Tribe Stage 2/3/23
Nature of Human: The Tribe Stage v6 2/3/23-3/8/20
Introduction The Tribe stage of social evolution follows from the Family stage and has dominated our ancestor's behavior for the last half million years.
The Tribe stage is primarily characterized by cooperation among multiple families. This replaces the lethal hostility between them in the Family stage. A second, essential characteristic of the Tribe stage is the primary allegiance to the common beliefs, traditions and culture of the group of families as opposed to the primary allegiance to individuals in the Family stage.
The Tribe stage is clearly a continuation of the preceding stages as the zone of cooperation pushes the lethal competition behavior of the Individual stage back enough to contain multiple families.
The mutually cooperative behavior of the Family stage is extended to multiple families while the lethal competition of the Individual stage is reserved for other tribes.
Progress For the vast majority of those half million years, our ancestors hunted and gathered as nomads. They were able to combine the best of all the families' traditions to guide them and enhance those traditions with the combined life experience of the whole tribe. With the extended cooperation they were able to provide more food and our species population increased significantly. Our ancestors began to develop language and extend the use of stone tools and weapons. Then, about ten thousand years ago they stopped moving their camps in particularly fertile areas and began farming. About seven thousand years ago, the additional food gave them the time for increased specialization and they started making metals. The settled populations began economic cooperation between tribes and set the scene for the Nation stage.
Transition The bridge between the Family stage and the Tribe stage is undoubtedly the clan where violence between families is mitigated by interrelationships. Inbreeding within families results in too many defective DNA's so there would be a cultural and genetic tendency to for sons to take wives from other tribes creating the path to interrelationships.
Primary Behaviors There are many behaviors that strongly contributed to the survival of tribal societies and the vast majority are continuations of behaviors established in earlier stages. The Tribe stage is the pinnacle of instinct guided societies.Instinctive behaviors are pretty easy to identify because they occur across the world and across history. Unfortunately, those instincts become more and more toxic to the survival of later stages of social evolution.
In addition to the instinctive behaviors, there are many cultural behaviors embedded with instincts which served the survival of tribes. Cultural behaviors are extensions of the traditions in the Family stage.
Behaviors of the Tribe stage include:
Blame And Punish
Bigotry
Certainty
Community
Competition
Conformity [consistency]
Consensus
Cooperation
Coordination
Discipline [contempt]
Diversity
Exclusion (xenophobia)
Gullibility
Identity
Impact
Innovation
Leadership
Obedience Parenting
Primary Behaviors
Productivity
Progressive Behavior
Regressive Behavior
Schismatic Behavior
Specialization
Survival
Tradition
Warrior
Survival In the Tribe stage, families will sacrifice their lives to protect their tribe. This overrides both the Family stage survival instincts and the Individual stage survival instincts. These survival instincts arose simply because our species has had a much better chance of surviving in the highest level society available to them.
Cooperation The whole progress of human civilization rides on the balance between cooperation and competition. At each advance, cooperation is extended. It is the choice between taking and sharing, between including and excluding. This behavior is a combination of instincts initiated by the first mother and reinforcement by culture.
Competition The core instinct of survival, competition, evolved in the Individual stage of pre-society. In the Tribe stage, it primarily continues to drive the hostility between tribes.
Community Community is the core of society. The instinct to gather in peaceful groups began with the first mother.
Coordination Coordinated group behavior provides one of the greatest survival benefits of society. In the Tribe stage, the instincts to follow the direction of leadership provides a much improved productivity over voluntary and random contributions. Those instincts were initiated by the first mother.
Consensus Consensus is an opposing influence to leadership. The tribe obeys the leaders' direction. A consensus of opposition can redirect or replace leaders. The counsel of consensus provides an expanded perspective for individual leaders.
Tradition One of the most powerful survival protections society provides is the collection of life's lessons passing on from one generation to the next. Unlike the Individual stage and most forms of life on the planet, we do not have to start out life with only our instincts to guides us. The lessons we learn in life do not die with us. The tribe's traditions are the composite of all the traditions of the individual families which in turn are composites of the traditions of the individual parents. The tribe's traditions are a collection of behaviors which have proven to help their ancestors to survive.
Conformity The benefits of conformity in the Tribe stage are the same as those in the general rule of life: consistency (Keep doing what you are doing until it kills you). Any behavior has to be pursued consistently to be validated. Conformity also provides the Tribe with its primary identity and enforcement of traditions.
Identity The merging of group and individual identity is a major part of social evolution. In the Individual state the identity might be summarized as “I am.” In the Family stage it becomes “We are.” In the Tribe stage it becomes “We believe.” The identity of the Tribe stage is their unique culture.
Discipline Discipline is part internal and part external. The boundary is where we have different behaviors in a group than we have alone. Both parts enforce [most, all?] of social behaviors.
Diversity Diversity in the Tribe stage is in direct conflict with the behavior of conformity and provides a dynamic balance as it does in all of life. The diversity among tribal cultures, among tribes, provides the dynamic flexibility essential for survival in cyclically varying conditions. As external conditions change, the populations of those tribes with more effective cultures increase while those with less effective cultures decrease. When conditions revert, so do the populations. Diversity among tribes also support dispersal across climates and [biomes]. It also reinforces the distinction of identities between tribes.
Gullibility There are constant examples supporting the adages that “people will believe anything” and “there is a sucker born every minute.” Surprisingly, there are major survival benefits to this instinctive failure of reason in the Tribe stage. The greater the diversity of cultures among tribes, the better the survival prospects are for the species as explored under diversity. The identity of tribes is based on the common belief system and there are numerous behaviors supporting conformity. The fundamental gullibility of humanity supports this diversity and subsequent irrational human behavior.
Blame And Punish This practice [institution?] is a combination of behaviors that yield multiple benefits. The practice is founded on a belief, also traditional, that anything that goes wrong for the tribe is the result of one or more people not practicing the traditions correctly. The remedy for the undesired situation is simply to identify those guilty for misbehavior (or scapegoats.) Once identified, those blamed are punished until they correct their behavior. In extreme cases, the punishment is lethal. Traditions actively protecting the tribe are often called taboos. Since breaking taboos presume to put the survival of the tribe at risk, the punishment is usually severe: banishment or execution.
The direct benefit is as a mechanism to enforce attention and devotion to traditions. An indirect, but powerful, benefit is providing another layer of certainty for the populace in the face of adversity. Another indirect benefit is supporting the tribe's delusion of control over their lives in the face of overpowering natural forces.
Innovation Innovation is an opposing influence to many of the primary behaviors of Tribe stage societies. It is suppressed by their importance. The primordial behavior of consistency opposes innovation, as does conformity, traditionalism, and blame-punishment. Tribe societies are firmly facing the past as they move through the present. Innovation faces the future. The survival impact of past lessons is greater than the benefits from innovation through this stage of social evolution. Innovation's window of opportunity arises from the fact that traditions, for most of the half million years tribes have existed, are sustained by oral history. Combined with assent from consensus, it is relatively easy to add or subtract traditions to the tribe's culture.
Certainty Certainty has been repeatedly reinforced by survival since the Individual stage where confusion was an invitation to become someone else's meal. In the Tribe stage it supports conformity, devotion to traditions and the tribe's identity. It is also supported itself by nature's fundamental Consistency Imperative.
Bigotry Bigotry is an extreme of conviction. Avid belief in the tribe's culture returned the gifts of certainty and identity. Where conviction distorts into bigotry is where “I am sure I am right” extends to “I am right and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.” In the extreme of bigotry, and the most dangerous form, it is combined with the ultimate power of tribal survival instincts “I am right and anyone who disagrees with me is a threat to the survival of my tribe.” That is the doorway to predatory warfare. Since it is based on certainty, bigotry's origins can be traced back to the Individual stage.
Exclusion The instinct to exclude, xenophobia, supports conformity, dedication to traditions and particularly the diversity among tribes. Active exclusion means anyone who does not conform is excluded from the tribe and therefore an enemy. Passive exclusion means that anyone not part of the tribe is an enemy and to be avoided. This instinct counter balances the community instinct which would otherwise tend to absorb other cultures diluting diversity.
Inclusion of people who conform to the tribe's culture reigns within the community.
Leadership Leadership in the Tribe stage takes two forms. One is to exhibit perfect devotion to the tribe's culture, particularly the traditions. This function was split off to a priesthood in more complex tribes. The second form is the role of coordinator to provide direction to tribal projects. Coordinated cooperation is much more effective than random voluntary cooperation unless the leadership has no vision of the process underway.
The leader of the tribes is a preeminent father figure reprising the role from the Family stage for the whole community.
Obedience Obedience is a refinement of cooperation that was initiated in the first parenting of the Individual stage. Progeny who obeyed the instruction of a first parent had a much high rate of survival to reproduction. Cooperation covers respecting other members of the community, the opposite of treating them as prey. Obedience is the behavior to follow instructions given by a leader which was strongly reinforced in the Family stage and again in the Tribe stage in pursuit of coordinated cooperation.
Progression and Regression Progress is always an experiment. The biggest benefit is to learn what does and doesn't work and why. Regress is the opposite of progress, the abandonment or rejection of innovation. The two form a dynamic equilibrium of opposing influences. When in balance, regression restrains excessively risky progress while progress experiments in innovation. A tribe is fundamentally devoted to the results of previous innovations to the exclusion or suppression of innovation. Conformity is an opposite influence to progress while diversity encourages it.
Specialization In the Individual stage, there are no specialists, just generalists. Each organism has to provide for its own survival in all ways. As the benefits of cooperation provided a better food supply, there was time to take advantage of specialized talents. By the tribe stage, the best club maker could make clubs for the whole community which in turn fed the specialists. As tools and weapons became more technical, the skills of the specialists would be passed on to their children and later to their apprentices. All of this improved the tribes survival.
Leaders and warriors are examples of specialists found in most tribes.
Productivity The productivity of a tribe can be measured in what portion of the community were necessary to provide food for the tribe. Coordinated, cooperative activities provided massive improvements over individual, isolated efforts so long as the goal and procedures were known. Group hunting and group gathering gained more food and better managed to carry it back to the camp. This is also an exercise in specialization as the best hunters would hunt and the best gatherers would gather. Less adequate hunters and gatherers could be used to chelp carry food back to the camp. They could also be used to supervise and defend the camp while the hunters and gatherers were in the field.
Specialization and coordination combined to provide tribes with more and better food, tools and weapons.
Warriors In the Individual stage, everyone was a warrior in lethal competition with everyone else. This predatory behavior had to be limited inside a community but still be needed to defend the community against other communities. In the Tribe stage, warriors were essential to defend the tribe from predation by other tribes. The role of warriors was to be as violent as possible toward other tribes while being cooperative with members of their own tribe. The crazy-making can be summarized: Warriors spent the day slaughtering the neighbors and then came home to make nice with the in-laws. It was the responsibility of the leadership to try to maintain this insanity.
In the early Tribe stage, everyone was a warrior, a militia, when called upon to defend the tribe. As tribes became more sophisticated, the role of warrior became an occupation, freeing others to perform the more peaceful duties of the tribe. The tribe with the best warriors survived and could even prey on other tribes, obtaining slaves and wives to expand the gene pool. There was a gender specialization as well. Women were cast in roles of encouraging warriors by subjugating themselves, caring for the wounded and, when necessary, attempting to limit violent outbreaks within the community.
Schism The opposite of cooperation and community is schismatic behavior. When a tribe became too successful, too big, there were problems with finding enough food, with maintaining any form a sanitation, with disease and with disorder. Big tribes were too good at conquering other tribes. Being too good reduced the overall diversity of the tribes. Big tribes needed to reproduce themselves by splitting and the schism could follow a demarcation between opposing leadership. It could also follow a crevasse between conflicted interpretations of traditions. Once the split occurred, diversity was increased and the two tribes became enemies.