(A little addendum to our recent discussion on D.Quinn with Steve Salmony)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Tribalism Neo-Tribalism is the ideology that human beings have evolved to live in a tribal, as opposed to a modern, society, and thus cannot achieve genuine happiness until some semblance of archaic lifestyles has been re-created or re-embraced. Neo-tribalist ideology is rooted in the social philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and in the Evolutionary Principle of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, which states that a species removed from the environment in which it evolved will become pathological. Certain aspects of industrial and post-industrial life, including the necessity of living in a society of strangers and interacting with organizations that have memberships far above Dunbar's number are cited as inherently detrimental to the human mind as it has evolved. In a 1985 paper, "Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, & the Commons," psychologist Dennis Fox proposed a number around 150 people. Recently some supporters of neo-Tribalism have put forth the argument that their ideas have been scientifically proven by the discipline of evolutionary psychology. This claim has been highly disputed, however. ... Radical tendency Radical neo-Tribalists, such as John Zerzan, ___Daniel Quinn___ and others associated with the New tribalists, believe that healthy tribal life can only thrive after technological civilization has either been destroyed or severely reduced in scope. Quinn formulated the concept of "walking away," abandoning civilization as a whole and constructing a new, tribal culture on its periphery. Others, such as Derrick Jensen, tend to call for more violent action, as they believe that it is appropriate and necessary to actively accelerate or cause a collapse of civilization. Still others, such as The Tribe of Anthropik take a survivalist bent and believe that a collapse is inevitable no matter what is done or said and concentrate their efforts on surviving and forming tribal cultures in the aftermath. In general radical neo-Tribalist groups tend to agree that the current population of humanity is unsustainable and thus a form of cultural change is fundamentally necessary, rather than simply desirable, and that the preferable, or perhaps inevitable form for society to take after this change is tribalism. The call for a revolution is intended to either accomplish or survive this change. Anarcho-Primitivism has been cited as an influence on or even a variant of radical neo-Tribalism. Criticism Critics have pointed out that membership in modern 'tribes' is voluntary and shallow, i.e. not based on deep cultural traditions and kinship ties. Therefore it is argued neo-Tribalism is likely to be nothing more than a fad - if it even really exists outside the minds of certain pundits and weekend hobbyists. ... _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
