competition, individualism, and reliance on authority to solve problems. I need to be careful here – I am NOT condoning some Ayn Rand way of looking at the world, that is radical individualism of self-interest, nor am I condoning some system that puts the authoritarian state ahead of the individual. Daniel Quinn uses the term ‘tribe’ to describe how humans evolved within a social structure. I will use that term for now to describe the worldview that bound people to a socio-cultural system that worked for thousands of years. While there may have been a loose social hierarchy, it was not rigid. Positions of leadership (chiefs) tended to be the tribe’s choice for the best people to do the many leadership jobs. For starters there was more shared governance between men and women. If the person at the bottom of the tribe was hungry, so was the head chief. In most tribes, the individual was still there and enjoyed freedom as an individual. Their attachment to the tribe was voluntary. Each person tended to do what they were best at doing. And most of them were a ‘jack of all trades.’
Many years ago, I was in Nome, Alaska. I was honored to be invited to the home of an older well-known and respected local Inuit woman. She had grown up in the traditional Inuit culture. When she had married, she continued to join the men on the hunts because she was a strong and skilled hunter. Her husband, who was less adept at hunting than she, stayed home with the children. There was no shame at this arrangement – it made complete sense to the tribe. They were both fulfilling their roles admirably. Except for the fact that she had to have the babies, the gender separation roles did not automatically exist. A unique aspect of tribes, and by default most indigenous cultures, was the belief in individual freedom, but also the role of individuals in supporting the whole tribe. What made this kind of culture unique was that it was completely supportive of all members of the community from cradle to grave! The wealth that was honored was one that cannot be hoarded or locked up – cradle to grave security about everyone’s well-being! Sort of a Three Musketeers thing expanded – all for one and one for all! Freedom from all worries. The tribe sticks together through think and thin and pass skills down to everyone.
Quinn says, “If you can only be free on a mountain top or desert island, then you’re less than free.” In our modern westernized society there are so many people that have feelings of no way to escape the prison we feel trapped within. It’s no wonder so many people go off the rails. Remember from previous posts that our ‘work week’ is a product of hierarchical need – the industrial revolution. What we really want (need) is REAL freedom. Imagine being your own boss and yet still being a part of the whole community because what you do contributes to the whole community and hence to yourself. Why do we work such long hours under stress? Only about 10% of people love their jobs. To the rest, the work they do is merely the means to earn money to pay the bills and put food on the table. The weapon of our cultural story that we call civilization is how the hierarchy locked up Food to make us work at things we don’t like doing. Our system creates dependency base on commercial values that exploit our needs for alternate ends benefitting the hierarchy. This system we accept as normal increases specialization for more dependency and where destruction is seen as inevitable and negative side-effects are acceptable. This has lead in four generations to loss of community and personal WHOLENESS. Specialization is not bad. We need specialists to build the complex technology we now have, but it has created a stratification within society where some members are more valued than most of the others.
When all your basic needs are met, there is no need to resort to crime to get anything. Tribal laws are not a list of prohibitions, but instead procedures for handling problems of communalized living – the whole tribe are the law-makers and enforcers. The tribal laws do not punish but set up a system to provide discussion and compensation for those grieved by improper action or behavior (as judged by the tribe) with exile the ultimate penalty. So how do we change our westernized system to a new way of thinking. Old Minds within our current system think from a reformationally: “How do we stop these bad things from happening? If it didn’t work last year, let’s do more of it this year (and throw more money at it).” New Minds think transformationally: “How do we make things the way we want them to be? It if didn’t work last year, let’s do something else this year.” Those who find life OK within the system fight for reformation. Note that only 15% of the worlds population do OK within the system, and then out of that 15% probably 13% dislike how they are constrained and browbeaten by the system. If we are to create a new world that works for everyone, then we have to transform the whole system at its core (I have said this in earlier posts). In our current world system, people demand a 10 min break after 3 hours work, which is typical of a Dependent organization. In a tribal system people are just devoted to what they do, which is typical of Interdependent organization. “A tribe is a coalition of people working together as equals to make a living. A tribe of tribes is a coalition of tribes working together to make a living; each tribe has a leader, as does the coalition as a whole.” Tribal living transmits down the generations a way to make a relaxed, stress-free living, not a ready-made fortune. And why (how) would we work to transform the world with a ‘new tribalism’ that merges the best of today with the best of the past? To Be Continued………
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