Post-Tribal

Description

Jonathan Rowson:

"The post-tribal injunction is about recognising the problem of political polarisation and epistemic filter bubbles and facing up to the fact that humans cannot continue to be tribal but nonetheless have to be. This perspective implicates technology and the underlying business models of social media, but it is also about our complicity in that and opportunities to create alternatives. There is a deep and adaptive human need to belong, and belonging is meaningless unless it is somehow circumscribed, for instance by place or people or purpose. And yet, it is equally true that we need to expand our circles of belonging more than ever, perhaps to encompass the whole globe of eight or so billion people. And we have to try to do so in a way that is not warm and fuzzy but ultimately lame, and that means not being naïve about competing commitments, power imbalances, competitive pressures, incommensurate values and other features of life that inevitably undermine collaboration. We need a kind of post-tribal tribalism that recognises ‘We work’ is one of the most fundamental challenges of our time. It is hoped that by combining an aristocratic context alongside a set of democratic imperatives, the post-tribal challenge will be a particularly intriguing part of the setting. In all these cases, ‘post’ is mostly about transcending and including rather than opposition as such."

(https://jonathanrowson.substack.com/p/post-conventional-imperatives)