Tribes

 

We Are Family

All of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We're giving love in a family dose

Join in with me!

Man is genetically wired to join groups. Man's smallest group is a family. Families may join together to form Clans. Clans may join together to form Tribes. Tribes may join together to form Nations. You can be a member of more than one group. I am a member of Red Sox Nation. I am also an American .  There are those who live in the Canadian Maritimes Provinces who are also members of Red Sox Nation. ( They probably are not also Bruin hockey fans, but that is another sport and subject). It is thus possible to be an American or a Canadian National and to still belong to Red Sox Nation.

Man is also genetically wired to be fearful of, and not trust, those in other groups. And that creates a conflict when a person is in more than one group. For example, Americans are guaranteed freedom of religion. Thus it is possible, for example, to be an American and a Catholic, or an American and a Southern Baptist  ( As someone who was born in Rhode Island, which was founded by the Baptist Roger Williams, who was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religion, I think Roger Williams would be appalled that there were Southern Baptists). When John F. Kennedy ran for President, he had to convince a  Southern Baptist conference that he was running as an American, and owed no allegiance to a foreign Pope.

Most religions and cultures recognize this problem and have admonitions for the protection and honoring of strangers. They recognize that the energy spent in excluding others does not serve to advance the purpose of the group. John Donne famously said that “No man is an island”. When you try to exclude others by building a moat around your group, you are trying to act as if you are an island.  This is not a game of Survivor. Let’s not vote people off the island. Instead let’s welcome them if they wish to move to the island. What was true in 1776, is true today.  "If we don’t hang together, we will all hang separately.”