Look at this awful trigger discipline…
It’s good to be back writing for Carpe Forum again. Apologies for the long delay, but one must make ends meet and put bread on the table. Aside from work, one of the things I’ve been working on has been a project on feuding during the Middle Ages. In my reading, I stumbled across the work of the anthropologist Max Gluckman, and it’s changed the way I view current political situation in the US, so I thought I’d share my thoughts with you all.
Gluckman is known for his work among tribal groups in Africa, particularly focusing on conflict within and between tribal groups. In 1955, he wrote the article “The Peace in the Feud,” which looks at the Nuer people in what is today South Sudan. Gluckman looks specifically at how the Nuer allow for different levels of violence in feuding depending on who they are feuding with. For example, when feuding inside their tribal groups the Nuer are not allowed to fight using deadly weapons such spears. When an outside tribe comes that threatens all of the feuding parties, the parties temporarily band together and whip out all the deadly weapons to fight the invaders with all due force. He notes that it is the proximity of different groups that determines the level of violence allowed. Neighboring tribes who the Nuer share grazing land with will likely avenge extreme violence with extreme violence, and so they are not fought as viciously as groups who the Nuer rarely come into contact with. Anybody who’s read any history can point out that this feuding structure isn’t unique to the Nuer, but can be seen among cultures around the world. As the Somali proverb states, “Me and my nation against the world. Me and my clan against the nation. Me and my family against the clan. Me and my brother against the family. Me against my brother.”
But what about those of us who live in our “modern” world? Surely we’ve put those “barbaric” tendencies of the past behind us and have the bright future of our current era to look forward to, right? While this progressive view of history is crammed down all of our throats in school and we are inundated with it every day in our media, a cursory examination of the past century paints a very different picture (some notable examples of modern depravity include this, this, and this). As the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (perhaps best know for writing the Serentity Prayer) said, the only Christian doctrine that can be objectively proven by looking at history is that of Original Sin. Humans are inclined to do horrible things. As an eccentric academic recently stated, humans are basically murder-apes. This is, like, um, a problem, ‘mkay?
So it’s safe to say that we “modern” humans have not escaped our basic predation instincts, and it’s also safe to say that we won’t be getting rid of them anytime soon. But how well do tribal feuding dynamics scale to deal with restraining violence at a modern scale? It’d be easy to write off Gluckman’s thoughts as only pertaining to small tribal groups, but I contend that they remind us how little humans have changed in this regard. Consider your run-of-the-mill family feud.
Even in your family, you are often forced to make peace far more readily with those who live in your household than with those you only see every Christmas. Aunt Bev only has to be dealt with once a year and who cares what she thinks, but your spouse is someone who you do NOT want to be engaged in a long-term feud with (the couch quickly gets uncomfortable). The more proximity, the more pressure to find some sort of a peace or equilibrium. There’s wisdom here.
This of course isn’t to say that no horrible things ever happen between people or groups in everyday contact, but it is a notable factor in determining the severity of disagreements and differences. For tribal groups such as the Nuer, proximity oftentimes means physical proximity. Groups who live farther away tend to be fought more violently. But unlike the Nuer, those of us living in America live in a hyperconnected and highly mobile society. “Proximity” for us probably should not be seen as pure physical proximity. As someone on the right who lives in one of the most progressive places in the country, I can tell you from personal experience that the people I’m physically closest to almost always have no actual proximity to me religiously, culturally, or politically. But if we expand our definition of “proximity” to one that emphasizes common culture and values, this accounts for a lot of the situation in America today. While there are more than two different tribes feuding today, a couple general groupings of tribes are forming. If you’re reading this, I think I can guess which one you lean more towards.
So how can we attempt to find peace in the feud? Is the solution to ramp up our rules of engagement for those culturally farthest from us? Remember the whole murder-ape thing? Yeah? Ok, don’t do that. Rarely turns out well. Rural parts of America innately grasp this. A good friend of mine from Alaska recently pointed out that the cities are crazy because there are no bears.
In places where nature can easily kill you, even people who hate each other will still look out for each other at least to a bare minimum, because they understand how uncaring the world actually is. You still want the neighbor you dislike to warn you if a bear is going through your garbage, and so you do the same for him. In cities, “someone else” will deal with the problem. Why would you ever bother doing something about rampant drug use and mental health patients being turned out on the street? The “state” or the “experts” will deal with that problem. You can just push that responsibility onto someone else. Aside from the damage to others, the downside to this is that when you find yourself in need, you’re surrounded by people who have no desire to help. This creates a negative feedback loop, which is very, very difficult to break once it’s entrenched.
So, solutions? It’s not a magic bullet, but in line with the Nuer I’d say let’s start with building a tribe. Actively create a culture of people who give a shit about things, who help each other, and who push back against the Current Thing. It can be a local tribe, or a tribe (such as this place right here on Carpe Forum) that exists across space and time. What matters is that the tribe fosters a spirit of togetherness, and its members know that, if feud does come, their fellow tribal members got their back.
It might not be “peace,” but it IS structure, and we as humans need this. So go make your tribe. Invite fellow people of good will to join, and look out for each other. As an accountable monarch once said, “we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life”. Otherwise the bears and the murder-apes threaten to overrun us.