The explicit search for a tribe is, in many ways, so much a product of our era.
I get this, and I offer my well documented predicament that I found best articulated by Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity. Like Rorty, I never quite gelled with any tribe in the sense that normal socialization didn't stick. This leads, if one wants to participate in community at all, to irony, i.e., performing the social expectations even though one does them as a sort of hollow mimicry all while feeling the utter nihilistic contingency of that fact that this sociocultural act or expectation is totally arbitrary, yet one must act as if it isn't.
Thoughtful as always. I’ve been using the term “tribe” for years to speak of my community that exists across so many different boarders. Most of them are creatively driven, even if that means they have a day job, i.e. almost always. But more recently, as I enter my mid 30s, I’ve noticed the disparity between what I’ve come to see as a more traditional/American form of ambition that’s usually related to material wealth and/or public recognition (which is really just another word for high school grade popularity), and people, my tribe, who are more interested in figuring out how to feel fulfilled without any external validation. Thanks for inspiring these many thoughts.
Well said, Samuél. Appreciate your other comment about self-promotion hiding in the sheepskin of self-actualization. I really hate caring about "likes" and other metrics. The only way to truly escape that trap is by solving the money problem another way and taking art out of it. Easier said than done.
A very simple way that I've come to understand the gap between traditional ambition and my/our tribe is the ability to lose track of time while in conversation. I've found that those who attracted by traditional ambition have terribly short attention spans. They don't care about following the vein of a thought like a seam of ore. They'll stop listening to anyone who does. But when you find your tribe, it's not hard to talk until the sun comes up. I miss that.
I really dig the image of the seam of an ore. I must day, one of the great joys of living in Paris is that perhaps more than most places,
there is an implicit understanding that deep conversation is a fundamental part of what it means to civilized. Terrace culture just doesn’t work with a gaggle tourists on their cell phones; and that’s why gaggles of tourists have built a myth that the French are rude, when in fact the rudeness is often coming from the other side.
What if I don’t sign up and read the essay, what are your thoughts on the neoliberal
agenda masquerading as self-actualisation when it’s actually only ever about self-promotion? I don’t mean to put you on the spot I actually just think this is an essential subject, how to stay true to connecting with a fellow tribe without making it more about a follower count.
Very interesting thinking trough of the subject. I have a somewhat contrary response, maybe, to Josh's reflection on relationship to his Montana "tribal" community. What I read in this is the idea that ultimately for you, Sam -- for me -- tribe is a kind of affinity of the spirit that transcends, for some of us, more artificial (physical community) or biological (blood or genetic relationship). For creative people, writers, that affinity can be felt across all boundaries, as you felt it with Kundera and Milosz, and even time, as I felt it at a very young age with Camus. This is all very deeply personal, individual, and idiosyncratic, of course, so my experience that most other tribes will ultimately fail or disappoint in their bondedness may be that too.
Totally agree with this, Jay, and naturally there is no occasion for reciprocity with writers like Camus. But I think the principle of reciprocity that I'm associating with my Montana community (and which I haven't practiced as well as I might have) can still apply to these looser affinities with fellow writers. In fact, the neoliberal ideal of competition and achievement often gets in the way of that. We often see each other as rivals rather than as comrades. I hear Sam questioning that premise, and I share his feeling there.
Quite agree. As I thought to start, we were looking from different angles, you focused on your own contributions to community and generously critiquing yourself. Your take from Sam about a rivals/comrades tension is a good one, too.
Lots to love here, Sam. I had this feeling while participating in the Prague Summer program last year: sitting around a workshop table with true believers every day. There is an inherent contradiction, though, between the idea of a tribe and your word "fictive." We have something like that here at Inner Life and on Substack more generally. But because it's loose, virtual, more figurative than literal, there isn't the same accountability that comes with my sense of tribal identity. In those fictive tribes, we reap the benefits without really being obligated to any common purposes. Or at least there aren't any consequences for the more self-serving experience of the tribe.
I thought about this last week while visiting Montana. I have a deep kinship with many people there, including family and high school classmates. And I feel that taproot in a tribal identity every time I visit. I'd love nothing more than to return to that community, to that landscape. But I also realize that I've been skimming the cream for decades. After I left for college, I didn't really *do* anything to reciprocate what the community gave to me. I wrote about my feelings of exile in my memoir, I made good on the educational promise that my teachers saw in me, but mostly I was part of a brain drain from rural America. I didn't advocate for my home community in any meaningful way after the timber and mining industries waned. And the deep pleasure I get from a week's vacation there is a kind of lie, since I don't have to weather the economic and social realities of living there year-round.
William Cronon described this as a paradox in liberal education, that we are liberated by our college communities when they encourage our freedom and growth, but that we are also bound to those communities in return, obligated to give back in some way. I had a sense of that while teaching at a small college. I have less of a sense of it now as a freelance writer and coach. And I know that while many Montanans would still claim me as one of their own, to others I'm one of those who left, who didn't stay to fight against gentrification and government overreach. In which case I'm not a part of the tribe at all. I sold that birthright for a college degree and greener pastures.
That might depend on what one's relationship to that community was. My relationship to my rural Maine community was quiet alienation, and I never felt any need to give anything back. Even now, twenty five years later, I still don't feel that need.
In contrast, my communal sense with my boarding highschool (public charter magnet school) community is near fanatical, and that's shared by many of us. The difference is that the latter wasn't formed by a place, but shared purpose.
So, I ask you, what is the connection between community and what one owes?
The explicit search for a tribe is, in many ways, so much a product of our era.
I get this, and I offer my well documented predicament that I found best articulated by Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity. Like Rorty, I never quite gelled with any tribe in the sense that normal socialization didn't stick. This leads, if one wants to participate in community at all, to irony, i.e., performing the social expectations even though one does them as a sort of hollow mimicry all while feeling the utter nihilistic contingency of that fact that this sociocultural act or expectation is totally arbitrary, yet one must act as if it isn't.
This is the most thoughtful piece I’ve read in a very long time. Thank you.
Thoughtful as always. I’ve been using the term “tribe” for years to speak of my community that exists across so many different boarders. Most of them are creatively driven, even if that means they have a day job, i.e. almost always. But more recently, as I enter my mid 30s, I’ve noticed the disparity between what I’ve come to see as a more traditional/American form of ambition that’s usually related to material wealth and/or public recognition (which is really just another word for high school grade popularity), and people, my tribe, who are more interested in figuring out how to feel fulfilled without any external validation. Thanks for inspiring these many thoughts.
Well said, Samuél. Appreciate your other comment about self-promotion hiding in the sheepskin of self-actualization. I really hate caring about "likes" and other metrics. The only way to truly escape that trap is by solving the money problem another way and taking art out of it. Easier said than done.
A very simple way that I've come to understand the gap between traditional ambition and my/our tribe is the ability to lose track of time while in conversation. I've found that those who attracted by traditional ambition have terribly short attention spans. They don't care about following the vein of a thought like a seam of ore. They'll stop listening to anyone who does. But when you find your tribe, it's not hard to talk until the sun comes up. I miss that.
I really dig the image of the seam of an ore. I must day, one of the great joys of living in Paris is that perhaps more than most places,
there is an implicit understanding that deep conversation is a fundamental part of what it means to civilized. Terrace culture just doesn’t work with a gaggle tourists on their cell phones; and that’s why gaggles of tourists have built a myth that the French are rude, when in fact the rudeness is often coming from the other side.
Same in Prague
Wise man. What a fantastic town.
I think, based on this essay, that you might like to read this essay. It's behind a pay wall but you can sign up to read two free articles per month.
https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/scholarship-and-the-future-of-society/
What if I don’t sign up and read the essay, what are your thoughts on the neoliberal
agenda masquerading as self-actualisation when it’s actually only ever about self-promotion? I don’t mean to put you on the spot I actually just think this is an essential subject, how to stay true to connecting with a fellow tribe without making it more about a follower count.
Very interesting thinking trough of the subject. I have a somewhat contrary response, maybe, to Josh's reflection on relationship to his Montana "tribal" community. What I read in this is the idea that ultimately for you, Sam -- for me -- tribe is a kind of affinity of the spirit that transcends, for some of us, more artificial (physical community) or biological (blood or genetic relationship). For creative people, writers, that affinity can be felt across all boundaries, as you felt it with Kundera and Milosz, and even time, as I felt it at a very young age with Camus. This is all very deeply personal, individual, and idiosyncratic, of course, so my experience that most other tribes will ultimately fail or disappoint in their bondedness may be that too.
Totally agree with this, Jay, and naturally there is no occasion for reciprocity with writers like Camus. But I think the principle of reciprocity that I'm associating with my Montana community (and which I haven't practiced as well as I might have) can still apply to these looser affinities with fellow writers. In fact, the neoliberal ideal of competition and achievement often gets in the way of that. We often see each other as rivals rather than as comrades. I hear Sam questioning that premise, and I share his feeling there.
Quite agree. As I thought to start, we were looking from different angles, you focused on your own contributions to community and generously critiquing yourself. Your take from Sam about a rivals/comrades tension is a good one, too.
Lots to love here, Sam. I had this feeling while participating in the Prague Summer program last year: sitting around a workshop table with true believers every day. There is an inherent contradiction, though, between the idea of a tribe and your word "fictive." We have something like that here at Inner Life and on Substack more generally. But because it's loose, virtual, more figurative than literal, there isn't the same accountability that comes with my sense of tribal identity. In those fictive tribes, we reap the benefits without really being obligated to any common purposes. Or at least there aren't any consequences for the more self-serving experience of the tribe.
I thought about this last week while visiting Montana. I have a deep kinship with many people there, including family and high school classmates. And I feel that taproot in a tribal identity every time I visit. I'd love nothing more than to return to that community, to that landscape. But I also realize that I've been skimming the cream for decades. After I left for college, I didn't really *do* anything to reciprocate what the community gave to me. I wrote about my feelings of exile in my memoir, I made good on the educational promise that my teachers saw in me, but mostly I was part of a brain drain from rural America. I didn't advocate for my home community in any meaningful way after the timber and mining industries waned. And the deep pleasure I get from a week's vacation there is a kind of lie, since I don't have to weather the economic and social realities of living there year-round.
William Cronon described this as a paradox in liberal education, that we are liberated by our college communities when they encourage our freedom and growth, but that we are also bound to those communities in return, obligated to give back in some way. I had a sense of that while teaching at a small college. I have less of a sense of it now as a freelance writer and coach. And I know that while many Montanans would still claim me as one of their own, to others I'm one of those who left, who didn't stay to fight against gentrification and government overreach. In which case I'm not a part of the tribe at all. I sold that birthright for a college degree and greener pastures.
Josh,
That might depend on what one's relationship to that community was. My relationship to my rural Maine community was quiet alienation, and I never felt any need to give anything back. Even now, twenty five years later, I still don't feel that need.
In contrast, my communal sense with my boarding highschool (public charter magnet school) community is near fanatical, and that's shared by many of us. The difference is that the latter wasn't formed by a place, but shared purpose.
So, I ask you, what is the connection between community and what one owes?