Civilization and Beyond
A Metaconscious Mosaic Outline
All life forms, Quinn observes,1 have evolved patterns of social interaction over the course of millions of years which work for them, such as schools of fish, pods of whales, flocks of birds, herds of elk, prides of lions, colonies of bees, etc. These social patterns are not perfect, for nothing ever is; yet they have become highly refined by evolution over immense stretches of time. They work extraordinarily well, and are very difficult (though not impossible) to improve further. The tribe is the social pattern, for humans, which corresponds in other species to schools, pods, flocks, herds, etc. Like those patterns, the human tribe has evolved over vast expanses of time to a high degree of effectiveness and refinement; in our case, about three or four million years. Nevertheless,
Tribal life is not in fact perfect, idyllic, noble, or wonderful, but wherever it's found intact, it's found to be working well – as well as the life of lizards, racoons, geese, or beetles – with the result that the members of the tribe are not generally enraged, rebellious, desperate, stressed-out borderline psychotics being torn apart by crime, hatred, and violence. What anthropologists find is that tribal peoples, far from being nobler, sweeter, or wiser than us, are as capable as we are of being mean, unkind, short-sighted, selfish, insensitive, stubborn, and short-tempered. The tribal life doesn't turn people into saints; it enables ordinary people to make a living together with a minimum of stress year after year, generation after generation.2
Human civilization, in contrast, is a quite recent development, having made its appearance little more than 10,000 years ago; yet it has supplanted with few exceptions all previous social patterns. Every human culture, however, that has ever attempted civilization has eventually abandoned it, with the single exception of "Western Civilization," and of those civilizations which, like the Aztec and the Inca, were overtaken by the advance of "Western Civilization," and were destroyed by force before they were voluntarily abandoned. The final result is that "Western Civilization" is the sole remaining example upon the Earth of the social organization known as civilization. Quinn calls it the culture of the Takers. He calls all "non-Taker" culture the culture of the Leavers.3
To those who possess (or are possessed by) the meme, and its corollaries, that Civilization is the final and highest of all human inventions, the idea that the tribe offers a viable alternative to civilization is virtually unthinkable. Although it does no such thing, it seems to suggest an atavistic return to a primitive and barbaric past that cannot be entertained in a civilized mind. Indeed, the option of returning to the caves and mud huts of our ancestors, and chasing down rabbits and deer with spears, stones, and throwing sticks, although a few heardy souls may attempt it, is definitely not on any path available to the 6½ thousand million contemporary residents of planet Earth. There is no way, or need, to return to the primitive lifestyles of our pre-civilized past; the vector of human evolution does not point backwards.
However, if the vector of human evolution does not point to utter annihilation in a very short time, it points clearly beyond civilization. And that must involve returning to a time-tested pattern of social interaction that had worked in circumstances of endless variety for millions of years before civilization was ever imagined; and works just as well today as it ever has in the past. That pattern is the tribe.
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* Source: Beyond Civilization or The Killer Meme.
1. Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure, Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999.
2. Quinn, 1999, p. 61, boldface emphasis added.
3. Not in Beyond Civilization. Earlier on, Quinn had developed the vocabulary, Takers, and Leavers, to denote, respectively, civilization, and all other (i.e. "uncivilized") cultures, in Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn, A Bantam / Turner Book, New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland, 1992, p. 39. More specifically, Takers are those who take the Law of Life out of the hands of the gods, and assume it themselves; Leavers are those peoples who leave the Law of Life in the hands of the gods.
Civilization and Beyond copyright 2004, 2005 by J. Harmon Grahn. Copying and redistribution, in whole or in part, are permitted in any medium provided this notice is included.