[shakna]

> experiences with some sort of "narrative" that becomes more synthetic the more it becomes generalized and massaged?

We clearly have different thoughts on the matter, so I won't delve deeply here.

But I would say the message becoming more generalised isn't what I've seen. Though, the tribes I was immersed with had deep story-telling practices, such as weaving and repeated communal retellings. Resulting in near word-for-word retellings some hundreds of years apart. The moral isn't explained or given. Its just history.

[wordupmaking]

I'm happy for you that you don't just see the dark underbelly of it. But the ruins and the mass graves and the devious sadism of the last tribe "my people" was immersed in last are kind of the worst humanity has to offer, and tribalism is kind of one of my pet peeves. Doesn't mean I hate tribal people, especially since I don't really so much (just) mean "native tribes in Africa" when I think tribalism. Think people who liked Hip Hop people who liked Metal bashing each other in the 90s with such earnestness, or whatever. There's so many examples from cute and silly to horrible. There is no use to any of that, just insecure individuals trying to feel safety and identity in numbers. That's the tribalism I know, the one people engaged in after they have been uprooted. Football Hooligans. "Liberals vs. Conservatives". "PC Master Race vs filthy casuals". Israel vs. Palestine, with assholes and great people on both sides. I'm on the side of those who are on nobodies' side, and it involves a lot of kicking cans down empty streets.

> As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. [...] This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.

-- Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man" (1871)

It's the in-between that drives me nuts, and the closing window of opportunity to achieve some kind of unity that isn't based on deformity and deception, if not outright force.

    I don't understand why half the world is still crying, man
    And the other half of the world is still crying too, man

-- Janis Joplin

[shakna]

There's plenty wrong. I saw kids rejecting their own culture, and an invading one. Coming out messed up so badly they couldn't tell anger from happiness.

But if we forget our past, we risk repeating it.

Remember the bad, and where you came from, and remember the good, so that you have a chance at ensuring the future doesn't look like your nightmares.

Maybe this might be an example of a tribe serving a better purpose:

The elders acknowledged the problems of the next generation. So they built a school, and brought in outside knowledge to run it. The school was too far inland to run from, and a long way from anywhere else. They learned maths, alongside the story of the elder who decided to make peace with the other tribes.

The school is their pride. They rejoice in the girl learning to be a doctor, and the guy who is now a national athlete.

They didn't forget who they were, but they saw who they weren't and are actively trying to add to it. Enhance themselves, by using their past as a guide.

[throwway390]

> the tribes I was immersed with

You should have started off with that. There's no point in arguing with you if this is the case. You're too invested in them.

This is fine. You're probably more correct that I am anyway, since you've experience on the ground. I'm just armchair quarterbacking.