What Ran Said
by Jason GodeskyA lot of the regular readers here are also regular readers of Ran Prieur, so many of you may already have seen this, but for the benefit of those who haven’t, I’d like to quote what Ran wrote today, because it’s probably the most important thing I’ve ever read on his blog. I know I don’t usually indulge in simple quotation like this, but this is one of those exceptional times when something so important is stated so well that there’s nothing more I can add to it, except try to put it in front of a few more eyeballs.
* * *
Here’s an edited-down version of an email I got from Thomas, who has learned about tribal culture from his grandparents who actually lived in a tribe:
The difference between tribal and civilized is human ownership. In true tribal life, human beings are owned by their tribe and by extension a land base. It is the earth itself that actually accounts for everyone and mediates, leaving behind those who can live with its rules.
No one can interact with any individual without going through their owner. No individual stands alone—we are all ambassadors. Tribal life is a very serious life of negotiation and watching your step and conduct. People only meet on social basis, never utility basis as we do in civilized life. There is no on-going project that all must partake in other than each one fulfilling their individual ambitions to become people of the land.
Freedom from true social protocol is what civilization has always strived to protect. With it, every single individual can be objectified fully and forced into any type of despicable labor. It is the blueprint for how to remain unequal entities whose worth is judged solely on utility to the the state.
I am usually stumped because I want to tell people what is wrong with civilization without them trying to form a group with me, without them turning to me as some authority. It is so hard for people who do not know social barriers and are so used to being belittled and dependent to finally become their own heroes.
The “social vs utility” bit just about knocked me off my chair. In a tribe, purely utilitarian relationships are forbidden! The economic is a subset of the social, and in a land-based tribe, the fundamental social relationship is between the people and the land. But in civilization, the social and the economic are carefully separated. It’s uncool to accept money from your family—you’re supposed to “earn” it through a utilitarian deal with strangers. We don’t want to chat with the person behind the counter—we just want our coffee. We love people we don’t depend on, and we depend on people we don’t love, or even know.
This is what enables a large-scale domination system! Tribes can be repressive, abusive, even ecologically destructive, but they can’t be big, or grow past a certain size, because everyone has to know everyone for them to work. And for a tribe to be mean, everyone in it has to be mean. But you can build a global hell-world out of nice people with just one trick: the purely utilitarian relationship. It’s the basic chemical bond of Empire. And we can dissolve Empire, one cell at a time, by befriending the people we exchange money with, and building gift economies on our friendships.
But simply switching from state/corporate ownership to tribal ownership is not enough. The worst possible society would be a tribe that’s not land-based, so people are still owned, and destroy nature, and don’t even have the intellectual freedom or broad perspective of modernity. I think that’s the world of the sky-father fundamentalists.
Also, when we talk about “utility,” utility in what? In Empire culture, utility means bigger, faster, wealthier. But suppose we defined it in terms of topsoil richness or biodiversity. A non-tribal culture with a land-based definition of “useful” would be better in almost every way than a tribal culture with a domination-based definition of “belonging.”
I’m not so sure about the last two paragraphs, but this, I think, is absolutely essential:
So remember: “The economic is a subset of the social.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 14 November 2006 @ 10:23 AM
Jason - you’re right that this seems to be a crucial insight. And, as a student of anthropology, you no doubt recognize that much of what Thomas is talking about in his social versus utility relationship dichotomy is the classic Maussian difference between a gift economy and a barter or monetary economy. The former is strictly social and refuses to consider utility (though it may or may not in fact be utilitarian, that isn’t the point), whereas the latter refuses the social in favor of atomized individual rational exchange.
I have written a post over at my own page on some theories of gift exchange you may be interested in: http://leahbowe.com/deathpower/2006/10/26/the-gift-mauss-bataille-hyde-and-derrida/
Cheers, and keep up the great work.
Erik
Comment by Erik D — 14 November 2006 @ 11:35 AM
You know I always try to make personal connections with people I interact with economically. Waiters Waitresses, bank tellers. Most people seem to appreciate it.
Occasionally, though there are people that like bing part of a machine, part of it may be that there is just not enough emotional energy to invest in all these interactions.
This really is a key post Iagree.
Comment by Ted Heistman — 14 November 2006 @ 11:35 AM
Yeah this is great.
Agreed Ted, I always try and do the same. Bring a bit of human-ness back into this weird robot world.
The people who most affect me are people who do this to me, those few people who said something nice or funny when I used to work behind a counter in a superstore. They are my heroes.
Comment by Dan — 14 November 2006 @ 12:31 PM
And this topic touches on something way beyond different types of economies. It is the difference between treating humans as humans, and treating humans as vending machines.
A vending machine relationship is no good for either person, and creates that everyday frustration that most of us feel, and then throw at the appropriate vending machine.
Those times when the economic framework crumbles and you re-enter an authentic bond with someone are incredibly profound - I just got really emotional thinking it through then.
Comment by Dan — 14 November 2006 @ 12:40 PM
It is a watershed day for those of us in this little corner of the internet. This is new information that can really help crystalize our thinking. And I’m glad you posted it here, Jason, so that we can post comments and have a discussion.
Still, I don’t think coffee shops are a good example. I worked in coffee shops almost my whole adult life and my experience was that the majority of customers really loved interacting with the servers. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that coffee is an addictive drug.
Comment by casemeau — 14 November 2006 @ 12:42 PM
In fact, I actually got married to someone I met as a coffee customer, and had two children with her. That’s pretty far beyond utilitarian. Maybe coffee shops are one of our last hold-outs?
Comment by casemeau — 14 November 2006 @ 12:46 PM
I think with coffee shops, the server is giving something to you, so we tend to be that little more patient, polite and thankful. It reconnects with that golden act of giving.
In other situations like banks, phone calls, ordering something, or buying something, the server/banker/assistant is more of an obstacle to the goal (buying food, ordering your product)
Comment by Dan — 14 November 2006 @ 12:48 PM
But coffee shop interactions went way beyond patience, politeness, etc. People really became friends with us. In fact, coffee shops know this well. They know that coffee drinkers can get coffee anywhere and so they try to hire very sociable staff who make friends with customers and keep them coming back.
Comment by casemeau — 14 November 2006 @ 12:52 PM
Re-thinking that through, what I just said doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“In fact, I actually got married to someone I met as a coffee customer, and had two children with her. That’s pretty far beyond utilitarian.”
Authentic human bonding transcends any “system” that tries to put order on it. Sometimes, it just takes a while.
Comment by Dan — 14 November 2006 @ 12:52 PM
Maybe I should find a local coffee shop! Although the only coffee shops around here are housed within massive Tesco superstores
Comment by Dan — 14 November 2006 @ 12:54 PM
Maybe it just comes down to this: Some people want to have a place of social relationships, but still need to make a living. They discover that they can sell coffee while simultaneously having a place of social interaction.
Comment by casemeau — 14 November 2006 @ 12:56 PM
A personal problem I have is that I have realised that I’m a very sensitive person (after years of trying to harden up and “fix” some non-existent problem), and that when I try and interact with a lot of people, I find them immediately intimidating and not understanding. So I like jobs where I get my work done, get paid, and go home, and interact with those closest to me.
I think there’s all sorts of other reasons why people shy away from authentic relationships, aswell as the fact (and topic of this post) that our civilisation makes us enter all these disjointed economic interactions to get food and stuff.
Comment by Dan — 14 November 2006 @ 1:19 PM
[quote]So I like jobs where I get my work done, get paid, and go home, and interact with those closest to me.
[/quote]
ditto, for the most part.
But a lot of that is from trying to balance so many aspects of life. Again, it’s part of the isolating action of civilization.
I wonder too, about the differences in economic class, and how that affords (or in some cases prohibits) working and living with the same people.
Comment by jhereg — 14 November 2006 @ 1:50 PM
I’ve been trying to be patient over this land ownership thing. Finally, something has been said here! I’ve been spouting about it in other places. Parts of Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty” will be painful to read, given his rebuking of Malthus and pitiful solution. However, the basic economic mechanisms will be explained. Land “ownership” can never be made fair. If also find Arator by John Taylor (first senator from VA) instructive regarding how farmers become coerced into extractive land practices and then loose their land. Fukuoka mentions similar observations in Japan.
The solution - that I have been putting forth here in NYC - involves using the tools of the state to protect land for use by rewilding and permaculture efforts. I want a Community Land Trust (CLT) to be the token “owner” for a given bioregion. The idea will be to educate the public (whoever we can get to listen) and have a place for them to both learn and observe nature, then learn a more sustainable culture. Getting people to listen will begin with the CSA model and then expanding it into a rhizome network.
There is more, but I’m trying to keep my comment short. I’ve been trying to get this corner to the hippie corner and back. Land “ownership” will be central to using the energy of the state against itself.
Comment by -Sean. — 14 November 2006 @ 2:33 PM
In a big city, the people who serve you and the people who you serve are mostly anonymous strangers. It is hopeless to extend the effort of forming relationships with all of them because there are simply too many. Way more than anyone can handle.
One can only have so many friends, before the word loses its meaning.
Comment by _Gi — 14 November 2006 @ 4:50 PM
In a big city, the people who serve you and the people who you serve are mostly anonymous strangers.
Not exactly. Your monkeysphere remains constant. With more people comes more choices for who to include. Other than that, it depends entirely upon the given neighborhood. I happen to be in a neighborhood which may conflict with your expectations.
Comment by -Sean. — 14 November 2006 @ 6:20 PM
Casemeau wrote:
“But coffee shop interactions went way beyond patience, politeness, etc. People really became friends with us. In fact, coffee shops know this well. They know that coffee drinkers can get coffee anywhere and so they try to hire very sociable staff who make friends with customers and keep them coming back”
So the coffee shop isn’t just selling a drug it’s also selling personal connection. You’re right you can get coffee anywhere but the irony of the city is that is that you can’t get genuine human connections easily. (because the city is all about utility). In fact I’m starting to wonder if coffee shop’s might be selling the whole tribal setting.
We’re all so terrified of being caught not doing anything productive that we can’t relax unless it’s purposeful-relaxation. It’s an oxymoron but going out to have coffee gives us a purposeless purpose so we’re able to properly relax. Everyone is at the coffee shop for the same reason so there’s a sense of common unity and a good size coffee shop holds roughly the same number of people you’d have in a tribe.
Maybe I’m putting my stuff onto everyone else but I really think we’re all missing our tribe and a sense of community. It’s like what the theme song to that old ‘Cheers’ comedy says; You want to go where everyone knows your name
Comment by Aaron — 14 November 2006 @ 6:47 PM
I totally agree Aaron.
“In a big city, the people who serve you and the people who you serve are mostly anonymous strangers. It is hopeless to extend the effort of forming relationships with all of them because there are simply too many. Way more than anyone can handle.
One can only have so many friends, before the word loses its meaning.”
I think I agree with this. It’s plausible to just be nice to everyone you meet, but trying to forge friendships with everyone you set eyes on would probably be a pain in the ass.
Humans and social animals usually go haywire if you shove loads of new people in with them. I think there’s good reason that tribes/packs/groups usually have a certain amount of individuals in them (and never any drastic variation) - familiarity confers stability.
Comment by Dan — 14 November 2006 @ 7:00 PM
A very personal synchronistic note: Before I read Ran’s post or this one, I actually used the following sentence at work: “I am not a machine.” The context was an annoying visiting scholar who is fond of interrupting me to ask out-of-context technical questions, with the idea of using me as tech support rather than treating me as a colleague. On the way home from work, what crystallized for me was that I enjoy working collegially “with” other people (alas, even if it be in service to the empire); what I *hate* is being treated like a vending machine.
Ran’s post is challenging, and along with my experiences today forces me to really look at how I’m living my life.
Comment by slomo — 14 November 2006 @ 7:32 PM
… but I agree with Dan in Post #13. I’m also very sensitive, and because authentic relationships are important to me and therefore extract a huge energy investment, I tend to shut down in situations where I have to interact with too many people. As a consequence, people perceive me as cold and formal until they get to know me. The opposite is true when I’m in a rural setting: I become warm and gregarious.
Interesting….
Comment by slomo — 14 November 2006 @ 7:40 PM
Cool stuff, Sean, I’ve been thinking about doing something similar down in Western NC, in the area around Asheville. Like Giuli says, it’s exceptionally difficult to get to know people in the city, which is something I’m okay with — I’m just going to need to be creative, and find those selective few. I already have a number of ideas for in-roads, and a CSA on a CLT-”owned” (opened?!) land is definitely one of those. As far as personal networking and getting people together goes, I have some other ideas as well. Mostly I’m thinking about connecting with what is already out there — organizations like Food Not Bombs (meeting anarchists and the homeless), breastfeeding organizations like La Leche League (they’ll certainly notice a young teenage male showing up at their meetings!) where I’ll meet alternative-minded moms (I’m thinking about creating an unschool/afterschool/mom hangout organization, or networking with various already existent groups), and so on and so forth. One of the best ideas I have is to do some slam poetry at local venues, raising my voice and making some connections with other passionate people. I’m realizing that people who are passionate regardless of whether they’re on the same path I am are people I want to be around far more than people who are on the same path I am and dead.
The amazing thing is that no one I know really WANTS to be so disconnected from everyone else, they just don’t know how to open the space — or are afraid of being embarrassed or otherwise hurt. I’m in a good place to open some space — I’m young, mostly baggage-less, and so I have relatively little to lose. That plus the fire and determination I have seems to make this a definite possibility. We’ll see what happens, though — sometimes “the gods” have other things in store for us.
- Devin
Comment by Devin — 14 November 2006 @ 8:39 PM
“With more people comes more choices for who to include. Other than that, it depends entirely upon the given neighborhood. I happen to be in a neighborhood which may conflict with your expectations.”
I think many people who currently live in cities are operating in their own ‘rhizome’ networks already - though it may be hard for those of us raised in suburbia to notice. There are neighborhoods in every city that have been entrenched for generations, especially ethnic neighborhoods. They are self-supporting for the most part, and there are people who go their whole lives without leaving their buroughs, just as some small town residents.
I think it would be a great loss to think that we have to abandon our cities and the networks created there. Rather, we need a rewilding of the city environment in my opinion. This is actually happening in Detroit. Entire neighborhoods have succumbed to crime and decay and been razed to empty pasture.
I’m not from the East coast so I don’t know what it’s like to not be able to find a peice of wild somewhere close. But if we can manage to support wild space, permaculture, and concentrated living arangements, why not?
Oh, and I’m with Sean on the CLT concept. Along with CSA programs and Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives, It is the best win/win solution for everyone. Now on to educate!
Comment by shali_isdes — 14 November 2006 @ 9:25 PM
casemeau wrote:
In fact, I actually got married to someone I met as a coffee customer, and had two children with her. That’s pretty far beyond utilitarian. Maybe coffee shops are one of our last hold-outs?
Always the pessimist, I have to question that. Social Relationships of a certain kind are relied upon by “the system” (so far). Population growth supports economic growth which is relied upon to support fiat currencies and all the associated exploitation.
Colleges and Universities don’t so much serve as educational institutions, but rather as mate selection / marriage markets. Perhaps coffee houses serve the same function for people who didn’t land one in school.
What I’m saying was, perhaps your marriage WAS purely utilitarian, your social looking glass may have just warped your perception into thinking it was an authentic relationship.
You created children, what the system wanted, but…. Did the marriage last?
I mean no offense, casemeau, I have a lot of respect for you. Just wanted to throw out some food for thought.
Cheers!
-Ian
Comment by Ian — 14 November 2006 @ 10:38 PM
No amount of friendly, intimate customer relations will keep you from getting canned for slacking from your vending machine duties. Some amount of ‘keeping it real’ may help one business keep an edge on another, but it’s really just extra since it doesn’t directly make them money.
Another thing to consider, I personally have found it painful for somebody - coworker or otherwise - to treat me as a fellow human being when I’m in robot-mode at a job… I would love to stop, chat, play (and usually I will for a short while) but then there’s that pull of the boss’ eyes saying ‘get back to work’. The feeling of being torn between true desires and ‘being productive’ can be so uncomfortable and frustrating.
Comment by Vanasto — 14 November 2006 @ 11:34 PM
Ian said:
“What I’m saying was, perhaps your marriage WAS purely utilitarian, your social looking glass may have just warped your perception into thinking it was an authentic relationship.”
It’s a good point, Ian. Perhaps we too quickly call one transaction “utilitarian” and another “social” as if there were a clear dividing line between the two categories. Indeed, as you have shown, there is a way even for a marriage with offspring to be seen as purely utilitarian. If we follow this path, the trick becomes finding a way to discern what is authentic social relating, and what is merely utilitarian service to the growth of civilization. Myself, I would have to rely on my feelings to tell one from the other.
Mates are one thing, but children seem to be another. Even if I were to have children hoping for it to be purely utilitarian (like, say, if I needed a supply of workers for my farm or something) I can’t imagine it not quickly (perhaps immediately!) turning into an authentic relationship between parent and child. I just can’t imagine having a child and not loving the child (having an authentic social relationship with the child.) Choosing a mate, on the other hand, it could go either way and I wouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps if the parent left before the birth or soon after, and tried to forget all about the child. I guess this happens all the time, but I haven’t heard anything about what the leaving parent feels. If I heard report after report that a parent can have a child and it’s only a utilitarian relationship, then I guess I’d have to believe it.
(p.s. I read your comment just as you intended it, without offense.)
Comment by Anonymous — 15 November 2006 @ 12:22 AM
Ian said:
What I’m saying was, perhaps your marriage WAS purely utilitarian, your social looking glass may have just warped your perception into thinking it was an authentic relationship.i
It’s a good point, Ian. Perhaps we too quickly call one transaction “utilitarian” and another “social” as if there were a clear dividing line between the two categories. Indeed, as you have shown, there is a way even for a marriage with offspring to be seen as purely utilitarian. If we follow this path, the trick becomes finding a way to discern what is authentic social relating, and what is merely utilitarian service to the growth of civilization. Myself, I would have to rely on my feelings to tell one from the other.
Mates are one thing, but children seem to be another. Even if I were to have children hoping for it to be purely utilitarian (like, say, if I needed a supply of workers for my farm or something) I can’t imagine it not quickly (perhaps immediately!) turning into an authentic relationship between parent and child. I just can’t imagine having a child and not loving the child (having an authentic social relationship with the child.) Choosing a mate, on the other hand, it could go either way and I wouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps if the parent left before the birth or soon after, and tried to forget all about the child. I guess this happens all the time, but I haven’t heard anything about what the leaving parent feels. If I heard report after report that a parent can have a child and it’s only a utilitarian relationship, then I guess I’d have to believe it.
(p.s. I read your comment just as you intended it, without offense. Thanks!)
Comment by casemeau — 15 November 2006 @ 12:26 AM
Ooh, lots of interesting thoughts.
(1) People and machines are different… to the extent (in my opinion) that artificially intelligent things won’t be machines. And treating people (or artificially intelligent things) like machines is wrong.
(2) I tried being a robot at work for a while. Now my aim in work is to be as little of a robot as possible. There is always a tension. There are ways of managing it. They are sometimes difficult.
(3) Thinking about our machines as other than ourselves is also wrong.
Comment by speedbird — 15 November 2006 @ 9:13 AM
Like a toaster?
Comment by Ted Heistman — 15 November 2006 @ 11:28 AM
I think Ran goes wrong in the last two paragraphs with the suggestion that this is a matter as simple as making friends with the cashiers and waitresses in your life. I do that, too, and besides the social interactions and passing friendships, it also gets me t3h m4d h00kupz, j0! But does it undermine civilization? I’m not so sure.
But, the placing of the economic sphere as a subset of the social sphere, that is something very significant—and as this discussion illustrates, much more problematic than just being nice to your cashiers and waitresses.
Giuli hasn’t been in this thread. She posts under her own name; _Gi is somebody else.
Of course! How could it be otherwise? See “The Face of Anarchy.” Being so essential to human life, no society can do without tribalism completely. Tribalism doesn’t need hierarchy, but hierarchy always needs a bit of tribalism.
Yes, but the cities are going to be killing fields. They can’t support that many people. They’ll be rewilded, too, but not without a lot of time and a lot of pain. If your community is still without roots, I’d very strongly advise you to take the communities you form in the cities, and start putting down roots in a somewhat more remote location. The Tribe of Anthropik lives in Pittsburgh, but our home is a good clip north.
It’s the premise I think that’s flawed. Even the most ambitious permaculture plans can’t support much more than a small town.
AI is smoke and mirrors. It’s as much “intelligence” as a puppet is a “person.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 November 2006 @ 5:24 PM
“Even the most ambitious permaculture plans can’t support much more than a small town.”
I think this statement could be better phrased. Permaculture is a design philosophy. The designs can be made to aid planning, but the philosophy is for bottom up plans. As a result, top down hierarchies would be nonsensical in a Permaculture design.
It’s just a tool and not the only tool. I’m hoping to have more tools to gracefully transition eight million new yorkers to the future. There are no guarantees that a have the tools needed for it to be graceful. Nevertheless, I appreciate the utility that Permaculture offers … for some things.
Comment by -Sean. — 17 November 2006 @ 10:19 AM
Ran and Thomas fit a lot of keen observations into a fairly few words. I’ve been thinking lately about how difficult it is to establish or, more to the point, maintain tribes inside our culture, and have noticed two things that seem to boil down to the same point. First, most, if not all, traditional tribes are composed of families or groups of families. There are a lot of blood ties. This makes it awfully difficult to leave a tribe: you’re walking away from siblings, parents. (BTW, up to half of all Iraqis are married to a first or second cousin, which, as this article points out, is one reason Iraq will never be a successful nation-state: there’s little allegiance to a unit larger than the family except for ethnic group. Imagine how tight-knit your clan would be if your son-in-law were also your nephew.)
And second, in traditional tribes, leaving the tribe means exposure to terrible hardship and alienation. There’s little or no support for someone outside of the tribe; you don’t just go join another. But in this culture, there’s almost no penalty for leaving whatever you happen to be a member of. I live 2000 miles from my siblings; when Seattle got too big for me, I moved. When my employer sold out, I quit and got another job. No big deal.
I’ve taught live-in courses at a half-dozen intentional communities, and am familiar with many more, so I know their dynamics well. Few of them are still around, and the rest have high turnovers. That’s because, if things get tough, people just leave. It’s much easier than staying to solve the problems and there’s little penalty for quitting. Sadly, the only thing that really keeps intentional communities together when things get tough is if the members have a monetary stake that is difficult to withdraw. (Or, as the financial sponsor of the Big Island’s Pangaia community said to me, you’ve got to have some skin in the game or there’s no reason to work at it.) If you leave one of this culture’s tribes or communities, there are thousands of options, unlike traditional tribes where outcasts often die. Maybe in a couple of decades the situation will be more like old-style tribes, but for now, as Anthropik folks well know, the threshold for quitting a tribe is often nothing more than an argument or bad feelings, or just boredom. Having the idea that tribes are cool, or that maybe someday you’ll need to know this stuff, is poor incentive for maintaining the discipline required to stay in a voluntary tribe. So: How can contemporary tribes develop structural ties that are more solid and enticing than all the options outside the tribe? If we wait to learn how to form tribes until a collapse, we’re in trouble.
Comment by Toby Hemenway — 20 November 2006 @ 2:04 AM
Absolutely, and as I noted in “The Tribe of Anthropik“:
And I think that suggests precisely where tribe-building has to start: with your own family. Because like you said, if we wait to learn how to form tribes until a collapse, we’re in trouble.
(Surprisingly enough, should Steve ever rejoin us, we’d still be a family—we discovered that Steve’s actually a distant cousin of mine and Mike’s!)
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 November 2006 @ 12:22 PM