Fate of Tribes in a Cosmo-Local World

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• Article: Beirut - Istanbul - Athens: the fate of tribes in a cosmo-local world: A more personal travelogue that starts in a Lebanese mountain community and ends up in a network nation. Michel Bauwens, Nov 19, 2023.

URL = https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/beirut-istanbul-athens-the-fate-of

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Michel Bauwens:

This is not a theoretical piece, but rather a record of my subjective experiences during a very interesting trip that brought me to three cities, while visiting three different types of tribal realities that persist in our high tech world. One is rooted in the world before modernity, but has quite successfully adapted to it, the second is a quintessentially modern political tribe, and the third is a definitely meta-modern one. (I want to stress that dividing these tribes in terms of ‘temporal’ origin, does not imply a value judgment.)

Before Covid struck, I had become a world-weary traveler, doing from 60 to 100 conferences a year since 2013, and ending up with a severe case of diagnosed ‘adrenaline fatigue’. So to be honest, the Covid years came a bit as a relief, allowing to stay with my family for several years, and to engage in a deep study of ‘Civilizational Analysis’, systematically reading the macrohistorians. But given the fairly monastic life and its routine, and it is with enthusiasm that I embarked on this journey, responding to a number of invitations.

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My first step was Beirut, but more precisely, a northern Lebanese mountain town of the Maronite community, called Miziara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miziara), to visit and confer with my colleague and research assistant. Indeed, I am engaged in the writing of a book on ‘mutual coordination’ economics (https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Mutual_Coordination), and my colleague is engaged in setting up a ‘Fourth Sector’ decentralized p2p project for his local community, which is rooted in the local ethics of cooperation. Now I am quite familiar with more familial communities, since I live in Northern Thailand, have a Thai wife, and have been accepted in her extended family, many of which live literally next door, and others come regularly for visits. Given that my mother-in-law, who is 95, had 11 brothers and sisters, who each had on average 3-4 children, who also then subsequently had one or two children, this gives you an idea of the extension of such a family. The sense of solidarity, i.e. the view that the family is a commons, is already quite palpable in this northern region of Thailand,’Lanna’, who also has a history of matrilinearity.

But the Lebanese situation is quite different. First of all, the village has its own ‘water commons’, based on papers and agreements dating to Ottoman rule, and respected by the Lebanese state. Second, the village crowdfunds its own physical security (the town is surrounded by three self-managed guard posts), social security (which includes running a hospital and housing for the poor), but also builds its own road. It can do this in part because Lebanon is the country with the largest level of remittances from outside, having a huge expat community in countries like Brazil (nearly 5 million Lebanese in the country vs 14 million outside, is the often cited approximate number). Of course, this community is very embedded in the current time frame, globally connected to its diaspora, but still, I would say that the tribal dynamics are a direct continuation and adaptation of the prior situation before modernity. So this type of family and tribal dynamic is not just a family living in conditions of a modern state, but rather a substantially self-managed community that survives and thrives under conditions of a hollowed out state, and manages advanced technology and global communitarian solidarity to its own advantage. Maronites are also still very wedded to their particular minoritarian religion, though formally linked to the Papacy, and these are all factors that bind the community. When I was staying there four weeks ago, there were always people in the chapels, shrines and churches, at different times of the day. Miziara is also an important pilgrimage site. So unlike the Western European countries, this is not a place where religious practice has died, though I do imagine it is less intense than it once was.

My third step was in Athens, where I have been confronted with the implosion of the Syriza party, the party of the left. I place this in the second place of my description, as it belongs to the temporal order of political modernity. In short, a former Goldman Sachs executive, Stephanos Kassalakis, won the party primary as an outsider, upending the control of the left social-democratic party membership and leadership, leading to a multi-facetted split and many people leaving the party, so it is widely seen as an implosion. It is often said the left/right polarity has lost its importance and legitimacy, and this is indicative of a general crisis of the Western left. The situation in Greece remains peculiar because it never had a strong industrial base (except shipping perhaps), and was a country that until recently remained wedded to a SME-craft based economy, heavily relying on the touristic sector, perhaps even more so today, as a strategic response to the debt crisis. I was told that it was unusual to have so many tourists in Athens in November. The weakening of the left is part of a general trend, which may also be said to affect its traditional counterparts on the right, as both have been challenged by populist upstarts in recent decades. Thomas Piketty already noted more than a decade ago, that the left had moved from its industrial base in the working class, to become the party of the cognitive urbanites (i.e. the more educated part of the population, engaged in ‘symbolic’ work, which he called the ‘brahmin left’), while what remains of the industrial working class has largely moved its support to the populist right, or has stopped voting altogether. This is true in Western Europe, as well as in North America. So in response, the sociologically transformed left has generally moved to embrace minority-based identitarian concerns, including sometimes the most extreme forms of ‘wokism’ which in many countries has become the de facto managerial ideology and has become an institutional reality. At the same time, they have not only accepted the declining neoliberal order, of which they became the ‘softer type’ of managers, but become the staunchest defenders of the status quo, and moving to authoritarian positions concerning pluralism and free speech. Many progressive parties have recently also transformed in supporting war efforts. On the other side of the spectrum, there seems to be a convergence between blue collar concerns and the defense of older identities such as nation-state, ethnicity or religious identities. It would seem that currently, the political representation of the urban precariat is linked to one faction of the ruling class, the non-territorial ‘globalistic’ faction, while those involved in physical work, are converging towards an alliance with the more territorially linked factions. ‘Defending the empire at the cost of the nation’ stands against ‘defending the nation at the cost of the empire’, as it were. For the people of the old left, who have a historical linkage with working class identity and the universal concern of global popular solidarity, these are very hard times, and this was reflected in my conversations with Syriza members, marked by a strong sense of nostalgia. My own proposed ‘solution’ to this crisis has been in seeking a renewal of universalist subjectivity through the construction of commons, and I have reported on this continuously. But in Greece, the signs did not seem good. Many times, my correspondents would point out that the place where we were eating ‘used to be’ a cooperative, that the squats had been closed leading to a huge crisis in finding even places for self-organization, and most neo-rurals had returned to the cities. So, my first impressions, but I must admit these are subjective, is that the commons were not doing that well in Greece, at least not in their public face. To balance this subjective account, I must add that other correspondents told me the social, cooperative and solidarity economy were actually doing better than before, but that they had de-politicised their presence and activities, focusing on economic survival and self-strengthening, becoming less visible to the press and activists.

The latter interpretation would be consistent with reports I am getting from my network in other places in Western Europe, and even outside of it in countries such as Brazil, where my correspondents assure me that after a dip due to Covid, their projects are actually growing substantially, and faster than before Covid. For example, check out how Comuna is doing in Brussels, or Curto Cafe in Brazil, with both projects growing at a crisp pace. Paradoxically, in my experience, it is precisely when all avenues seem closed, that more radical shifts are poised to take place. I remain therefore very curious and interested as to the evolution of the Greek social and political field. I am optimistic in the longer run, as I believe in the hypothesis of the ‘Pulsation of the Commons’, which shows, based on historical evidence, that periods of market-state crisis, i.e. the descending cycles of societal evolution, are marked by a eventual revival of commons-based practices and institutions. I see no reason why Greece would be an exception to this rule, even if it momentarily is. If you have evidence that despite my observations and the testimonies I received, that the Commons are actually doing well, do let me know. However, the fact remains that in Greece, as in many other core European countries, the historical left is losing ground, perhaps at an accelerating pace, while the populist right is making advances nearly everywhere. In this framing, the forces of modernity, including the political affinity tribes that were typical of this period, are indeed weakening.

Anyway, I hope you can see the contrast so far, between a Lebanese community rooted in premodern dynamics, and which seems to manage to adapt well to ‘transmodern’ conditions, and a movement based on our industrial modern era, which seems to be not doing well at all. I do believe it is correct to talk about these modern movements as ‘ideological tribes’, and we should not forget that until a few decades ago, these civil society and political movements possessed a network of institutions that were deeply influential in the daily life of their adherents, providing identity, solidarity and many services. As a young Flemish Belgian, I remember there were ‘red gyms’, ‘blue social insurance’, etc .. These political tribes enveloped and gave meaning to daily life. Their weakening and disappearance has created a ‘meaning crisis’, a ‘identity crisis’.

So let’s now discuss my experience with the transmodern crypto-nomadic community, whom I would spend two weeks with in Istanbul, where they organized a second self-organized ‘pop-up academy’. In many ways, these new digitally-native tribes are an answer to the crisis of the first and second kind of tribe. So, it is important to note that what I am describing is largely ‘digitally native’, i.e. born in the digital sphere, even if it becomes physically rooted in real life, and that their mode of operation is translocal. This is of course a ‘question of degree’. The first kind of communitarian tribe, expanded physically through its diaspora, relying on modern electronic media to communicate and organize itself; and the second type of political tribes, often had transnational ideologies that allowed for inter-national coordination.

The example I want to describe is called Zuzalu, and is part of the community efforts of the Ethereum community, with the support and partial financing of Vitalik Buterin, one of the main co-founders of Ethereum. The first event took place from March to May in Lustica Bay, a ‘relatively private’ beach town in Montenegro, and was billed as a pop-up city on the broad theme of ‘Longevity’. It was not an obvious thing for me to attend, but I was invited for a side event, ‘Critiquing the Network State’, that was organized by Primavera de Filippi, a French blockchain scholar and fellow at the Berkman Center in Yale, and the ‘Blockchain Socialist’, attended by a number of ‘crypto commoners’.

Some important background:

There are now an estimated 35 million digital nomads in the world, i.e. people that are able to work remotely and do not need to live in a particular place; of these five million have ‘crypto wallets’, and a sizeable number of those could probably considered ‘crypto nomads’, i.e. digital nomads that are associated with the production of products and services associated with crypto-based infrastructure, such as the people working around the Ethereum infrastructure, with Ethereum being the main standard for applications built on top of the blockchain ledger, originally associated with the Bitcoin currency.

I am somewhat familiar with this space, not because I am a coder or developer, but as an observer of these efforts to build a global mutual coordination network for coordinating economic activities, and I live in Chiang Mai, one of the more popular hubs. Before COVID, one local Facebook group counted 25,000 members and there were on average four crypto meetings per week in the city.

But digital nomads have a rather fragmented life, moving to different places, and in need of friendship, support networks and the like. Part of this concerns attending events where they can learn from each other and address common concerns.

Zuzalu Montenegro was part of this larger scene, but with important characteristics. It was meant for a particular subgroup of the Ethereum community: those that were interested in the generic theme of longevity, and those that are interested in crypto. I’d call them the ‘crypto-transhumanist’ community. Not typically the crowd I would associate with, as a critic of transhumanism who produced the TechnoCalyps documentary in the late 90s, but as I explained, I was there for the associated meeting. Lustica Bay is a privileged community with expensive housing, and requires a pass to enter with the car, so it is not exactly a private town but not made easily accessible for the common people of Montenegro, who are mostly present there as service workers. Quite a few billionaires and venture capitalists could be spotted around, but it would be a mistake to reduce attendance to the ultra-rich, as many young and self-funded coders attended as well. One should not forget that crypto is still a one trillion dollar economy, funding a lot of workers. Despite a certain native dislike of such elitist places, I could also recognize many positive community dynamics, for example, the capacity to discuss ‘hot’ topics without anger, something very rare these days, and in my view, a result of their ‘commons’ focus, i.e. they are all working on a infrastructure that will benefit all of them, regardless of their opinions on various topics. I also discovered the very vibrant investment in public goods, i.e. the dynamic financing of common infrastructure, through Gitcoin and other methods and funds. I was told that $75 million had already been dispersed. I also discovered rather intense efforts at ‘anti-oligarchic’ decision-making procedures, such as quadratic funding and voting, which gives preferential voting power to regular contributors. One contributor one vote, rather than one dollar one vote, as a means to make decisions regarding the allocation of common resources. I met brilliant young coders dedicated to fairness and justice, such as the Protocol Guild and the Mechanism Institute. As I gave my lectures on the role of crypto in the civilizational transition, I would be lucky enough to meet the particular community of the Global Chinese Commons (Uncommons on Twitter), who are very involved in the support of public goods, and are creating a network of physical spaces for both the Chinese diaspora and people of the mainland interested in legal work on crypto infrastructures. (conflict of interest statement: I am now helping them in their research efforts). These are earnest young, and less young people who are motivated to increase the work of Chinese developers on global crypto infrastructures, to discuss updates on what it means to be Chinese today, and seek collaboration across the board, while maintaining a strong Chinese identity. Although they are much more modest than I believe they should be, they are earnestly constructing a budding ‘network nation’, something that is not opposed to the nation state, but creates an added layer of global translocal cooperation on top of it. Check out 4seas.io in Chiang Mai, to see one of their ‘cosmo-local’ efforts. So my assessment of Zuzalu Montenegro was positive all in all, as I found a collaborative, pluralistic and open community at work there. Perhaps the physicality of the space helped as well, it was enough to walk on the beachside, and to meet various people sitting and talking in the cafe’s. Here was ‘superlinearity’ at work (https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Sublinear_vs._Superlinear_Scaling ): very intense mutual learning experiences through multiple encounters in a temporary physical space. It gives a hint how ‘transmodern’ and ‘translocal’ tribes can be both apart and together, by creating intense ‘pop-up cities’ and ‘pop-up academies’, where translocal separation is compensated regularly through intense physical proximity.

This time however, I attended ZuzaluConnect in Istanbul, for 2 weeks and 300 people only. The experience was less enthusing than my previous one. For several reasons. One is that the technical solutionism of ‘zero proof knowledge’, which allows participants to ‘prove’ certain facts without disclosing their fuller personal identity, was also interpreted culturally, i.e. we were not allowed to talk about the event and its panel externally. This suggests to me a certain closure. Also the pluralistic element, present last time because of the side event for crypto commoners, was largely absent. As a result, the libertarian-propertarian and transhumanist elements of the culture predominated, and it seemed that challenges and critiques were less appreciated. But I would not like to imply of course that this was entirely negative, as there was a strong presence of the public goods thematic, and various meetings about their governance issues. But I found the generic culture, based on game theory, austrian economics and engineering-based techno-solutionism, much less rich and varied than last time. As usual, ‘what you don’t know that you don’t know’ is the biggest problem of all, and there are limitations to this digitally-based, engineering-based, developer-based culture.

Balaji Srivanasan’s ideas of the ‘network state’ are quite premature, and its venture-capitalist bias is not my cup of tea, I want to see real citizenship and not shareholder-ship of a for-profit city structure, but the broader idea of translocal network communities is certainly at the order of the day, and Zuzalu events are one of the places where you can see its reality moving forward.

See it this way:

• We started with ‘little brother, little sister’, in small trust-based physical communities

• We moved to Big Father empires, united in larger physical spaces under a common fear and belief

• We transitioned to smaller scale nations with a ‘Big Brother’ state, where citizens are protected, and surveilled/controlled by nation-state institutions

Today, we are facing a ‘Big Mother’ globalistic phase under the control of the ‘techno-feudal’ social media platforms, in which we face global cultural control of acceptable speech, under the rule of a ‘well-meaning global elite’, but we can also fork to a improved, technology-enhanced, return to ‘Little Brother, Little Sister’, in which local communitarianism, and nation-state based solidarity, and identity formation, is supplemented by a return to a warmer, affinity-kinship based neotribalism. This is the bifurcation that the crypto world is, as yet imperfectly, working on, but they are in fact building a real-world global mutual coordination infrastructure that will eventually benefit humankind as a whole.

In this article, we have seen how three types of tribal arrangement are adapting, or failing to adapt, to the new possibilities. Paradoxically, it is the modern tribe that seems most affected and unable to adapt to the promise and perils of trans-local, voluntary neotribalism.

My claim would be that we should not replace the former modalities, but rather ‘transcend and include’ the best of the earlier formats of human community formation, some kind of synthesis of the Tribe, the Nation, and the Networked Neotribe.