Tribalism within Scientology

[Mimsey Borogrove]

That's fair enough. I spent some time today looking at some sites about Marxism, which I can see how tribalism would be similar to socialism, or even communism, in that the tribes shared the work, by and large, there were no owners (the bourgeoisie), per Marx's position on capitalism. That was because, I imagine the amount of possessions one owned was limited by how you could transport them (in packs, travois, horse back etc.) Essentially the tribe in the hominid, and pre-industrial societies, such as the American Indians, is a proletariat society. I never would have guessed that.

But, having no capitalism to overthrow, how was tribal life back then anything less than ideal for the survival of the group?

I will have to look into Neo-tribalism to see what you are referring to.

The other thing - who was the upper class if the bourgeoisie was the middle class? As yet I haven't seen any mention of it, other than in a dimly recalled Animal Farm by Orwell. "Some animals are more equal than others"

Mimsey

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

Weird - I saw the below which posits the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the only two classes, however, there must be some "ruling" class to interact with other governments, right?

"To Marx, a class is a group with intrinsic tendencies and interests that differ from those of other groups within society, the basis of a fundamental antagonism between such groups. For example, it is in the laborer's best interest to maximize wages and benefits and in the capitalist's best interest to maximize profit at the expense of such, leading to a contradiction within the capitalist system, even if the laborers and capitalists themselves are unaware of the clash of interests." Wiki.

Mimsey

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

"I'm not going down this rabbit hole with you Mimsey. Any readers who want to understand how Neo-Tribalism is essentially Marxist doctrine should study Cultural Marxism. And it absolutely would not surprise me that someone indoctrinated in Cultural Marxism wouldn't themselves be able to recognize it."

Is this what you are referring to?

Cultural Marxism generally refers to one of two things:
First — extremely rarely — "cultural Marxism" (lower C, upper M) refers to an obscure critique of popular culture by the Frankfurt School, framing culture as being imposed by a capitalist culture industry and consumed passively by the masses.

Second — in common usage in the wild — "Cultural Marxism" (both uppercase) is a common snarl word used to paint anyone with progressive tendencies as a secret Communist. The term alludes to a conspiracy theory in which sinister left-wingers have infiltrated media, academia, and science and are engaged in a decades-long plot to undermine Western culture. Some variants of the conspiracy allege that basically all of modern social liberalism is, in fact, a Communist front group

Wiki

 

[JustSheila]

That's fair enough. I spent some time today looking at some sites about Marxism, which I can see how tribalism would be similar to socialism, or even communism, in that the tribes shared the work, by and large, there were no owners (the bourgeoisie), per Marx's position on capitalism. That was because, I imagine the amount of possessions one owned was limited by how you could transport them (in packs, travois, horse back etc.) Essentially the tribe in the hominid, and pre-industrial societies, such as the American Indians, is a proletariat society. I never would have guessed that.

But, having no capitalism to overthrow, how was tribal life back then anything less than ideal for the survival of the group?

I will have to look into Neo-tribalism to see what you are referring to.

The other thing - who was the upper class if the bourgeoisie was the middle class? As yet I haven't seen any mention of it, other than in a dimly recalled Animal Farm by Orwell. "Some animals are more equal than others"

Mimsey

Mimsey, you're getting away from the book you're reading, Marxism and all societies that ever existed.

Let's get back to basics:
Every group that ever existed, tribe or otherwise, has leaders. Leaders have power and control. They decide who gets what and are "more equal" than others. Over time, the differentiation becomes more and more severe.They then overthrow other groups for more power and control. In theory, a good leader will rule fairly and a bad leader won't.

This describes the basics of Marxism and capitalism. In Marxism, the controlling group ends up with complete power and control over the people and resources and Marxism quickly becomes Communism or a dictatorship. It has never worked out otherwise and it can't.

In America, we have laws and safeguards against complete control by groups or corporations. These are contained in the Constitution. We are both a Republic and a Democracy.

That's the simplicity.

 

[Enthetan]

That's fair enough. I spent some time today looking at some sites about Marxism, which I can see how tribalism would be similar to socialism, or even communism, in that the tribes shared the work, by and large, there were no owners (the bourgeoisie), per Marx's position on capitalism. That was because, I imagine the amount of possessions one owned was limited by how you could transport them (in packs, travois, horse back etc.) Essentially the tribe in the hominid, and pre-industrial societies, such as the American Indians, is a proletariat society. I never would have guessed that.

But, having no capitalism to overthrow, how was tribal life back then anything less than ideal for the survival of the group?

I will have to look into Neo-tribalism to see what you are referring to.

The other thing - who was the upper class if the bourgeoisie was the middle class? As yet I haven't seen any mention of it, other than in a dimly recalled Animal Farm by Orwell. "Some animals are more equal than others"

Mimsey

Long before Columbus showed up, the Native American tribes practiced slavery. The slaves were other Native Americans, mostly captured in wars against rival tribes. So a tribal person could have more property than he could personally transport, if he owned slaves to do the carrying

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

Are you thinking of the Incas or Aztecs perhaps? They were no longer tribal nations. Mimsey.

 

[guanoloco]

Are you thinking of the Incas or Aztecs perhaps? They were no longer tribal nations. Mimsey.

No. He's talking about the Sioux, etc. Widespread slavery throughout. And genocide. Brutal tribal warfare.

The pastel idyllic pre European existence that is romanticized is fake.

The Aztecs you mentioned horrified the Spanish with their human sacrifices and cannibalism. Think of that...the Spanish had just been liberated from centuries of bloody Muslim conquest of rape, torture, slavery and forced conversions - unimaginable conditions of severe brutality and the Aztecs horrified them.

 

[JustSheila]

Are you thinking of the Incas or Aztecs perhaps? They were no longer tribal nations. Mimsey.

This is just arguing for the sake of arguing over the meaning of the term "Nation" and has nothing to do with anything. Are you really unaware there were any other North American native Indian tribes?

As late as the 1960s my grandfather helped to feed a small tribe of Ojibwa Indians in Wisconsin. Throughout America, there were still tribes then. Fact.

There were plenty of aggressive native American Indian tribes that took other Indians as slaves long before Columbus, like the Apache, Comanche, Chippewa, Dakota, Iroquois... You disappoint me. I thought you knew more about American history. Instead, you have this weird, romanticized version because some tribes were peaceful. They were raided all the time by other tribes, though.

https://www.thetoptens.com/deadliest-native-american-tribes/

 

[guanoloco]

This is just arguing for the sake of arguing over the meaning of the term "Nation" and has nothing to do with anything. Are you really unaware there were any other North American native Indian tribes?

As late as the 1960s my grandfather helped to feed a small tribe of Ojibwa Indians in Wisconsin. Throughout America, there were still tribes then. Fact.

There were plenty of aggressive native American Indian tribes that took other Indians as slaves long before Columbus, like the Apache, Comanche, Chippewa, Dakota, Iroquois... You disappoint me. I thought you knew more about American history. Instead, you have this weird, romanticized version because some tribes were peaceful. They were raided all the time by other tribes, though.

https://www.thetoptens.com/deadliest-native-american-tribes/

That's right. The Peublo and Anasazi didn't build cliff dwellings because their neighbors were nice.

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

Enthetan, I am bringing up the points in the first chapter of the book, which deal with tribes in the 1700s when America was first being colonized, as well as some the tribe that were intact in Africa during the 1970's. The point I read the next day after posting, was the overarching duty to the survival of the group, and the bigger crimes were hording, shirking helping with hunting, fishing etc. Typically, the older men cast out those that weren't onboard with tribe survival, if they didn't kill them outright.

He discusses the amount of time they spend gathering food etc. child rearing and compares it to modern man - we lose. Not only do we have more depression, and other mental ills, and rich American women have the highest statistics for that, we work many hours of a day longer then they. He also compares time spend child rearing, holding infants, in tribes compared to modern urban life, and somehow imparts a wealth of data, in a way that is anything but dull and dry. They were a close knit group.

You might buy a used copy and give it a read - it isn't a tome.

Programmer guy - re: "The items and issues on this thread are interesting. However, IMO, using the terms "tribe" or "tribalism" are misnomers for this.
The better term would be "group dynamics". "

While I see your point, it's not quite the same. This should give you a sense of why the term is used over yours:

"We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding--"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival.

Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life. The loss of closeness that comes at the end of deployment may explain the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans today.

I think your term would be more appropriate for describing the interactions within a particular tribe.

Mimsey

I think any notion that lots of European Americans co-mingled with Native Americans is highly doubtful. Obviously there were outliers, amongst the most notable being Liver-Eating Johnson, but the recent brouhaha with Elizabeth Warren triggered some very interesting discussion about this based on DNA. I'm inclined to agree with the following article's assertion that there was extremely little migration of whites into native society.

In fact, I think the whole romanticized idea of tribe is ridiculous. After WWII our parents couldn't get off the farms and into the big cities fast enough. Small towns where everybody knew everything, a few families dominated business and politics, and there was less opportunity could be a real drag. I think the history demonstrates the political structures of tribes are more often hierarchical and culty than mutually sharing and caring. This is where we get into the Cultural Marxist spiel. Like Scientology you make Marxism so much a part of someone's life and thinking that they have a difficult time comprehending anything else. We are supposed to want to herald back to the good ol days of tribalism where we shared each other's potatoes in winter. This historical focus on Native American tribes is too selective, not to mention unverifiable. Who wants to be a young girl or boy in an Islamic tribe in Afganistan, that exists now and is absolutely verifiable? Small tribes are really extended families. That is completely different from large societies. The human condition is to wage wars and revolution to escape tribes and their feudal variants in order to establish governments that are responsible to the voters and not some royal hierarchy or council of elders.

As far as Scientology goes, I do think it has taken on some aspects of tribalism with it's culture of underage marriage. Scientology girls are well informed that they can petition for emancipation in the courts and marry before turning legal adult age. What I find very disturbing is this seems to now be something that has been deliberately adopted and encouraged by the organization to pair up older Sea Org men, as part of an employee retention program, with younger women as opposed to younger women using it to become independent out of their own volition. This might seem like a distinction without a difference but a lot of pre-adult girls could have their own motivations for asking the court to make them legal adults. Some reasons might be valid and some might be highly inadvisable but in the Sea Org having this become institutionalized is the worst of tribal behavior.

https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-US-population-carry-Native-Americans’-DNA#
///
Now we arrive at a point in time where genetic testing has opened up a whole new world of demographic analysis and research. The results are quite stark, and they sync up with historical and genealogical findings. The reality is that White Americans are surprisingly unmixed and there is negligible Native contribution to the White gene pool in the US. And the admixture of Native ancestry within the Black population is also extremely low.

The White American average genetic makeup is 98.6% European, 0.19% African, and 0.18% Native American.
///
_____
https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/day-girl-end-child-marriage

 

[guanoloco]

I think any notion that lots of European Americans co-mingled with Native Americans is highly doubtful. Obviously there were outliers, amongst the most notable being Liver-Eating Johnson, but the recent brouhaha with Elizabeth Warren triggered some very interesting discussion about this based on DNA. I'm inclined to agree with the following article's assertion that there was extremely little migration of whites into native society.

In fact, I think the whole romanticized idea of tribe is ridiculous. After WWII our parents couldn't get off the farms and into the big cities fast enough. Small towns where everybody knew everything, a few families dominated business and politics, and there was less opportunity could be a real drag. I think the history demonstrates the political structures of tribes are more often hierarchical and culty than mutually sharing and caring. This is where we get into the Cultural Marxist spiel. Like Scientology you make Marxism so much a part of someone's life and thinking that they have a difficult time comprehending anything else. We are supposed to want to herald back to the good ol days of tribalism where we shared each other's potatoes in winter. This historical focus on Native American tribes is too selective, not to mention unverifiable. Who wants to be a young girl or boy in an Islamic tribe in Afganistan, that exists now and is absolutely verifiable? Small tribes are really extended families. That is completely different from large societies. The human condition is to wage wars and revolution to escape tribes and their feudal variants in order to establish governments that are responsible to the voters and not some royal hierarchy or council of elders.

As far as Scientology goes, I do think it has taken on some aspects of tribalism with it's culture of underage marriage. Scientology girls are well informed that they can petition for emancipation in the courts and marry before turning legal adult age. What I find very disturbing is this seems to now be something that has been deliberately adopted and encouraged by the organization to pair up older Sea Org men, as part of an employee retention program, with younger women as opposed to younger women using it to become independent out of their own volition. This might seem like a distinction without a difference but a lot of pre-adult girls could have their own motivations for asking the court to make them legal adults. Some reasons might be valid and some might be highly inadvisable but in the Sea Org having this become institutionalized is the worst of tribal behavior.

https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-US-population-carry-Native-Americans’-DNA#
///
Now we arrive at a point in time where genetic testing has opened up a whole new world of demographic analysis and research. The results are quite stark, and they sync up with historical and genealogical findings. The reality is that White Americans are surprisingly unmixed and there is negligible Native contribution to the White gene pool in the US. And the admixture of Native ancestry within the Black population is also extremely low.

The White American average genetic makeup is 98.6% European, 0.19% African, and 0.18% Native American.
///
_____
https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/day-girl-end-child-marriage

View attachment 14759

There is something to tribalism and a tribalistic nature in a human, though.

I've argued this point and Scientology is a perfect example. As culture modernizes it tends to blur out tribes and many do so with social engineering.

This leaves a void in a person's life. They fill it with things like Scientology, crips and the bloods gangs and things like this that are extreme versions of tribalism.

I think a lot of this thread has run down a yellow brick road of splitting hairs over the definition of "tribe". We can call it whatever we want but I personally believe that school mascots, town rivalries, boyscout troops and healthy competition along those lines fill this void and should be fostered and nurtured so as to prevent the dangerous aspects of tribalism.

Cults have a severe "us vs them" mentality and are warlike. Same with gangs. Perhaps (my guess and it's only a guess) this is because people were feeling unconnected and were searching for a connection and meaning - only to then become consumed by the group. I think many people wound up in Scientology looking for meaning and purpose. Had they had those aspects in healthy relationships they never would've been searching to begin with.

The current SJW religion is certainly no exception to this phenomenon.

 

[JustSheila]

I think any notion that lots of European Americans co-mingled with Native Americans is highly doubtful. Obviously there were outliers, amongst the most notable being Liver-Eating Johnson, but the recent brouhaha with Elizabeth Warren triggered some very interesting discussion about this based on DNA. I'm inclined to agree with the following article's assertion that there was extremely little migration of whites into native society.

In fact, I think the whole romanticized idea of tribe is ridiculous. After WWII our parents couldn't get off the farms and into the big cities fast enough. Small towns where everybody knew everything, a few families dominated business and politics, and there was less opportunity could be a real drag. I think the history demonstrates the political structures of tribes are more often hierarchical and culty than mutually sharing and caring. This is where we get into the Cultural Marxist spiel. Like Scientology you make Marxism so much a part of someone's life and thinking that they have a difficult time comprehending anything else. We are supposed to want to herald back to the good ol days of tribalism where we shared each other's potatoes in winter. This historical focus on Native American tribes is too selective, not to mention unverifiable. Who wants to be a young girl or boy in an Islamic tribe in Afganistan, that exists now and is absolutely verifiable? Small tribes are really extended families. That is completely different from large societies. The human condition is to wage wars and revolution to escape tribes and their feudal variants in order to establish governments that are responsible to the voters and not some royal hierarchy or council of elders.

As far as Scientology goes, I do think it has taken on some aspects of tribalism with it's culture of underage marriage. Scientology girls are well informed that they can petition for emancipation in the courts and marry before turning legal adult age. What I find very disturbing is this seems to now be something that has been deliberately adopted and encouraged by the organization to pair up older Sea Org men, as part of an employee retention program, with younger women as opposed to younger women using it to become independent out of their own volition. This might seem like a distinction without a difference but a lot of pre-adult girls could have their own motivations for asking the court to make them legal adults. Some reasons might be valid and some might be highly inadvisable but in the Sea Org having this become institutionalized is the worst of tribal behavior.

https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-US-population-carry-Native-Americans’-DNA#
///
Now we arrive at a point in time where genetic testing has opened up a whole new world of demographic analysis and research. The results are quite stark, and they sync up with historical and genealogical findings. The reality is that White Americans are surprisingly unmixed and there is negligible Native contribution to the White gene pool in the US. And the admixture of Native ancestry within the Black population is also extremely low.

The White American average genetic makeup is 98.6% European, 0.19% African, and 0.18% Native American.
///
_____
https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/day-girl-end-child-marriage

View attachment 14759

Great post, too much to reply right now, though.

Just want to mention that the genetic makeup of Americans as stated in that article is biased, since it separates out those who state they are Hispanic or black and doesn't even mention Asians (are Asians considered white?) rather than mix them in. So I'm not sure what the breakdown would actually be if the percentages hadn't been tampered with, because after all, Hispanics and blacks are Americans and the separation is based on self-identifying.

This article is a bit more precise, but you can see the difficulties in getting the percentages correct if any American with a larger percentage of a non-white blood self-identifies as either Hispanic or black. It throws the white percentage way off:

"The team started by looking at the average genetic ancestry of the three largest groups in the United States: European Americans, African-Americans, and Latinos. Those categories are based on how 23andMe customers defined themselves. But as you might expect in a country where different groups of people have been meeting and mixing for hundreds of years, the genetic lines between the groups are quite blurred.

“You see all of those different ancestries in each of these groups,” Bryc explains. The average African-American genome, for example, is 73.2% African, 24% European, and 0.8% Native American, the team reports online today in The American Journal of Human Genetics. Latinos, meanwhile, carry an average of 18% Native American ancestry, 65.1% European ancestry (mostly from the Iberian Peninsula), and 6.2% African ancestry.
...

"At least 3.5% of European Americans carry African ancestry, though the averages vary significantly by state."


https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals-surprising-ancestry-many-americans

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

Tribes as a term has enjoyed a recent uptick in usage in the vernacular with a broad range of interpretations depending on the point that someone is trying to make. I think this article and study emphasizing tribes as a way to characterize American political demographics makes two fundamental errors. The US is not polarized because of media manipulation. True, that is a factor but the country is polarized because the impacts of these various political belief systems and the implementation of their agendas are now definable to the average American in the profound ways it effects them personally. Their effects are no longer just theory - they have reached a critical mass.

Secondly, I do not believe people are driven by group identity as much as they suggest. I think people are driven by personal interest and they seek out groups and venues for information that best meet those interests. We are not all victims of indoctrination where we have no analytical control over how we define ourselves and our groups.

I also challenge this point: “The reason American society appears to be split 50/50 is that the loudest and most extreme viewpoints monopolize airtime and social media space”

Elections are often determined by close margins within 3 point all across the country for all kinds of offices. That is not because of media control. That is because of personal interest. Some people benefit by a status quo or they are harmed by it according to their personal situation and that is what mostly defines how they vote.

This study focuses on issues but it glosses over the reasons those issues are important to individuals. Many of these issues as issues have been colored with political correctness and bias and trying to categorize them and classify people by percentages based on their support or opposition does not address the extreme complexity of those issues, their causations and effects. It is possible to be strongly supportive of some aspects of things like taxes, immigration, race while being strongly opposed to other aspects.

I see this current attempt to interpret political orientation as tribes much like a Scientology PR Marketing Survey. Scientology conducts these to seek out vulnerabilities that can be exploited. There isn’t any real attempt to honestly understand people or respect what is in their best interests. We aren’t tribes based on how we might stand on a set of political positions. Our lives aren’t defined that way and I don’t think it is helpful for anyone to start thinking like that. It is true that there are two primary economic political models competing for supremacy in the world but as individuals we are much more than that.

The desire to enjoy the better things that come from connectivity in smaller groups shouldn’t be conflated with an attempt to get people to start thinking of themselves as political tribes with all of the confused associations that that word implies. Free thinking people just don’t behave that way. I'm an Ex-Scientologist and I have spent a lot of time studying and commenting on the subject but I don't consider myself a member of some kind of Ex-Scientology Tribe. Maybe Scientologists do but they are a cult and that is exactly how they are supposed to think. I have a lot of interests, activities and groups but I don't consider myself a member of a tribe and I have no desire to be thought of that way. It's just culty and weird but according to this study that makes me a member of the anti-Tribe Tribe.

https://hiddentribes.us/

///
Why do the Wings dominate the conversation? A key reason is that polarization has become a business model. Media executives have realized that they can drive clicks, likes, and views, and make money for themselves and their shareholders, by providing people with the most strident opinions. This means that the most extreme voices―no matter how outlandish―often get the most airtime. In addition, people with the most extreme views are often the most certain of their positions. They are willing to argue with anyone and avoid moderating their opinions or conceding points to the other side. All this can make entertaining television and viral social media content. But it is distorting how we see each other, fracturing our society, and adding to distortions in our political system that give undue weight to the most extreme views.
///
Core Belief 1: Group Identity and Tribalism in America. Perhaps the most important aspect of the hidden architecture underlying political behavior is people's group identities. Social scientists have long recognized that people see their own groups as a strong source of self-esteem and a sense of belonging. Consequently, these tribal identities have an almost magical influence over people’s views, for example, captured recently in a T-shirt (circulated on social media) proclaiming “I’d rather be Russian than Democrat.”
///

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

This is just arguing for the sake of arguing over the meaning of the term "Nation" and has nothing to do with anything. Are you really unaware there were any other North American native Indian tribes?

As late as the 1960s my grandfather helped to feed a small tribe of Ojibwa Indians in Wisconsin. Throughout America, there were still tribes then. Fact.

There were plenty of aggressive native American Indian tribes that took other Indians as slaves long before Columbus, like the Apache, Comanche, Chippewa, Dakota, Iroquois... You disappoint me. I thought you knew more about American history. Instead, you have this weird, romanticized version because some tribes were peaceful. They were raided all the time by other tribes, though.

https://www.thetoptens.com/deadliest-native-american-tribes/

No - I am discussing what was written in the book. I have not done extensive study of native American Indian history. Reviews of what the author wrote was this:

"Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species." Amazon.com

Or this:

"The author begins by looking at early American history, even before the American
Revolution, and the appeal of American Indian tribes for some white settlers. Some of these
settlers were captives who refused to be rescued; others simply disappeared into the forest,
never to return. Junger speculates that the appeal was the tribal closeness they found there.
Although he cautions that we should not romanticize American Indian tribes since their
warriors could be as vicious as any other warriors, theirs was a more egalitarian society than
most others, including ours, and women had far more autonomy and bore fewer children than
their white counterparts." http://www.threesistersbooks.com/files/TheTribe.pdf

It's really hard to discuss a book when the people you communicate with have not read it. Sorry if I was not clearer. It's not like the book is a lot of money, or a heavy tome. You can pick up a used copy cheap on Amazon.

Here's a transcript of a discussion on NPR:

"...JUNGER: Yes. The idea for the book started with my background in anthropology. I studied anthropology in college. I did my fieldwork on the Navajo reservation. And at one point a year or two ago, I had this idea. I was like, I bet the Navajo, the Apache, the Comanche, the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Kiowa - very, very warlike societies. I bet they weren't getting PTSD. I bet they weren't coming home to their community and feeling alienated and out of place and unconnected. I bet the transition was fine.

And so I had this idea. Maybe the rate of long-term trauma that combatants experience - maybe that's a function not of the trauma - not of what happens on the battlefield - but the kind of society you come home to. And if you come home to a cohesive tribal society, maybe you recover quite quickly from trauma. "

https://www.npr.org/2016/05/21/4789...r-s-examines-veteran-life-after-leaving-tribe

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

This is just arguing for the sake of arguing over the meaning of the term "Nation" and has nothing to do with anything. Are you really unaware there were any other North American native Indian tribes?

As late as the 1960s my grandfather helped to feed a small tribe of Ojibwa Indians in Wisconsin. Throughout America, there were still tribes then. Fact.

There were plenty of aggressive native American Indian tribes that took other Indians as slaves long before Columbus, like the Apache, Comanche, Chippewa, Dakota, Iroquois... You disappoint me. I thought you knew more about American history. Instead, you have this weird, romanticized version because some tribes were peaceful. They were raided all the time by other tribes, though.

https://www.thetoptens.com/deadliest-native-american-tribes/

I want to address the above paean to my shortcomings:

I was born in 1947 - I was in school in the 50's early sixties. My schooling on the subject of American Indians can be summed up in one sentence:
The Indians saved the Pilgrims from starvation, resulting in Thanksgiving, the Huron fought in the French English war prior to the Revolutionary war.

In college not one word about the Indians was uttered in any in any course I took.

Cultural influences:
The usual cowboy and Indian shoot ups on black and white TV, and Tonto (Yes, I knew he was played by Jay Silverheels)
I loved the movie and read the book: Little Big Man, and read some stuff about Little Big Horn at that time.
I loved the movie and read the book: Last of the Mohicans, and loved the role by the great Wes Studi
I loved the movie and read the book: Dances with Wolves, which had many fine Indian actors, including Wes Studi, and as a result I frequently enjoy eating Tatanka
I read a book that was written in English, translated to Sioux and back to English to eliminate any American anachronisms from creeping into the story
Recently I saw and liked Hostiles, again with Wes Studi and also saw Wind River and liked it a lot.
I also saw and was enthralled by Apocalypto

That is, for the most part, my sanitized understanding of the Indians, and hence: "You disappoint me. I thought you knew more about American history. Instead, you have this weird, romanticized version because some tribes were peaceful" stems from the above genus of my perspective of the Indians, their culture, their lives, which one would expect with such exposure to those peoples.

Mimsey

 

[guanoloco]

What you're missing regarding tribal life is the relationship to violence. It's evident in gangs and the current progressive cult like Antifa, BLM, etc. In anthropology one learns that virtually every tribal name defined as "the people"...meaning those not of the tribe weren't people. That's immediately what happens in war. The enemy is defined as less than human. Today, conservatives are seen as Nazi mysogonist homophobic bigots that are cowards, greedy, lying, etc. By Any Means Necessary...get It?

ViolenceEdit
Anthropologists engage in ongoing debate on the phenomenon of warfare among tribes. While fighting typically and certainly occurs among horticulturaltribes, an open question remains whether such warfare is a typical feature of hunter-gatherer life or is an anomaly found only in certain circumstances, such as scarce resources (as with the Inuit or Arabs) or only among food-producing societies.[17][18] There is also ample evidence that the level of violence among tribal societies is greater than the levels of violence among Western and European societies.[19]

Tribes use forms of subsistence such as horticultureand foraging that cannot yield the same number of absolute calories as agriculture. That limits tribal populations significantly, especially when compared to agricultural populations.[20] Lawrence Keeley writes in War Before Civilization that examples exist with low percentage rates of casualties in tribal battle, and some tribal battles were much more lethal as a percentage of population than, for example, the Battle of Gettysburg. He concludes that no evidence consistently indicates that primitive battles are proportionately less lethal than "civilized" ones.[17]

The realistic conflict theory is a model of intergroup conflict, arguing that in a real or perceived zero-sum system, conflicts arise over shared interests for finite resources. The 1954 Robbers Cave Experiment involved researchers putting 12-year old boys into groups, where they formed their own ingroups, before then developing hostility and negativity towards the other group during simulated conflict over finite resources in a zero-sum game.[citation needed

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism​

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

I think one of the lead ups to the current political emphasis on “tribe” in the US was the 2012 book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodward.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-the-midlands-tidewater-greater-a8078261.html

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/woodard-colin-1968
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I haven’t read the book but I have read the highly publicized articles about it. Colin attended the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest as an exchange student and has written about his experiences behind the Iron Curtain. I don’t know if his positions are pro or against Marxism or colored by it but I do think this attempt to segregate the US into political categories fits a pattern.

I am not opposed to classifying people into groups or isms. I watched a documentary that made the point that the industrial age was made possible because the Guttenberg Press enabled cross indexing of information from disparate fields of knowledge. In effect, our world as we know it today is the result of broad access to classification and definition.

What I am opposed to is the deliberate distortion of classification and definition for ulterior motives. Scientology is full of charts, tables, classifications and definitions. It promotes itself as an applied philosophy - not only with all of the answers, but the only workable answers to all the problems of not just mankind but their spirits as well. Then they go on to create extensive and elaborate classifications and definitions for anybody or anything that opposes Scientology or attempts to explain how these classifications and definitions are not only flawed and inconsistent but driven by ulterior and very manipulative motives.

We live in a world saturated with different parties trying to take control of the classification and defining process. Scientology, like Marxism, realized after the 1977 FBI raids that radical violent revolution was not a practical method to achieve their goals of world domination because loyalties to things like culture, religion, justice and patriotism were too difficult to overcome by force. They shifted their strategy to Cultural Scientology. Sure, they always used misinformation and indoctrination but now that would become their primary strategy. Front groups would push popular agendas about drugs, education, human rights, religious freedom while masking their association with Scientology and the larger goal of Global Clearing (read: domination).

When Scientology sets out to categorize any group and define it they are locked into a preconceived opinion about that group that prohibits them from truly understanding that group. They don’t want to be able to assume that group's viewpoint, they want to manipulate and control it. Their manic need to discover hot buttons isn’t so they can constructively work with the group in their best interests - it’s so they can sell to them, indoctrinate them, asset strip them and protect themselves against risk.

America is divided. By the IRS’ own figures we have been steadily approaching and are very close to 50% of people who file tax returns either paying no taxes or actually being net tax recipients through credits or redistribution. There is your honest classification of American tribes. Some people have a vested interest in redistribution and some have a vested interest in limiting redistribution. That isn’t indoctrination or classification into isms. It’s personal. But in order to promote increased redistribution the people who want to limit redistribution must be demonized as greedy and selfish, without compassion. And the people who want to parasitically position themselves to gain power within this system of redistribution want to identify and classify the population in order to pitch the various groups against each other - recruiting some and demonizing the others. They don’t care that we care that our quality of life and tax burdens are being adversely effected by their agenda. They just want to know how to push our buttons.

This is the problem I have with the use of “tribe” in popular discussion today. Things like Cultural Scientology and Cultural Marxism are long marches through the cultures and the institutions in order to create a milieu bubble or saturated environment where their viewpoint is the only viewpoint and everything else can only be seen through their positive or negative classification and definition. The only other viewpoint is one that hasn’t been absorbed yet because those groups are ignorant rubes.

So what is a tribe really? What associations does the use of this word evoke that the normal use of the word “group” not evoke? To Mimsey’s credit he did get me thinking about this and to me a tribe is a group where the individuals are bound by something other than reason. For all intents you don’t choose a tribe, you are born into it. Your loyalties are inherent and unquestioning. Culture supersedes critical thinking. Why would anyone want us to start thinking of ourselves and each other as members of groups where our convictions are guided by something other than reason? My answer is because that is how they perceive us. They see us as driven by ideology and to control us you don’t need to understand or improve the actual conditions of our day to day lives - you only need to understand and change our ideology.

Like exes on ESMB who are defining the definers - a lot of people are defining the definers of American politics and ideology and they don’t like being subjected to this cynicism. We aren’t supposed to be looking behind the curtain. We are supposed to be unthinking consumers of opinion polls and media narrative but as the internet was to Scientology so it is to Cultural Marxism. I for one don’t accept that I’m part of some neo-tribalism. I don’t buy the nostalgia of it and I surely don’t accept the idea that membership in a group should be driven by unquestioning loyalty. I think individualism is healthy. Groups are formed by individuals and individuals who have individual rights and freedoms and who question the authority of groups make the best group members.

This thread started by pointing to this New Yorker article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dail...s-insights-into-tribalism-in-the-age-of-trump

As far as I’m concerned that instantly made this a political thread. This isn’t about Native American anthropology - it’s about leftist media pushing the concept of tribe in order to portray supporters of Trump in a disparaging light. They are the Marxist equivalents of PTSes and SPs. Trump supporters are the new revolutionaries. They are rebelling not only against Marxism and this exact type of mis-characterization but against both the Democrat and Republican deep state bureaucracy and the Republicans who have sold us out to corporate and other interests. The left can’t comprehend this anymore than Scientologists comprehend exes so they go back to their old playbook of manipulating classifications and definitions with this self-soothing tribalism nonsense but also like Scientologists, they are the only ones buying it.

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

What I fail to understand is this: Junger is making the point the troops are in war, overseas, isolated from our culture, in a tight tribe like group, with it's own morals, goals etc. He is discussing both the non-combatants and the combatants. They both experience PTSD symptoms when returning to our fractured society. His point is the PTSD is not as much from the trauma the troops experienced as the loss of their tribe.

He questions - what is the reason for the non-combatants having PTSD? They experienced no direct trauma, though possibly tangentially.

Why do many troops re-up? Is it Stockholm syndrome? Is it wanting to leave our alienating society for the close knit group they lived in on the front? A group you could easily describe as Junger does, a Tribe.

What was the Hurt Locker about, if not the re-uping, the rejection of our society? To go back to a tribal life? To go back to the overcoming of danger for a cause?

So I ask this - how many of us experienced a feeling of loss when we left Scientology? What was it about the loss was the worse? Loss of friends and family? The loss of belief in the states of Clear, OT, and other states of release? The loss of a game of helping people? The loss of a "star high" purpose?

Further, how many go back to Scientology? I am assuming Marty did not go back, he wanted a golden parachute, and sold his soul to get it. What of those that are indipendents, and never really left, they just changed flavors?

Mimsey

 

[Mimsey Borogrove]

What you're missing regarding tribal life is the relationship to violence. It's evident in gangs and the current progressive cult like Antifa, BLM, etc. In anthropology one learns that virtually every tribal name defined as "the people"...meaning those not of the tribe weren't people. That's immediately what happens in war. The enemy is defined as less than human. Today, conservatives are seen as Nazi mysogonist homophobic bigots that are cowards, greedy, lying, etc. By Any Means Necessary...get It?

ViolenceEdit​

Anthropologists engage in ongoing debate on the phenomenon of warfare among tribes. While fighting typically and certainly occurs among horticulturaltribes, an open question remains whether such warfare is a typical feature of hunter-gatherer life or is an anomaly found only in certain circumstances, such as scarce resources (as with the Inuit or Arabs) or only among food-producing societies.[17][18] There is also ample evidence that the level of violence among tribal societies is greater than the levels of violence among Western and European societies.[19]​

​

Tribes use forms of subsistence such as horticultureand foraging that cannot yield the same number of absolute calories as agriculture. That limits tribal populations significantly, especially when compared to agricultural populations.[20] Lawrence Keeley writes in War Before Civilization that examples exist with low percentage rates of casualties in tribal battle, and some tribal battles were much more lethal as a percentage of population than, for example, the Battle of Gettysburg. He concludes that no evidence consistently indicates that primitive battles are proportionately less lethal than "civilized" ones.[17]​

​

The realistic conflict theory is a model of intergroup conflict, arguing that in a real or perceived zero-sum system, conflicts arise over shared interests for finite resources. The 1954 Robbers Cave Experiment involved researchers putting 12-year old boys into groups, where they formed their own ingroups, before then developing hostility and negativity towards the other group during simulated conflict over finite resources in a zero-sum game.[citation needed​

​

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism​

You don't have to travel out of LA to find warfare between gangs, though frankly, I don't understand the point of their turf wars. Lord knows how many gangs there really are, but Wiki states, according to a May 2001 Drug Threat Assessment by the National Drug Intelligence Center, Los Angeles was home to 1,350 gangs.


Mimsey

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

You don't have to travel out of LA to find warfare between gangs, though frankly, I don't understand the point of their turf wars.

.

Seriously?

You seriously don't understand why gangs fight and kill each other?

SPOLIER ALERT.

They kill each other for money.

Each block represents money in the drug trade.

Money.

And what money can buy in the ghetto. Bling. Jewelry, thick 14K rope chains, tattoos, $300 sneakers, $5000 chrome rims for their car, a stereo system with sub woofers you can hear a half mile away, designer jeans, cash for weed, coke and ecstasy, money to buy guns, money for gold "grill" teeth, money to go clubbing and party, et al.

Are you seriously saying you did not know that?

I mean how could anyone living in North America not know that? LOL