Adonis Diaries

It appears that old terms for social organization are considered exotic enough to be used in order to effectively disseminate new concepts; as if languages are too poor to creating new words for an evolving civilization, or maybe it is a sarcastic metaphor to mean that our social organization and social behaviors did not improve after hundred of centuries.  One of these most commonly adopted words is “tribe” to describing a collection of people with same shared passions and interests, intellectually or professionally.

We know that there are syndicates, associations, organizations (profit and for non-profit), collectivity, cooperative, community, gang, cartel, commission, political parties, “circle of friends”, sects, cult, castes, clans, classes of people (privileged, poor, elite…), club, strata, close-knit group, regiment, brigade, division, army, squadron, brotherhood, sisterhood… But why selecting “tribe” among all these social terminologies for gathering in organized units? 

Is nomadic life-style back in favor?  Sort of back to nature and retaliations and vendetta customs?  Why chose a term that carries heavy bad connotation of violence and prehistoric traditions?  Such as raiding another tribe, massacring all male members and saving only the virgin girls so that to secure no retribution in kind will happen in forms of vendetta, decades later, or even centuries later!  Obviously, before ransaking all their chattels and domesticated animals for the survival of the famished and unfit mentally.

For example, what is common among Meg Ryan, Debbie Allen, Brian Ray, Hellen Pilcher, Don Lipski, Matt Groening, Ewa Laurance, and Black Ice?  Ken Robinson in his “Element” would like us to believe that they all found their own tribes:  Each one of them, finally, felt part in their new career domain “tribal members in the field” and hit it well with the “field” colleagues.  They discovered that the tribe members validated their passions, passions they share in the tribe, they talked shop, bounced ideas around, shared and compared techniques, indulging enthusiasms or hostilities for the same things.  They were finally convinced that what they were doing mattered and was worth doing.

Is that how tribe members behaved in prehistory?

Working with your tribe, you receive inspiration and provocations to raising the bar on achievements.  For example, William Choukeir borrowed the term “tribe” in his blog notesby.me to refer to “high-energy” gathering of people who join in demanding physical activities and converse on topic of  high quality intellectual level (no argumentations permitted for degrading the discussions).  This process within the tribe is targeted to recharging in energy.

Many professionals in math, sciences…poets, painters, athletes… might prefer to work alone; fact is, they are interacting frequently within their close-knit associations:  They publish and interchange ideas and comments:  They stand on the shoulders of previous giants in the profession.  Otherwise, no challenging problems are resolved.  Freeman Dyson says: “Up to a point, you welcome being interrupted because it is only by interchanging ideas with other people who you get anything of interest done.  When I write I close the door; but when I’m doing science I leave the door open.”

Why using this cute term “tribe”?  Tribes were constituted of population over 150 members; consequently, tribes were split naturally to smaller units or clans for adequate communication among the members and remembering names and the family history of each member.  If the name “team” is too common or unit is inapropriate then, how about Tfield, meaning Terrific members (in a particular field of specialty), or Punit for pulsating unit, or RKeam for reversed karma team?