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The New Tribal Revolution

The Tribe of Crow—and others

Thanks to his father, Jeffrey was able to live as a vagabond without ever being stigmatized as homeless. He clearly had no interest in working, but no one ever sneered “Get a job!” at him, because he never needed to stick out his hand for alms. He may have been too lucky for his own good, for had he been truly homeless, he might have found his true place in the world as a member of the Tribe of Crow.

But of course this tribe isn't for everyone.

When I first described the New Tribal Revolution in My Ishmael, I was rather like an astronomer describing a planet whose existence has been deduced but which has yet to be seen by any eye. If asked, I couldn't have furnished a single example of what I was talking about. Only after a year of vague groping did it occur to me that the circus (which I'd used as another sort of model in Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest) is in fact organized in a way that is authentically tribal. (And I subsequently added this example to later editions of My Ishmael.)

But even so: only a single example?

After more months of vague groping, I realized I was preoccupied by the ethnic tribal model, designed to make a group of sixty or seventy individuals totally self-sufficient. I was looking at size and structure and forgetting benefits.

The East Mountain News

As soon as I began looking at the problem in a different way, I realized that Rennie and I and two other people had once (quite unconsciously) made our living in an authentically tribal way producing the East Mountain News in a vast area east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rennie and I started the paper as a speculative venture with virtually no capital. After putting out a couple of issues we got a call from Hap Veerkamp, an old newspaper man living in forced retirement (because no one would hire him at his age). He said he could do literally anything on a newspaper—except sell advertising. We said we'd love to have his stories and pictures, but if we didn't find people who could sell advertising we were going to be out of business very soon. He said he'd give it a shot. A few weeks later we heard from C.J. Harper, a young woman who wanted desperately to be a writer and who had an idea for a column that we might like. We liked the column and we liked her. The next question was, “Can you sell advertising?”

She said, “I can sell anything.”

Why it worked

Suddenly we were in business—in a modest way. None of us was salaried. At the end of the week, when the issue was out, Rennie would sit down with C.J. and Hap and divvy up the advertising revenue that was left over from paying the printing bill. It was our rule only to print as much newspaper in any week as could be paid for out of advertising revenue. If we had enough advertising for twelve pages, we printed twelve, and that was “a good week.” If we had only enough for eight pages, we printed eight, and that was “a fair week.”

The newspaper worked for us for two reasons. First, we all enjoyed a very low standard of living, so what we got from the paper (a pittance by normal standards) was enough. Second, it wasn't just a way of making money. We all loved the paper and were intensely proud of our contributions to it. Hap's photos were as good as any published in any big-city paper. C.J.'s columns were fabulous. Rennie's features and news stories could have served as journalism-school models. Still slogging away at the sixth version of the book that would someday be a novel called Ishmael, I gave only three days a week to the paper, doing design and typesetting, but it gave me a break from writing and a chance to do other things I enjoy.

We were nothing like the size of an ethnic tribe, nor were we living in community, but we were nonetheless receiving the chief benefits of tribal life.

The East Mountain News as circus

As at the circus, each of us had a job to do that was essential to the success of the whole. As at the circus, the worst job was the boss's (and that was held by Rennie); no one envied her or dreamed for a moment that she was overpaid.

Just as at the circus, everyone knew the paper had to make money, but making money wasn't the object. Like circus folks, we had a way of making a living that suited us. To keep that, we had to keep the paper going. We all needed the paper.

Without discussing it, we all knew that, like a circus, we had to keep the paper going so the paper could keep us going. The only trouble was, the tribe needed a couple members more, and we didn't quite see this. The boss needed to share some of her more exhausting tasks—and there were plenty of those, considering that we were covering an area the size of Rhode Island. Rennie was being progressively worn out, but the people we needed didn't present themselves to throw in their lot with ours and (at the same time) to extend our business so that they too could make their living from it. Several people presented themselves to be hired, but they were only interested in the wage. When they saw how little they'd be making, they walked away. They weren't content to live out of the paper and make its success their own, as the rest of us were doing.

The success and failure of the paper

The startling success of the paper was that, by building it tribally, Rennie and I were able to start a business with almost no capital (a very small amount of cash and some retired typesetting equipment generously contributed by Rennie's brother, James). It would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a paper in the ordinary way, staffing it entirely with personnel hired at normal wages. Built in the ordinary way, it might have taken five or more years for the paper to break even. Built tribally, it broke even the first week. Given the huge area to be covered and its relatively small advertising base, the paper would never have generated enough profit to appeal to a publisher with ordinary capitalistic goals. And in fact, after we sold it (to a local real estate broker who intended to run it just as a business), it failed very quickly.

Realistically speaking, the area at that time couldn't support a newspaper as a capitalistic venture. What it could have supported was a shopper (an advertising sheet with a few token stories). And in fact, after the East Mountain News folded, its place was taken by a shopper.

The tribal benefit

The Albuquerque paper didn't cover the news on “our side” of the mountain at all, except for the occasional homicide. For the first time ever, because of the East Mountain News, people were able to find out what was going on in their area—school events, political events, social events—the whole spectrum of life that counts as “news.” Though they had no way of knowing it, this was a direct benefit of our willingness to build the paper tribally. Building in the ordinary way, we couldn't have afforded to offer a real newspaper.

I wasn't personally invested in making the East Mountain News a “real” newspaper. My end of the business was putting the ads together. Once, after a succession of fourand eightpage issues had left us all feeling pinched, I said, “Why don't we just do a shopper?” This was instantly voted down. Rennie, Hap, and C.J. were in it because it was a newspaper, not because it earned money. The fact that it would earn more money as a shopper was irrelevant to them. They would have ceased getting what they wanted if it had become a shopper, and just having more money wouldn't have compensated them for the loss.

The important thing to see is that we were not “giving up” something by being tribal. We were getting something by being tribal—something that would have been out of reach otherwise. We weren't tribal because we were noble and altruistic; we were tribal because we were greedy and selfish.

What happened to Hap and C.J.?

We used the paper as a means of providing a living for all of us. For example, when Hap needed a new tire, we traded the local tire company an ad for it. When C.J. couldn't get a phone on her own signature, we co-signed with her. We didn't doubt for a moment that, if our positions had been reversed, they would have done the same for us.

When we sold the paper, we strongly advised the new owner to keep on working with Hap and C.J., but he soon made it clear he had other ideas. Hap by this time had become something of a celebrity through his work on the paper, so he had no trouble getting a job on the Torrance Country Citizen, a paper whose area of coverage overlapped ours to the south. He's still there as of this writing. The picture of me that appears on the dust jacket of Providence was taken by him while we were revisiting the area in 1993.

C.J. got married, left the area, and has been out of touch ever since. If you see her, tell her we'd like to hear from her.

Tribal business: the ingredients

Merely being tribal is no guarantee of success, of course. The normal elements needed for success have to be there as well. In our case, there had to be a public need for a newspaper and a fairly large number of businesses looking for an advertising venue, and we had both those things.

But beyond that, Rennie and I were quite incredibly lucky in finding two people who were ready to throw in their lot with ours in building a newspaper, who were content to make a living out of it (as opposed to a killing), and who were used to living on very little (as we were ourselves). With all this, we could hardly miss.

I think what's needed at a minimum is a group of people (1) who, among them, have all the competencies needed to start and run a given business, (2) who are content with a modest standard of living, and (3) who are willing to “think tribally”— that is, to take what they need out of the business rather than to expect set wages.

What ventures lend themselves to it?

As far as I can see, any enterprise that can succeed in the conventional way can succeed in the tribal way—with a few exceptions. A business that's built around the work of a single individual doesn't seem to lend itself to a tribal approach. For example, it's hard to imagine an internist and his or her office staff working together tribally. The disparity between what the internist puts in and what everyone else puts in is just too great. On the other hand, a tribal hospital isn't inconceivable, for there the internist would be putting in the same amount as the surgeon, the administrator, the anesthesiologist, and so on. I haven't been able to figure out any way to make the author's business into a tribal one (unless s/he prefers to be self-published).

To mention just a few things, restaurants, lawn-care businesses, and construction businesses could all be done tribally (and I'm sure many already are). Keep in mind that, as previously defined, a tribe is nothing more than a coalition of people working together as equals to make a living. I really see no limit to the possibilities.

A new tribal venture

People often ask if I consider myself a Leaver. In the past I replied, “Certainly not. I'm a prisoner of the same Taker economic system as you are. I'm entirely dependent on the vast corporate machinery that publishes, distributes, and sells my books.” I then added that I'd be very glad to reduce my dependence on this machinery, even by ten percent, for this would represent at least a ten percent liberation from the prison. But only recently have Rennie and I taken decisive steps to achieve that ten percent.

I produce a lot of material that has little or no “commercial” value (is not attractive to the corporate publishing machine), but this doesn't mean that it's of no interest to my readers. In order to make this material available to those who want it (and hopefully to win that ten-percent degree of freedom), we decided to start a company called New Tribal Ventures, which will make certain of my works available to the public outside the corporate machinery of U.S. publishing. For example, two short books called The Book of the Damned and The Tales of Adam contain some of the most powerful expressions of my ideas I've ever achieved, but everyone agrees they're not “commercial” properties. These will be offered by New Tribal Ventures as a two-volume set entitled An Animist Testament.

Tribal tasks and organizational patterns

In the neo-futurist company, all members of the tribe do everything—write, perform, sell tickets, clean up, and so on. The same is true in the Culpepper and Merriweather Great Combined Circus, where all do everything—set up the tent, take care of the animals, perform, and so on.

The East Mountain News was organized differently. Hap and C.J. gathered news and sold advertising. I assembled the ads and did the typesetting and copy-editing. Rennie assembled all the news, did the layout, and was responsible for a host of managerial chores—far too many chores, as it turned out. Since no one had presented himself or herself to assist in a tribal way, we needed to hire people to shoulder some of her burdens, but we weren't making enough money to do that.

We failed to see that one important chore was not being done by any one of us, a chore that might be called marketing. No one presented himself or herself to extend the living of the tribe by performing this function. As a result, through lack of business sense and expertise, we ended up running into a wall we couldn't get around. We needed to hire support for Rennie, but were unable to do so because we were missing a tribal member we didn't even know we were missing.

A self-sustaining tribe needs to perform all the functions that will make it successful. A tribe of cabinet makers is not going to suceed without a member who knows how to sell cabinets.

Cradle-to-grave security?

Undoubtedly the greatest benefit of the ethnic tribal life is that it provides its members cradle-to-grave security. As I must always begin by saying, this isn't the result of the saintliness or unselfishness of tribal peoples. Baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees enjoy exactly the same sort of security in their social groups. Groups that provide such security are obviously going to hold onto their members much more readily than groups that don't. Once again, it's a matter of natural selection. A group that doesn't take good care of its members is a group that doesn't command much loyalty (and probably won't last long).

But will occupational tribes provide such security to their members? Not instantly, obviously. If you and your brother start a conventional business on Tuesday, he can hardly expect to retire on Wednesday with full salary for the rest of his life— though he may hope to do that in twenty years, if he helps to build the business during that time.

The fact that ethnic tribes can provide their members with cradle-to-grave security is a true measure of their wealth. The people of our culture are rich in gadgets, machines, and entertainment, but we're all too aware of the dreadful consequences of losing a job. For some people—all too many—it seems to spell the end of the world; they go “postal,” pick up the nearest automatic weapon, open fire on their former bosses, and finish off with a bullet in their own brains. These are people who are definitely short on feelings of security.

What about care for the elderly?

I've been asked if “retired circus performers are cared for by young performers” the way the elderly are cared for in ethnic tribes. This isn't how circus life works—but it also isn't how ethnic tribal life works. Old hunters aren't “cared for” by young hunters.

To begin with, a circus isn't just performers. Performers are vastly outnumbered by people who do all sorts of things, just as the actors you see on a movie screen are vastly outnumbered by the people involved in putting that image on the screen. Next, to talk about “retired circus performers” doesn't reflect the reality of circus life—or the reality of life in an ethnic tribe, where there's no such thing as a “retired hunter.” When performers can no longer perform, they move on to other jobs in the circus. They don't need to be “cared for” just because they're no longer working the high wire or performing acrobatics.

What's your model of “care” for the elderly? If it includes all the services of a state-of-the-art hospital, then obviously no tribe is going to provide such a thing. IBM and General Motors don't run hospitals for the use of their employees; they offer them health insurance, which any tribe is free to do as well.

If your model of “care” for the elderly includes food, clothing, shelter, and the same sort of attention that elderly people in ethnic tribes receive, then this is perfectly well within the scope of an occupational tribe.

Tribes of the mind

People tend to imagine occupational tribes in a sort of postapocalyptic fantasy world. They're startled when I point out that they can have health insurance and retirement plans (if they want them) or that the government is going to be just as interested in collecting their taxes and social security payments as anyone else's. But if that's the case, they then ask, what's the point of what we're doing? If the world is just going to go on as before, why bother? These are questions that can't be answered often enough.

Mother Culture teaches that a savior is what we need—some giant St. Arnold Schwarzenegger who is a sort of combination of Jesus, Jefferson, Dalai Lama, Pope, Gandhi, Gorbachev, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin all rolled into one. The other six billion of us, according to Mother Culture, are helpless to do anything. We must simply wait quietly until St. Arnold arrives.

Daniel Quinn teaches that no single person is going to save the world. Rather (if it's saved at all), it will be saved by millions (and ultimately billions) of us living a new way. A thousand living a new way won't cause the dominant world order to topple. But that thousand will inspire a hundred thousand, who will inspire a million, who will inspire a billion—and then that world order will begin to look shaky!

(Next someone will ask, “But if the dominant world order gets shaky, what about my health insurance?”)

The tribe IS its members

In a famous interchange at Columbia University, a faculty member who asserted that the faculty is the university was immediately told by the president of the university (former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower) that the faculty are employees of the university. Mr. Eisenhower isn't on hand to contradict me when I say that the members of the tribe aren't employees of the tribe, they are the tribe. Indeed, that's the whole difference.

Because the tribe is its members, the tribe is what its members want it to be—nothing more and nothing less. If the members of your tribe expect it to provide exactly the sort of cradle-to-grave security that members of ethnic tribes enjoy, then make it so. But this isn't a requirement and may end up making little sense in a world of open tribes. In such a world, for example, it's perfectly conceivable that a husband and wife could belong to different occupational tribes—and that their children might want to belong to different tribes as well. Indeed, this openness to diversity is the whole point.

A tribe is a group of people making a living together, and there's no one right way for this to be done.

Be inventive.

Why make a living at all?

People sometimes react to my proposals as though there were something slightly distasteful and superfluous about the whole idea of “making a living”—tribally or otherwise. They seem to feel that if the New Tribal Revolution is all it's cracked up to be, then we shouldn't have to “make a living” at all, we should be able to live like the birds of the air.

Exactly so. That's the whole point, you might say.

Their misunderstanding isn't about the New Tribal Revolution; it's about the birds of the air. Sparrows may be “free as birds,” but this doesn't mean they don't have to make a living. On the contrary, every living thing on earth has to do this. Gnats, geese, dolphins, chimpanzees, spiders, and frogs all have to expend energy to get what they need to stay alive. There is no creature that spends its life just lying there inert while needed resources flow in and do the work of keeping it alive. Even the green plants have a living to make. Each one is like a cottage industry, a regular little factory that takes energy from the sun and busily converts it into its own substance.

The tribe, in fact, is just a wonderfully efficient social organization that renders making a living easy for all—unlike civilization, which renders it easy for a privileged few and hard for the rest.

Another tribal example

The Neo-Futurists are an ensemble of artists who write, direct, and perform their own work dedicated to social, political, and personal enlightenment in the form of audience-interactive conceptual theater. (These words from the group's online Statement of Purpose.) Working in a “low/no tech poor theatre format,” the group put together a unique postmodern dramatic endeavor that features an ever-changing collection of thirty plays performed in sixty minutes under the umbrella title Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. This signature work has (as of this writing) been running in Chicago since December 1, 1988, and had a successful run at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City in 1993. In 1992 the Neo-Futurists opened their own Neo-Futurarium, boasting a 154-seat theater and an art gallery.

As many as thirteen members are active in the company at any one time, though the average performance tends to involve only eight or so. In addition to writing, directing, and performing Too Much Light, these thirteen perform virtually all chores associated with the theater and the production—manning the box office, cleaning up, recycling, producing the programs, buying the props, and so on.

Scuffling in the usual way

In a study of Gypsies and other itinerant peoples, anthropologist Sharon Bohn Gmelch lists some reasons these groups survive. They keep overhead low and have little interest in “material accumulation and capital expansion.” They're willing to “exploit 'marginal' opportunities,” to “fill gaps” in the economy, and to “accept a narrow profit margin from multiple sources.” In short, they're experienced scufflers, as were all the residents of Madrid when we lived there—and as were all the members of the East Mountain News, none of whom made one hundred percent of his or her living from the newspaper.

The same is true of The Neo-Futurists. Though their goal is to make a living from the theater, most were probably deriving only twenty to fifty percent of their income from it in 1998, according to founder Greg Allen (who supplements his income by teaching theater history at Columbia College). Others have part-time jobs as massage therapist, physical trainer, CD-ROM writer, ultrasound technician, astrologer, secretaries, traditional waiters, and one “honest-to-god rock star in a famous punk band.”

One of the company, Geryll Robinson, writes: “I wish I could lead my life without supporting/being supported by corporate America. I can't. I engage in a number of odd and often messy activities that people give me money for … I visited Chicago. I saw Too Much Light. I wanted in. I moved here. I auditioned. Now they own me. My life is good. Very good.”

But can't an X be a tribe?

This is a question I'm asked again and again—substituting various terms for X. For example, I've been asked if an alreadyestablished conventional business can be converted into a tribal one. Yes, possibly, but with difficulty, the main one being that most people involved in conventional businesses are there for a wage, period. Some, having climbed up the wage scale, wouldn't care to climb down. Just as these might not be happy having less than a wage, others might not be happy having more than a wage—they just want to do their work and go home. But of course nothing's impossible.

A student in my Houston seminar asked if a bunch of people couldn't just get together and live tribally, and make their living elsewhere, individually. Certainly, and this is fine, but this is a commune, not a tribe, precisely because they're not involved in making a living together.

But can't a tribe be a commune—and can't a commune be a tribe?

We need some background to get at these questions.

Communities and tribes: origins

Like Topsy, most of the communities we inhabit just “grow'd,” without mother or father, as it were. Once upon a time a century ago—or two or five—a general store was joined by a feed store, a butcher, a livery stable, a smithy, a tavern, and these were soon joined by a bank, a dry goods shop, a boarding house, a lawyer, a barber, a doctor, and so on. At some point or other, all realized they had a stake in the community's success—and in each other's success to a certain degree. The banker certainly wanted some grocer to succeed, but he didn't care whether it was Smith or Jones. The owner of the boarding house wanted some barber to succeed, but she didn't care whether it was Anderson or Adams.

Communes never begin in this haphazard way. They're “intentional” communities, originating among people who want to live together in pursuit of common ideals, usually in relative isolation. Communes are about living together and may or may not involve working together.

Tribes (and I speak here of “new” tribes, of course) originate among people who want to pool their energies and skills to make a living together. Tribes are about working together and may or may not involve living together.

Communities and tribes: membership

To the extent allowed by law and custom, ordinary communities make it their policy to exclude certain kinds of people and include all the rest. In other words, unless you belong to some abhorred race, religion, social class, or ethnic group, you're welcome to move in.

Communes proceed in the opposite way. Their policy is to include certain kinds of people and exclude all the rest. In other words, unless you subscribe to the group's special values (social, political, or religious), you're not welcome to move in. The tribal rule of thumb is: Can you extend the living to include yourself ? In other words, if you want to live out of the tribal occupation, you'll have to extend the group's earning power to the point where it covers you. This is exactly what Hap and C.J. did for the East Mountain News. We couldn't have included them in the business if they hadn't extended it by selling advertising.

Can't a tribe be a commune?

As I said above, tribes are about working together and may or may not involve living together. But tribal people can live together without becoming a commune. Speaking of artisan, trader, and entertainer minorities such as Gypsies, Norwegian Taters, Irish Travelers, and the Nandiwalla of India, anthropologist Sharon Bohn Gmelch notes specifically that the social organization of these groups is flexible and “at its core, noncommunal.”

The difficulty I see with a tribe becoming a commune is that communes traditionally choose their members on the basis of shared ideals. Shared ideals aren't irrelevant to tribal applicants, but they're overridden by the question “Can you extend our livelihood to include yourself?”

I can certainly say that it didn't occur to any of us on the East Mountain News that we should “start a commune.” The idea would have struck us as ludicrous.

The tribe isn't about living together but about making a living together.

Can't a commune be a tribe?

The answer is, “Yes, a commune can definitely be a tribe; it's just a problematical way to begin.”

Communes generally start with people who want to “get away from it all.” Separating themselves from a corrupt, materialistic, and unjust society, they typically want to live “close to nature” alongside people with similar ideals. Because they intend to live simply, making a living seems almost incidental. They may farm, produce craft goods, or commute to ordinary jobs. As time goes on, all may work out exactly as planned—or it may not. Rustic simplicity may be less charming than expected. Perhaps some become bored with the work. Nerves fray, ideals are forgotten, friendships dissolve, and the thing is soon over. Or it may take a different direction. The members may refocus their attention from ideals to making a living together in a way that's more satisfactory. Remember, however, that this group originally came together on an entirely different basis, so it will be luck rather than design if they actually have some occupational interests and skills in common.

It's rather like going shopping for groceries that start with the letter m—mustard, mango, mackerel, mayonnaise, macaroni, and so on—and then later wondering if you happen to have the ingredients for Cassoulet du Chef Toulousian. It could happen, of course, but it's not as likely as if you'd gone shopping for those ingredients in the first place.

“Let's do the show right here in the barn!”

In cinematic legend this catch phrase springs to Mickey Rooney's lips in half a dozen movies he made with Judy Garland in the 1940s. Whether it was ever uttered in any film, its meaning is clear. Everyone understands that it emanates from a troupe of young entertainers looking for a chance to show off their talents.

It's important to note that it doesn't emanate from a group of people trying to invent something they might do together. In fact, they're a group because they already know what they can do together. Show business brought them together in the same way that the newspaper business brought us together with Hap and C.J. We might have been the best of friends, but only the newspaper could have pulled us together into a tribe. If we'd made up our minds to open an antique store or a computer software business, Hap and C.J. would never have been involved, no matter how close to them we might have been.

I say all this in answer to a question that must be in the back of many minds: Can't a bunch of miscellaneous friends become a tribe? The answer is yes, just the way a commune can become a tribe. It's perfectly possible, it's just not very likely—unless that bunch of friends was drawn together in the first place by a common occupational focus (as were the Neo-Futurists).

Aren't the Amish a farming tribe?

The Amish are a religious sect, an offshoot of the Mennonites. Here's what makes them communal rather than tribal: If you apply for membership, they'll be much more interested in your religious beliefs and your moral character than in your agricultural ambitions.

A commune “can be” a tribe, just as a lighthouse “can be” a grain silo and a prom gown “can be” a nurse's uniform. But the fact remains that we give things different names because we perceive them as different things. In Colonial New England, the settlers started communes, not tribes, and they knew the difference. Tribes were for savages and communes were for civilized people.

People will also ask, “Isn't Ben & Jerry's a tribal business?” And the answer is, Ben & Jerry's was a tribal business when Ben and Jerry were the company's only employees, personally making ice cream in a four-and-a-half-gallon freezer and scooping it up for customers in a remodeled gas station in Burlington, Vermont. After that point, their business grew not by adding members to their tribe but by adding employees in the conventional way. Ben & Jerry's isn't a tribal business, it's a values-led business (which doesn't make it any less admirable). Can a values-led business be a tribal business? Of course. It just isn't automatically a tribal business.

It's not my intention (or within my power) to divest the word tribe of its ordinary meanings. Rather it's my intention to invest it with a special one when used in the context of the New Tribal Revolution.

Noble savages?

While considering what it would take to start a health-care tribe, a physician mentioned the fact that medical professionals in our society generally have a pretty high standard of living— clearly implying that she perceived this to be some sort of obstacle or problem. A few questions revealed that she was unconsciously picturing the members of her health-care tribe as noble savages—too noble to charge for their services (and therefore unable to maintain the standard of living they're used to).

It's hard to know how to cope with this familiar bipolarity, which sees people as incapable of being anything but either totally selfish or totally altruistic. Like an on/off switch, they can only flop from one pole to the other. Tribal life functions in between these poles, and a tribe of totally altruistic individuals will fail as surely as a tribe of totally selfish individuals.

If a physician decided s/he would rather have a general practice in a small town than a specialized practice in a big city, would s/he expect to work for nothing? Of course not. People in small towns expect to pay for medical services. If a physician decides s/he would rather belong to a health-care tribe than to a conventional hospital, why would s/he expect to work for nothing? People know that physicians, whether they work in tribes or in hospitals, have to make a living just like everyone else.

An intermittent tribal business

As the 1973 film The Sting opens, we follow a pair of grifters, Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) and Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones), as they work a short con known as the Jamaican Handkerchief on a man who, unbeknownst to them, is carrying money to mob boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). When Lonnegan learns of the con, he has Coleman murdered. To avenge his partner, Hooker decides to take Lonnegan for a really big score. As he sets this in train, we see that he belongs to a whole tribe of grifters, who generally make their living in straight jobs (for example as clerks or bank tellers) but who are always ready to come together as a tribe in one of the classic “big cons.” A striking point is made of their readiness. When the single, wordless signal is given, they instantly abandon their jobs. Without asking how big the score will be or what their share is, they come together smoothly to assemble an elaborate theatrical production called a “big store.” As in the circus, each member is supremely important when his or her moment comes. One studies Lonnegan to discover how to lure him into the con. Others work on sets, on costumes, on props. Though Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) is clearly the boss, this doesn't make him uniquely important. All the jobs must be done—and the boss's is just one of them. In hierarchal organizations, the boss is a supreme being. In tribal organizations, the boss is just another worker. (This is exactly the way it was on the East Mountain News.)

My next tribal enterprise

Long before I identified the concept as tribal, I wanted to open a circus of learning such as I described in Providence and My Ishmael. Now I have a better idea of how to make this work in reality. Houston appeals to me because it isn't zoned, making it a crazy quilt of residential and commercial districts, and no one fusses if you run a business from your home. This makes it an ideal site for a learning circus, which combines spaces for working, exhibition, and performance to provide a center for work, play, performance, and education, involving (as teachers, performers, and participants) acrobats, jugglers, clowns, dancers, musicians, actors, set designers, magicians, lighting technicians, film makers, writers, potters, painters, sculptors, photographers, weavers, costumers, carpenters, electricians, and so on. No grades, no required courses, no tests—just learn all you want, whenever you want. Although open to all-age learners, it would make a marvelous resource for parents homeschooling their children, an option becoming more and more popular everywhere, with good reason. (Please note, however, that this isn't a “community learning center” for “studentdirected learning.” These are fine things, but I'm aiming at entertainment, not civic good works.) Someone asked why students would prefer this learning circus over a university. The two aren't competitive, and the strictly career-minded will surely prefer the more conventional of the two.

No timetable exists for this grand enterprise.

To distinguish is to know

It's important for me to point out (before others do) that I didn't invent tribal businesses; I just distinguished them from conventional ones and so made them especially visible. Now that you know what they are, you'll probably see them everywhere. In discussion with my seminar, Rennie brought to mind one we know in Portland, Oregon, the Rimskykorsakoffeehouse. This quirky local landmark, the creation of quirky local celebrity Goody Cable, almost has to be experienced to be believed. To take a table is to enter a special world that can really only be adequately described as tribal. When things get especially busy, customers will often be pressed into service to wait tables, and I know of one local author who waits tables one night a week just for the privilege of belonging to the tribe. There are often long lines of people waiting to get in; they like being there because the people working there obviously like being there.

Tribal people get more out of life.

Just think. It's taken me thirty thousand words to make those seven sound plausible.

The civilized hate and fear tribal people

People in traveling shows of every kind are viewed as exciting but dangerous people, people to be shunned when they're offstage. This is part of their allure, especially for the young. In past ages Gypsies were constantly suspected of stealing children, probably because more than a few children in fact succumbed to the lure of Gypsy life. It's long been suspected that the tribalism of the Jews has contributed to their demonization. And certainly no effort has been spared on our part to destroy the tribalism of native peoples wherever we find them. Their tribalism is the very emblem of their “backwardness” and “savagery.”

The civilized want people to be dependent on the prevalent hierarchy, not on each other. There's something inherently evil about people making themselves self-sufficient in small groups. This is why the homeless must be rousted wherever they collect. This is why the Branch Davidian community at Waco had to be destroyed; they'd never been charged with any crime, much less convicted—but they had to be doing something very, very nasty in there. The civilized want people to make their living individually, and they want them to live separately, behind locked doors—one family to a house, each house fully stocked with refrigerators, television sets, washing machines, and so on. That's the way decent folks live. Decent folks don't live in tribes, they live in communities.

Yet, oddly enough, as soon as you hold up the tribe as something desirable, decent folks will start insisting they're as tribal as any Bushman or Blackfoot.

Tribes and communities

Pressed into a hierarchal mold, the tribe becomes what the civilized call a community. Within the hierarchy of civilization in any age, community exhibits self-similarity at many different scales. The medieval Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy was a microcosm of feudal England, just as Evanston is a microcosm of modern America. This sort of fractal self-similarity between microcosm and macrocosm is, as John Briggs and David F. Peat point out, “a product of all the complex internal feedback relationships going on in a dynamical system” like our own. It's inevitable that Evanston—and East L.A. and Harlem and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma—are all going to reflect the hierarchal organization of our society as a whole, with rich folks here, middle-class folks here, and poor folks there. It doesn't matter that the rich of Evanston are better off than the rich of East L.A. or that the poor of Harlem are worse off than the poor of Broken Arrow. The structure is there.

The word community is itself an acknowledgment of decency and is withheld from the undeserving. Homosexuals struggled long and hard to become “the gay community,” but pederasts and pornographers don't stand a chance. Hoodlums, criminals, convicts, and religious fanatics don't have communities, they have gangs, mobs, populations, and cults.

I can imagine totally decent people being attracted to Objectivism or Voluntary Simplicity or Creative Individualism. I have a harder time imagining them being attracted to the tribal life. Maybe it's just me.

A parable about sustainability

An inventor brought his plans for a new device to an engineer, who looked at them and said, “What you've got here is systemically flawed, which means it'll destroy itself after just a few minutes of operation.”

“Not if it's well made,” the inventor replied. “Every part must be made of the finest material and to very exact specifications.”

The engineer had the device built, but it destroyed itself after just four minutes of operation. The inventor wasn't discouraged. “You didn't do what I told you,” he said. “You've got to use much finer materials—the finest available—and make the parts to the most exact specifications.”

The engineer tried again, and the new model worked for eight minutes. “You see?” said the inventor. “We're making tremendous progress. Try again, using even finer materials and more exact specifications.” The new device lasted for ten minutes. The engineer was told to build yet another model, using still finer materials and still more exact specifications. The new model lasted for eleven minutes.

The inventor wanted to go on and on in this way, striving for perfect parts, but the engineer refused, saying, “Can't you see that our returns are diminishing here? It's a waste of time to try to make a dysfunctional design work by improving its parts. Bring me a viable design, and I'll guarantee you a device that'll work for years, using parts made from ordinary materials, to ordinary specifications.”

Why what we've got is unsustainable

It's a fundamental tenet of our cultural mythology that the only thing wrong with us is that humans are not made well enough. We need to be made of finer materials, to some set of better specifications (provided, perhaps, by greened-up versions of our traditional religions). We just need to be made kinder, gentler, sweeter, more loving, less selfish, more far-sighted, and so on, then everything will be fine. Of course, no one succeeded in making us better last year or the year before that or the year before that or the year before that—or indeed any year in recorded history—but maybe this year we'll get lucky … or next year or the year after that.

What I've endeavored to say in all my books is that the flaw in our civilization isn't in the people, it's in the system. It's true that the system has been clanking along for ten thousand years, which is a long time in the timescale of an individual life, but when viewed in the timescale of human history, this episode isn't remarkable for its epic length but for its tragic brevity.

In Ishmael I compared our civilizational contraption to an aircraft that has been in the air for ten thousand years—but in free fall rather than in flight. If we stay with it, we'll crash with it, and soon. But if most of us lighten its load by abandoning it, it can probably stay in the air for a long time (while the rest of us try something that makes better sense).

Let's bail out and go over the wall!

Professor of anthropology James W. Fernandez writes, “Anthropologists, unlike philosophers, find that cultural worlds are brought into being by the performance (enactment) of mixed metaphors.” (Emphasis added.)

So there. I'm happy to mix a few metaphors in the cause of bringing into being a new cultural world.

After several hours spent discussing the movement beyond civilization to tribal living, one of the members of my seminar said he still couldn't see how it would serve to make human life more sustainable. We've come a ways since the last time I addressed this issue, so I should probably address it again here. It's a valid and important question. The New Tribal Revolution may give people a better life, but if it doesn't serve to perpetuate our species beyond a few decades, what's the point?

Right now there are about six billion of us in what I've called the culture of maximum harm. Only ten percent of these six billion are being maximally harmful—are gobbling up resources at top speed, contributing to global warming at top speed, and so on—but the other ninety percent, having nothing better in sight, want only to be like the ten percent. They envy that ten percent and are convinced that living in a way that is maximally harmful is the best way to live of all.

If we don't give them something better to want, we're doomed.

A systemic change

The New Tribal Revolution is an escape route from the prison of our culture. The walls of that prison are economic. That is, the need to make a living keeps us inside, because there's no way to make a living on the other side. We can't employ the Mayan Solution—we can't disappear into a life of ethnic tribalism. But we can disappear into a life of occupational tribalism.

Will this leave our civilization a smoking ruin? Certainly not. It will diminish it. As more and more people see that going over the wall means getting something better (not “giving up” something), more and more people will abandon the culture of maximum harm—and the more this culture is abandoned, the better. The escape route leads beyond civilization, beyond the thing that, according to our cultural mythology, is humanity's very last invention.

The escape route leads to humanity's next invention.

But even so, will this next invention give us a sustainable lifestyle? Here's how I assess this. Humans living in tribes was as ecologically stable as lions living in prides or baboons living in troops. The tribal life wasn't something humans sat down and figured out. It was the gift of natural selection, a proven success—not perfection but hard to improve on. Hierarchalism, on the other hand, has proven to be not merely imperfect but ultimately catastrophic for the earth and for us. When the plane's going down and someone offers you a parachute, you don't demand to see the warranty.

But why “humanity's” next great adventure?

In The Story of B and elsewhere I made a great point of establishing the fact that we—the Takers, the people of this culture—are not humanity, and I'll certainly never draw back from that statement. It isn't humanity that is presently converting this planet's biomass into human mass, it's the people of one culture—ours. It isn't humanity that is pressing thousands of species into extinction every year by its expansion, it's the people of one culture—ours.

Why then do I describe the New Tribal Revolution as “humanity's” next great adventure instead of “our” next great adventure? The answer is simple: civilization was not “our” adventure. As I've pointed out again and again in this book, civilization was an adventure that many peoples embarked upon. “We” weren't the only ones; we were just the only ones who stuck with it to the point of self-immolation. And if civilization wasn't just “our” great adventure, how could the next great adventure be just “ours”?

The New Tribal Revolution isn't intended to be ours alone— anyone can join who wants to, after all. But neither is it compulsory. The old tribalism with which humanity became humanity is as good as it ever was. It will never wear out or become obsolete. Landing on the moon was a great achievement for humanity, but that doesn't mean all humans have to do it.