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[so] Lack of A Tribe

Lead Guitar Wankery

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I am an So dom, and I don't strongly relate to most of the descriptions of this instinct or what other So doms say about it because both tend to focus on social aspects of small groups (such as a group of friends). I'm not even interested in having a group of friends.

What really gnaws at me is the lack of social cohesion in broader society. I live in the United States, which seems to me to be a very divided, sprawling, socially disorganized society. I actually don't think that a group as large as a country is a workable social unit for human beings; a tribal social structure seems much healthier, so I don't even have any hope of this country (or most others) socially improving much.

Thus my main focus as an So dom is the lack of tribes or something approaching them (such as a commune, for example), which is a torturous focus to have because I'm unlikely to ever get any sort of tribe. No friends, no significant other can satisfy this need.

What I want to know is whether anyone else is so intensely bothered by large-scale social incohesiveness and how you deal with that.
 

Mole

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I am an So dom, and I don't strongly relate to most of the descriptions of this instinct or what other So doms say about it because both tend to focus on social aspects of small groups (such as a group of friends). I'm not even interested in having a group of friends. What really gnaws at me is the lack of social cohesion in broader society. I live in the United States, which seems to me to be a very divided, sprawling, socially disorganized society. I actually don't think that a group as large as a country is a workable social unit for human beings; a tribal social structure seems much healthier, so I don't even have any hope of this country (or most others) socially improving much. Thus my main focus as an So dom is the lack of tribes or something approaching them (such as a commune, for example), which is a torturous focus to have because I'm unlikely to ever get any sort of tribe. No friends, no significant other can satisfy this need. What I want to know is whether anyone else is so intensely bothered by large-scale social incohesiveness and how you deal with that.
I joined the electronic tribe called Typology Central.
 

ceecee

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I am an So dom, and I don't strongly relate to most of the descriptions of this instinct or what other So doms say about it because both tend to focus on social aspects of small groups (such as a group of friends). I'm not even interested in having a group of friends.

What really gnaws at me is the lack of social cohesion in broader society. I live in the United States, which seems to me to be a very divided, sprawling, socially disorganized society. I actually don't think that a group as large as a country is a workable social unit for human beings; a tribal social structure seems much healthier, so I don't even have any hope of this country (or most others) socially improving much.

Thus my main focus as an So dom is the lack of tribes or something approaching them (such as a commune, for example), which is a torturous focus to have because I'm unlikely to ever get any sort of tribe. No friends, no significant other can satisfy this need.

What I want to know is whether anyone else is so intensely bothered by large-scale social incohesiveness and how you deal with that.

What tribe do you want to get into exactly? Why is a significant other or a group of friends not enough to qualify as a tribe for you? If you are talking more about the social cohesion and lack of knowing ones neighbor in the US, get involved at your community level. Obviously I don't feel this is as big of an issue as I see plenty of social cohesion daily but I'm also involved in my community, have a significant other, children and friends.
 

EJCC

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I’m very bothered by how modern society is built to make us more isolated. I don’t mind that America is sprawled and disorganized and diverse, because I think that’s one of the things that makes America great. But I AM very bothered by the fact that it’s incredibly hard to find community nowadays. Urban sprawl, frequent job changes/the increased mobility of the younger generations, the Internet, and various other factors have basically destroyed the idea of the neighborhood community. Not to mention, the younger a city is, the less it feels like a community, because no one feels settled down enough to commit to it.

I am certain that the reason I’m bothered by this is because of being social-first. I have a deep-seeted need for communal homeness - feeling like I’m part of a community, and like I share that community identity, proudly. I don’t really have that where I currently live, but I did in the town where I grew up. I miss it all the time.
 

Lead Guitar Wankery

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What tribe do you want to get into exactly?
The tribe I want isn't possible for me. It's something a person is born into, but larger than a biological family. It's like what you can read about in National Geographic or see in a documentary on pre-modern people.

Maybe I would be satisfied if people just had a basic level of respect for everyone else and a basic sense of responsibility for others' welfare.

Why is a significant other or a group of friends not enough to qualify as a tribe for you?
The kind of tribe I'm thinking of is socially, psychologically, and materially interdependent and therefore all the members are wholly and unfailingly devoted to the other members' welfare from day one.

Friends and so's come and go in this society, sometimes for trifling reasons. The bonds are relatively weak and take years to build up; in the meantime one has to expend effort getting to know them and deciding whether to trust them. We are vulnerable to being alone if things don't work out and vulnerable to abuse we can't always foresee. We have to work to satisfy the basic human need of having someone know us and give a damn about us (outside of whatever family we have, which is none for some people), something that is automatically satisfied in a tribal structure.

If you are talking more about the social cohesion and lack of knowing ones neighbor in the US, get involved at your community level. Obviously I don't feel this is as big of an issue as I see plenty of social cohesion daily but I'm also involved in my community, have a significant other, children and friends.
I don't think that would necessarily allow me to know my neighbors. The public face people put on can be completely different from who they are in private. I wouldn't have much reason to trust my community any more than I trust any other acquaintance. And my involvement wouldn't necessarily change the "I care about my family and friends and screw everyone else" attitude that many people have. My idea of social cohesion is more than the polite acquaintanceships that are the best most people can hope for in modern society.
 

Abcdenfp

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Is that overall sense of cconnection to a larger whole ? Or that deep routed feeling of this is where I come from and this is the way of my people.

I've often thought that Americans miss out on that sense of "tribe" that you experience growing up on an Island for example . where I come from everything is small and connected people often ask you what your last name is and make connections based on that " you look like your Pa" give you some background story on your family ( you have certain features that are related to different last names) . Families are larger and always included extended family quite a ways out 3rd 4th 5th cousins . We have large group dinamics and can be quite clannish. My sister recently moved to the states and the word she often uses about how she feels is isolated.
But woildnt being a part of small town America give you that feeling ?
 

Neokortex

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I am an So dom, and I don't strongly relate to most of the descriptions of this instinct or what other So doms say about it because both tend to focus on social aspects of small groups (such as a group of friends). I'm not even interested in having a group of friends.

What really gnaws at me is the lack of social cohesion in broader society. I live in the United States, which seems to me to be a very divided, sprawling, socially disorganized society. I actually don't think that a group as large as a country is a workable social unit for human beings; a tribal social structure seems much healthier, so I don't even have any hope of this country (or most others) socially improving much.

Thus my main focus as an So dom is the lack of tribes or something approaching them (such as a commune, for example), which is a torturous focus to have because I'm unlikely to ever get any sort of tribe. No friends, no significant other can satisfy this need.

What I want to know is whether anyone else is so intensely bothered by large-scale social incohesiveness and how you deal with that.

Man, that's a serious issue. Short answer on the why it is like this: capitalism.
One reason tribes grew, I faintly remember ANTHRO256, was because they realized the potential in agriculture so from then on breeding and social expansion, social organization has become more premeditated. Yes, there is a limit to it and I'm also bothered, more precisely by the huge mobility but not just in the U.S., it has started in Europe too, job related, short term jobs, pick you up, then dump you, people traveling around as a profession, then in E-Europe the money lure of higher currency wages from the west, thus emigration, etc.

Enneagram-wise I'd put it in the category of the 6. Although not all 6s are social types, and not all social types are conservative/community oriented.

Another prospective factor comes from learning that people have the freedom to move since familial abuse, feeling misfits in their own culture grants them the right to "cocoon out," to explore other parts of the world they might call a "2nd home" beyond their original one. After all, tribes can be very limiting, abusive, blackmailing, dragging you down if you wanted to break out from the endless cycle of social responsibility/debt. So concessions have to be made: against depopulation, so still keeping some youth, (for some have already decided not to reproduce, others leaving, etc.) an idea could be to monitor well being of children in families. And if child's complaint persists, therapist unable to appease the parties, move the child to another family (more matching type-wise).
Another is to create jobs for ones for whom more of the fitting jobs are only available somewhere abroad (e.g. Paris for artists).
Investing in activism. Gov's closer cooperation with civic organizations.

I think the biggest problem about being social consisting a tribe and preserving a healthy unit, while still keeping in touch with a larger unit (state, fed gov) is exactly that it has become very "social." Very... unnatural, unspontaneous, by rote. It has become so social that it is now a herd mentality, a blind following of the rules, a "Mass Ornament." What is lacking is the intimacy of the social, the telling stories by the camp fire, the familiarity that allows for physical closeness, emotion expressed through touching and of course, the slowness of times to allow for consistency for that familiarity to develop. And more specifically: board games, team games but anything without digital devices.

Without a "tribe," a smaller unit that is able to account for its members but that still could be taken accountable by a larger unit, there is no healthy communication between the smaller unit where the events happened and the larger unit that could discern whether the smaller unit is taking ethical decisions to solve its problems. The police can't be there 24/7 and the police can't be always accountable for knowing the laws right. Fractions can keep information hidden from the whole of the smaller unit and at the end of the day the small town we're talking about would be just another mound of opportunism where everyone tried to get the most out of everyone being together (and working in hierarchy).

Now that's just the smaller scale incohesion. But what if there's no larger unit, an overruling authority to watch over the smaller unit for it has the same fragmentation, even worse as being bigger, as the smaller unit? What if the people who justice in one unit can't find the justice people in another unit for it has a completely different style of dressing, of self-presentation and where it said "police" it is actually mafia-allegiance, where it said transparency organization, it actually is the conglomeration of deregulationists, where it said "church" it is actually a community of people calling themselves conservatives but are actually narcissistic child abusers caring for a community as long as the members have a similar rate of profit/year? Will the justice seekers be able to find support elsewhere to do justice in their already awry, incohesive "community?"

Sprawl in the U.S. is a funny thing, though since they bought territories so recently they are still, even to this day, trying to populate them. Whereas best would be perhaps if more large unit people descended to small unit people to vet their law system. Moving out and creating new "lifestyle enclaves" does not insure a transmission of cultural knowledge consisting of laws, cases and empirical solutions that were effective in dealing with abuses. Moving out and starting anew does not insure a community rooted in history, where people are accountable for the long time publicity of their family names, so in a sense it does not insure accountability, cohesion at all. If the authorities of a smaller unit are not responsible to a community based on stronger, more direct familial ties and yet ones allowing them to pass judgment in the most unbiased way possible, then the only authority supervising them is a higher one which may or may not be aware of the contextual details of their decisions. Where there is no accountability, there is fragmentation.

......

and answering the question: I don't know. I don't deal with that at all. Perhaps unconsciously by going to the same places I went to eating out. Small diners, where they already recognize my face. Just today they allowed me to have the fruit soup, the extra dish as part of the daily menu. So I didn't have to pay extra. But this is just minor result. Competition has to be reduced for healthy "tribes" to flourish. If there's too much instability over who belongs to what social class and what other possibilities on the horizon keep egging others one, then they will never get settled with that they already have, with what social group belongs to that material/life standard. Check on YT how much people try to monetize on typology videos. :p
 

Mole

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Electronic tribes are no longer limited by time and space. The centre of every electronic tribe is everywhere and the edge is nowhere. Electronic tribes are no longer disengaged but are engaged emotionally in real time across the globe. Electronic tribes are no longer linear and sequential but everything happens at the same time. Electronic tribes are no longer dominated by the eye but use all the senses: the ear, the eye, the nose, the skin, the taste buds, and the muscles.

However we look in the rear vision mirror for the traditional tribes, while the electronic tribes are rushing towards us through the windshield.
 

Typh0n

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This is an interesting topic.

I'm not sure where notions of individualism began, I think it was ancient Greece. Ancient Egypt had no notion of individuality, there was no word for "individual". Christianity, with it's emphasis on every person having value also had an impact on the notion of individuality we have today.

I don't think individualism, or even capitalism, precludes social cohesion. In fact, capitalism creates it, through transaction, it's just that the contact between people in these transactions is often impersonal. I think blaming capitalism out of the blue like the user Neokortex did seems rather incoherent, capitalism gets alot of shit because it is the system we live under (though technically it is a mixed economy) so it's easier to blame what is perceived as being the status quo. I'm not sure many of the anti-capitalists are actually giving up their smartphones, internet connections etc.

But anyways, I don't see why individualism and capitalism mean we can't socialize and make emotional connections with others. I agree though, with [MENTION=29478]Neokortex[/MENTION] that part of the reason why society is so impersonal is because of the its size. Especially in cities where nobody knows anyone. I kinda like it like this, though. I like walking down the street and not knowing anyone I cross. I feel safe. I feel exposed in a community where everyone knows me. Not that I have anything to hide but I just like anonymity.

Friends and so's come and go in this society, sometimes for trifling reasons. The bonds are relatively weak and take years to build up; in the meantime one has to expend effort getting to know them and deciding whether to trust them. We are vulnerable to being alone if things don't work out and vulnerable to abuse we can't always foresee. We have to work to satisfy the basic human need of having someone know us and give a damn about us (outside of whatever family we have, which is none for some people), something that is automatically satisfied in a tribal structure.

[MENTION=32642]Lead Guitar Wankery[/MENTION] this is so true, however. This is the drawback of an impersonal society.

But I also think this nostalgia for tribal society stems from a desire to go back to a "golden age" or "paradise". It can't be done, really, as you know. But if you live in a smaller town or rural area you have a very different style of life than in the big city and that can make a difference. There is no going back to the comfort of the womb (and I believe that the desire for a lost" golden age" is a desire to return to the comfort of the womb), to borrow a image from psychoanalysis.
 

Mole

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All environments are invisible. So we don’t see our environment here, which is an electronic tribe.
 

Forever

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All environments are invisible. So we don’t see our environment here, which is an electronic tribe.

You’re an electronic tribe.
 

Neokortex

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[MENTION=17729]Typh0n[/MENTION] , it's not having transactions is problematic but measuring worth. Worth is the key word here. If someone can have way lower of way higher worth than others, then there you have the tear in the fabric of the communion. Capitalism allows these impossible exaggerations in worth to happen, perhaps for one's desire to vindicate having been wronged. A system should be in place to not allow this system of numbers and values to be exploited by people's psychological drives.
 
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I don't think I'm an So dom (I'm pretty sure I'm either Sx/Sp or Sp/Sx, probably the former), but I just wanted to say that I relate to everything you said. I live in the US, too, and I've often envied the people of other countries that have more of a distinctive, cohesive culture. I think these unifying forces provide a healthy backdrop of stability and enhance group identification so that people are less politically and socially divided because there's more agreement on values and goals. I also think that nations, especially when they're larger than a few million people, result in a government that's too far removed from the needs of the population and a fractured population that splinters off into numerous factions.

On the other hand, I wonder if those of us living in the US today sometimes romanticize the tribal life because the flip side of it is that there's not as much room for privacy or individual identity under those conditions, and people who don't conform can be condemned or ostracized. Not that that doesn't go on in the US right now because it does, but in general, freedom to do your own thing is highly prized and encouraged in this country as compared to many others in which you can actually be killed just because you don't adhere to the dominant religion or whatnot.

I wish we could find a happy medium. I've often thought the small-town pre-industrial life was the closest we ever came to this ideal in the US. I would happily take part in an experimental community similar to the one portrayed in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, minus the secrecy, lies, and manipulation, of course.

By the way, you said that you don't relate to most descriptions of So doms, but it's my understanding from what I've read and observed that dom instinct is expressed quite differently by people of each type. From what I understand, some So doms can be preoccupied with broader social issues rather than the latest office gossip or whatever.
 
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