The inevitable toxicity of tribalism and the responsibility of the individual

Hi everyone.

So I've had a few more thoughts after posting my last post about the nature of tribe and the self justification it gives us to hate on the "other".

I see tribalism in all areas of our lives. Religious tribalism, racial tribalism, cultural, social and political tribalism. All of these group identities are being used against us all as tools for division and vehicles for hate.

If we in the west don't wise up to it soon then we also will be sucked headlong into the ongoing conflict that threatens to engulf our entire world in flames.

I see people on facebook who have been friends for a long time falling out and condemning each other because of differences of opinion or perspective without any recourse to consideration or contemplation on the other point of view.

I see the "hard left" hating the "alt right" and the "hard right" hating everyone else, the climate change deniers hating the eco-warriors and the greens hating the deniers and everyone hating on the chem trails protesters.

We have Corbyn supporters hating the tories while conservative and labour mps all rally together to hate on Corbyn.

Those who voted "remain" hating those who voted "brexit" and vice versa.

The rich hate the poor while the poor hate the rich.

And Donald Trump just seems to hate everyone while glorying in his role as everyones favoutite figure of hate.


This is all so absurd, and essentially no more reasonable or enlightened than Muslims hating Christians or Christians hating Jews. It's the same dynamic but without "god" being the cause for self justification, just a strong sense of "being right" and those who disagree with us "being wrong".

I am reminded of a poem by William Blake:

"O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue
 To Drown the throat of war! When the senses
 Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,
 Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressed
 Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
 When the whirlwind of fury comes from the
 Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance
 Drive the nations together, who can stand?
 When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,
 And sails rejoicing in the flood of death;
 When souls are torn to everlasting fire,
 And fiends of hell rejoice upon the slain,
 O who can stand?
 O who hath caused this?
 O who can answer at the throne of God?
 The kings and nobles of the land have done it!
 Hear it not, Heaven, thy ministers have done it!"

For this is indeed the truth we face, being manipulated and maneuvered into the madness and horror of war against our brothers and sisters in this world, and others, by those who assume a privileged place of safety from which to conduct their mind games of control, and seek to ever quench their unquenchable thirst for yet greater levels of domination, control and power.

Typical bloody addicts!

So then this concept of tribe, and tribalism has resulted in the reality of the nation state. And the nation state has been the engine and vehicles of all of the horrors of abuse, conflict and exploitation that we have seen in our world over the last few thousand years. From this sense of belonging to a national tribe has come the ever encroaching, ever striving, ever fighting force of imperialism. The idea that one tribe is superior over all others and can demonstrate it's superiority through violence. This is the essence of Empire and is the ideology behind Fascism and the concept of "manifest destiny", and it is the face of pure evil.

There are no chosen people. There are just people. To think otherwise is to be mistaken.

These forces are not alien, they are human constructs. The impulses that conceive and drive them are human impulses. If we are looking for the true enemy, the true villain of this drama, then we need only to look in the mirror for it is all there to be seen in our own being.

These forces use religious concepts and symbols of divine endorsement as justification for their crimes against life Itself, either in an open vocal manner or in an occluded secretive manner, but make no mistake - religious concepts and the sense of self righteousness they endow upon us are at the heart and root of all that is horrific, cruel and destructive in this world.

It is always so with people.

We excuse ourselves of our crimes, our moral compromises, our deceptions and our inconsistencies while at the same time condemning others for having the same faults of character.

We construct notions and ideologies that place our selves in the front line and centre of the "heroic crusade", and by virtue of that constructed reality and self appointed role we develop and nurture a sense of entitlement that allows "me" to break every rule or code, even my own, as the ends justify the means.

Some are addicted to power, some are addicted to a sense of self righteous indignation, but both are addicts and both addictions are destructive forces that drive us all to the brink of madness.

With regard to the current so-called "refugee crisis" (which as any intelligent person knows is really simply a consequence of the moral crisis of global inequality that has existed for a very long time); in the face of the magnitude of this tragedy of our times, in the face of the horror of a world where bodies young and old wash up on beaches like so much flotsam only to be ignored by tourists and argued about by politicians, in a world where people are so driven by desperation, conflict and inequality that they would risk themselves and their children to the meaningless and undignified fate of becoming human garbage washed up on a foreign shore, I have felt sure and justified that it matters no more what happens to me on a personal level, or what personal choices I make or methods I choose so long as I am responding to that situation, to that horrific reality.

And yet now I feel unsure again.

As I realise how far and how deep I have fallen from my own highest ideals, how corrupted I have allowed myself to become for the sake of expediency and how distant and irrelevant the most meaningful epiphanies of my life have become to me, I wonder have I too fallen foul of the egos trap of placing itself front and centre of the heroic crusade and allowing itself the entitlement of whatever is required of it to maintain that role?

How do I move forward from here?

How do I best serve the cause of Life from this point on?

How do I now go about regaining mastery over, and respect for, myself?

How do I continue the quest for meaning in the face of all these monstrous absurdities?

"The kings and nobles of the land have done it!" - for sure this is a truth. However, as I wrestle here with the physical and existential pain of my own being I know a harsher truth, a truth I do not wish to face.

I have done to my own physical being what humanity has done to the world it exists within.

I have reveled at my own destruction in the name of pleasure and sensation. I have laughed at or dismissed every warning sign that things may not be altogether ok with me.

For the sake of my addictions I have failed, quite goriously, to act on the truths and revelations that life has presented to me.

I wonder if for myself, and for humanity as a whole, the situation is ever hopeless.

If we act now, will it be enough?

Or a case of too little, too late?

Love, Courage and Strength to you all.