Sunday, October 18, 2009

tribal relations

Modern humans live lives radically different from the ones evolution prepared us for. If you would know yourself, and understand modern problems from a more elemental level, you must understand the life humans lived for our first 200,000 years.
Archaeology tells us our social unit was the tribe, numbering 100 persons or so. Biology tells us this too; a recent study revealed that the maximum number of people our brains can relate to as distinct individuals is around 150. Beyond that, we have to resort to hierarchy and stereotype.
Tribes were largely egalitarian, with little or no concept of private property. They were also the original idle rich. Creature comforts were easily met with two to three hours of work per day, leaving the rest of the time for leisurely pursuits. So if you decide to disparage Uncle Moe for doing nothing but sitting on the couch and expelling gas from both ends, or your step-neice Ashley for her inability to hold down a full-time job, the scientific arguments will be on their side.
You can read the writings of Marshall Salins and Richard Borshay Lee for more tribal insight. The angle that popped into my mind is interpersonal relationships.
In a modern society, how many people of your peer group will you come into contact with in your lifetime? Thousands is a conservative estimate. For the more mobile, tens of thousands is possible. If we include our "peers" from movies and television and the internet, 100,000 is not out of the question.
How many peers did tribal life prepare us for?
Let's postulate a tribe of 120, and break the tribe into age groups. For most of human history, we didn't live past forty, so let's say there are four peer groups by age in each tribe: children (1-10), youths (10-20), adults (20-30), and the elderly (30-40). So the size of your peer group would be one quarter of the tribe - thirty people. Halve that number, as the idea of men and women as peers is a revolutionary new concept in the course of human history. You're down to fifteen people.
Fifteen peers.
How did you get along with the other kids in first grade? Was there one you hated? Were you popular but lonely? An outcast with one true friend? A leader loved by all? Somewhere quietly in the middle?
Imagine time freezing in first grade, and the members of that class being the only peers you get for the rest of your life.
In my own childhood, each new grade brought a subtle reshuffling of my place in the class, which stayed largely the same until third grade, when my personality burst within the group dynamic, and i became the class clown.
I had never been that before, nor would i ever be again in such an unqualified way.
But in a tribal society, there is no third grade. Imagine the childhood peer you got along with least. Was there one particular person dedicated to making your life miserable? For me it was an arrogant churl named Dean. Now imagine that person being there, close at hand, your entire life. Tribal interdependence precluded homicide or running away. Modern life allows us to discard individuals we don't like...maybe not always right away, but always eventually.
How much better at conflict resolution were we, as tribal humans? Or how much better were we at simply accepting a certain amount of unresolvable misery?
What if your greatest nemesis had never been a part of your life, or what if he or she were with you every single day forever? How would you be different from who you are now? Maybe your nemesis would eventually become a friend. All sorts of miracles can happen...it took me a couple decades, but i've grown attached to Yoko's stuff on DOUBLE FANTASY.
And romantically...suppose you met your true love in fourth grade? Or tenth grade? Or when you were seventy-five, like Tony Randall? In a tribal society, that's not gonna happen. You're frozen with first grade. What if there wasn't any girl or boy you particularly fancied? That's your life, huckleberry. So much of our lives are consumed by the search for that special one who is right for us. But in a tribal society, that's nonsense. Maybe you get lucky, but i'm guessing not many love stories for the ages came out of tribal societies.
Or maybe our modern expectations are the myth.
Think about all the relationships in your life that didn't work out. Then imagine that you could never walk away from them. But wait, the fact that you picked such and such a person in the first place...if that had been your choice in a tribal society, you had a pool of fifteen from which to go shipoopie shopping. Where do you go if the relationship goes sour? Obviously, the person you were with had been your best option. Move on to choice #2, who's probably not available anyway?
The answer is you didn't move on.
Compromise. Acceptance.
Skills we have moved away from in this post-post-modern world.
How many failed relationships would we have worked at harder, if we didn't live in a world where humans are dispensable?
And i understand that "failed relationship" is a prejudicial term, based on the fallacious belief that humans are monogamous. Must a relationship which provided intimacy and healing, but fell apart, be labeled a "failure"?
No.
Just take care that your head isn't so far in the clouds, that you miss the chance to love the person or people who are standing in front of you. Maybe your last love wasn't perfect, but maybe "perfect" is some bizarre modern tyranny, leading many to lives of unfulfilled searching, or marriage number five.
Of course, there's the story of the lovers who are peas in a pod, finding each other only after a long road of loneliness. I'm not suggesting a return to tribal ways...and the freedom to leave someone is not one i would wish to lose. But perhaps the degree to which we view a new friend or lover as dispensable, perhaps this attitude needs more scrutiny than we give it, particularly through the lens of the lives that evolution made us suited for.

1 comment:

Max said...

There's a lot of anthropology on this sort of thing. Obviously inbreeding discourages tribes of 120 people from being closed units. In an african culture I studied, about ten tribes met up at the watering holes once a year and people could shuffle around, both to escape bad situations and for marriage.

That said, you present a fascinating point to ponder on. I've often wondered how love must have worked back in the days of arranged, divorceless, young marriages. Surely most people then, as now, found happiness? I think love and affection for people is far more malleable than we'd like to think. Unfortunately, our civilization doesn't preclude a better mate coming along, so we will be haunted with that what-if somewhat more than our distant ancestors.