What's Your Tribe?

Is that the question behind almost all human interaction?

Used to be, 30,000 years ago and more (or at least it seems like it used to be, nobody really knows for sure), your tribe was a mix of your genes and location. All members of a tribe shared a basic knowledge set, and were cousins, if not even closer relatives. There may have been some specialization, but for the most part everyone knew how to do every other persons function, or at least that's what the archaelogical record suggests.

At some point, for some unknown reason, someone got the bright idea to specialize. Turns out if you do the same thing enough times and pay attention to what you're doing, you might just get better with time.

Fast forward a thousand generations or so, and now everything is specialized to an astonishing degree. Add to that the internet where every specialization, every quirk, every hobby, every kink, every addiction can be shared, displayed, obsessed over, indulged, and fed.

But what does that have to do with tribes? Folks now can't rely on family bands to offer identity, instead we are constantly defining and redefining ourselves with each person we meet, and in each social circumstance.

Every choice you make becomes an identifier of which tribe(s) you want people to associate you with.

Mac v PC, Sony v Nintendo v Microsoft, Red Sox v Yankees, Trojans v Bruins, Chicago v NY Style (Pizza), Cat Fancier v Dog Lover, Horde v Alliance, Original Trilogy v Prequels (OK, that one doesn't count, that's no contest).

I think a certain degree of xenophobia and xenophilia is inborn in all folks. We are repulsed and attracted to that which is different from how we identify ourselves. There are evolutionary reasons why both might be attractive to a population. On the one hand, a small band with an especially good mutation would be advantaged by only breeding with those like themselves, but bands that have a history of favoring those unlike themselves have the advantage of new blood regularly. That ambivalence might be hardwired. Now that each of us carry identities born not just from who are parents are, or where we were born, or what gods (or non-gods) we worship, or who we choose to rub genitals with, I think we feel the need to both justify our own choices while casting suspicion on those that choose otherwise. It's an impulse from a dark and primordial place. Now that impulse finds expression across a variety of matrices.

It isn't pretty, it isn't rational, it just is.

So, if you love riding cycles, you can't just enjoy cycling, you have to hate folks in cars, if you are proud of making eco-friendly choices in your personal life, you can't just be satisfied with that, you have to despise folks who continue to 'pillage the planet', if you are a non-smoker, any soot-souled and soiled individual who dares to puff around you needs to be ostracized.

Is this something we could change? Is this something we should change? Does this look infected (wrong question, nevermind)?

If you need to blame somebody or something for these ramblings, blame the comments from this week in blogging in the comments at So Quoted. I take responsibility for the thoughts that are my own, and I deflect blame over there (or give credit if you like) for the concepts inspired by that thread.

And speaking of ridiculously specialized skills and how these odd skills are now appreciated more widely than they might have been in the past, I give you Billy Marks Balls (ping pong type).

(alternately you can divide the world into the tribe of folks who believe these tricks are real and the tribe of folks who believe that they were done through computer-aided devilry)

(hat tip throwing things)

Succinct Film Reviews

Saw The Last King of Scotland today.

My review (imagine it being recited by Billy Connolly)

It's a strange way to be entertained, but entertaining it bloody well is.

That's the short version. But, sometimes that's not enough to get folks to consider seeking out a smart semi-independent film like this, so here's a bit more.

Forest Whitaker is fantastic as Idi Amin, but this isn't his picture alone.

Not-Noah Wyle 'aka' James McAvoy is the star of the film (I call him not-noah wyle because, first he looks like him, second he plays a doctor, 'nuff said). His role is a meaty one. The swirl of events the film depicts, the tale of temptation it weaves moves along well. It doesn't fall into the trap of sappiness and sentimentality that most films that use a white protagonist to tell a non-white story fall into. There's some scenes of tremendous brutality, played to maximize their impact. This is no easy little popcorn munching bit of entertainment.

That's what I mean by this being a strange way to be entertained. But film can also inform, inspire and instruct. This film doesn't try to do all of that, and that's a good thing. An excess of earnestness would have weighed this thing down and ruined it. Serious stuff happens, but it's presented artfully and with flashes of humor.

I recommend this film, but be warned that it's not an entirely easy experience.

And when I posted earlier that Carina Chocano was pulling her anti-colonial nonsense straight out of her ass, I wasn't far wrong. The lessons she grabbed from this film, are far simpler than what the film really conveys. There are some hints as to British complicity in the problems suffered by Uganda, but this film doesn't diminish the domestic causes for their suffering.

It's still a great mystery why there are no Singapores in Africa. The local tribalism or the legacy of colonialism or the spread of Islam can't explain the suffering. So many of these countries seem to have created an awful amalgamation of the worst characteristics of these three main cultural sources.

It's sad to see all this unfold as it does in this film, yet strangely entertaining.