This blog repeats several earlier themes. It is hard to remember how exceptional American life is.
Virtually no one living in our modern world, who is not tribal themselves, has any conception of life in the tribal world. Tribal people constitute nearly 6/7ths of the worlds population..
That includes India, China, Africa and Arabia as populations that are nearly all tribal. In India your class designation is important to you but your family name and village are more important. In China it is similar. Your tong reflects a much larger family name but a tribal name nevertheless. In China an individual is also associated with his/her village of origin. Africa and Arabia are one hundred percent tribal.
When a baby is born into a tribe, that baby learns to rely on his/her family immediately in a way that is different from non-tribal babies. That tribal child's survival is entirely dependent on its understanding of its membership in the family. As the child grows he/she must protect and be protected by siblings, parents and extended family. It doesn't matter whether the child is born into a family of serfs or a royal elite.
In a tribal environment each family depends on its cousins or family hierarchy to come to its rescue in times of trouble. Trouble includes threats of illegal or criminal nature, threats to livelihood or threats to food survival. Families band together to protect each other, their family lineage and their entire tribe when necessary.
When you are born into a tribal environment you must learn how to favorably appeal to every member of your family from the closest to the most distant. Your survival depends on being accepted as part of the family. You can’t be a rebel, outcast or deviant. Being an individual is highly restricted.
There is no way that we, who survive based on money, neighbors, friends and sometimes police to protect us, can understand the nature of tribal society. In many ways we are stand alone individuals.
We, commercial people, haven't the vaguest idea of how the real world outside of modern commercialism works. We live in a global tribal world in which our understanding of reality is trivial, wrong and often gets us into trouble. Both we as individuals and as a nation.