5.2 Tribalism without the nurturance
For tens of millennia, the heart of tribalism was the…
Mutual nurturance and care which took place inside the tribe.
Of course, beyond the boundary of the tribe, was the competitive arena where tribes fought each other.
But inside was this sweet, sweet nurturance.
What happens, though…
If you remove the nurturance?
Then you have…
The downside of tribalism without the upside.
If your tribe is empty of nurturance, does that mean you live in an empty tribe? Not so, because…
Despair rushes into the vacuum.
Humans designed tribes to support survival. Tribes were life-giving. But our modern despair-driven tribes are different.
When I say despair, I’m not talking about despair that’s transitory and passes off in a few days. It’s not situational…
It’s despair that goes as deep as despair can go.
And if you’re a member of a despair-driven tribe, then…
You’re giving up on human nurturance.
And…
You’re surrendering to death.
And…
You’re dying before you’re dead.
I call this…
Nihilistic tribalism.
It’s many times more dangerous than traditional tribalism.
In Latin “nihil” means nothing. And nihilism can mean a nothingness like a tribe that has nothing left of its nurturance. Nothingness as in no hope. None. Really none.
Which means you’re living in a state of absolute despair. And now your task is to make a life for yourself out of that despair, which is a wretched thing to have to try to do.
You’re still walking and talking and going through the motions of living a life but your deepest allegiance is to death. And you probably don’t understand what you’re doing, you just keep doing it.
All this is bad news, but it gets even more depressing, because if you give yourself over to the realm of death, that’s…
Self-abandonment.
Worse it’s…
Self-negation.
And it’s…
Moral abdication.
You take no responsibility for yourself or for helping anyone else or for making things better. Which is why you hear nihilists taking delight in destruction. And cruelty. And why a key theme of nihilism is…
Burn it all down.
Because why not? Because nothing really means anything anymore.
It’s a serious challenge to play against the game of traditional tribalism. But to play against this vicious new game of nihilism is way more challenging and way more urgent and asks even more of us.
