Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure Page 10

  The success and failure of the paper

  The startling success of the paper was that, by building it tribally, Rennie and I were able to start a business with almost no capital (a very small amount of cash and some retired typesetting equipment generously contributed by Rennie's brother, James). It would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a paper in the ordinary way, staffing it entirely with personnel hired at normal wages. Built in the ordinary way, it might have taken five or more years for the paper to break even. Built tribally, it broke even the first week. Given the huge area to be covered and its relatively small advertising base, the paper would never have generated enough profit to appeal to a publisher with ordinary capitalistic goals. And in fact, after we sold it (to a local real estate broker who intended to run it just as a business), it failed very quickly.

  Realistically speaking, the area at that time couldn't support a newspaper as a capitalistic venture. What it could have supported was a shopper (an advertising sheet with a few token stories). And in fact, after the East Mountain News folded, its place was taken by a shopper.

  The tribal benefit

  The Albuquerque paper didn't cover the news on “our side” of the mountain at all, except for the occasional homicide. For the first time ever, because of the East Mountain News, people were able to find out what was going on in their area—school events, political events, social events—the whole spectrum of life that counts as “news.” Though they had no way of knowing it, this was a direct benefit of our willingness to build the paper tribally. Building in the ordinary way, we couldn't have afforded to offer a real newspaper.

  I wasn't personally invested in making the East Mountain News a “real” newspaper. My end of the business was putting the ads together. Once, after a succession of fourand eightpage issues had left us all feeling pinched, I said, “Why don't we just do a shopper?” This was instantly voted down. Rennie, Hap, and C.J. were in it because it was a newspaper, not because it earned money. The fact that it would earn more money as a shopper was irrelevant to them. They would have ceased getting what they wanted if it had become a shopper, and just having more money wouldn't have compensated them for the loss.

  The important thing to see is that we were not “giving up” something by being tribal. We were getting something by being tribal—something that would have been out of reach otherwise. We weren't tribal because we were noble and altruistic; we were tribal because we were greedy and selfish.

  What happened to Hap and C.J.?

  We used the paper as a means of providing a living for all of us. For example, when Hap needed a new tire, we traded the local tire company an ad for it. When C.J. couldn't get a phone on her own signature, we co-signed with her. We didn't doubt for a moment that, if our positions had been reversed, they would have done the same for us.

  When we sold the paper, we strongly advised the new owner to keep on working with Hap and C.J., but he soon made it clear he had other ideas. Hap by this time had become something of a celebrity through his work on the paper, so he had no trouble getting a job on the Torrance Country Citizen, a paper whose area of coverage overlapped ours to the south. He's still there as of this writing. The picture of me that appears on the dust jacket of Providence was taken by him while we were revisiting the area in 1993.

  C.J. got married, left the area, and has been out of touch ever since. If you see her, tell her we'd like to hear from her.

  Tribal business: the ingredients

  Merely being tribal is no guarantee of success, of course. The normal elements needed for success have to be there as well. In our case, there had to be a public need for a newspaper and a fairly large number of businesses looking for an advertising venue, and we had both those things.

  But beyond that, Rennie and I were quite incredibly lucky in finding two people who were ready to throw in their lot with ours in building a newspaper, who were content to make a living out of it (as opposed to a killing), and who were used to living on very little (as we were ourselves). With all this, we could hardly miss.

  I think what's needed at a minimum is a group of people (1) who, among them, have all the competencies needed to start and run a given business, (2) who are content with a modest standard of living, and (3) who are willing to “think tribally”— that is, to take what they need out of the business rather than to expect set wages.

  What ventures lend themselves to it?

  As far as I can see, any enterprise that can succeed in the conventional way can succeed in the tribal way—with a few exceptions. A business that's built around the work of a single individual doesn't seem to lend itself to a tribal approach. For example, it's hard to imagine an internist and his or her office staff working together tribally. The disparity between what the internist puts in and what everyone else puts in is just too great. On the other hand, a tribal hospital isn't inconceivable, for there the internist would be putting in the same amount as the surgeon, the administrator, the anesthesiologist, and so on. I haven't been able to figure out any way to make the author's business into a tribal one (unless s/he prefers to be self-published).

  To mention just a few things, restaurants, lawn-care businesses, and construction businesses could all be done tribally (and I'm sure many already are). Keep in mind that, as previously defined, a tribe is nothing more than a coalition of people working together as equals to make a living. I really see no limit to the possibilities.

  A new tribal venture

  People often ask if I consider myself a Leaver. In the past I replied, “Certainly not. I'm a prisoner of the same Taker economic system as you are. I'm entirely dependent on the vast corporate machinery that publishes, distributes, and sells my books.” I then added that I'd be very glad to reduce my dependence on this machinery, even by ten percent, for this would represent at least a ten percent liberation from the prison. But only recently have Rennie and I taken decisive steps to achieve that ten percent.

  I produce a lot of material that has little or no “commercial” value (is not attractive to the corporate publishing machine), but this doesn't mean that it's of no interest to my readers. In order to make this material available to those who want it (and hopefully to win that ten-percent degree of freedom), we decided to start a company called New Tribal Ventures, which will make certain of my works available to the public outside the corporate machinery of U.S. publishing. For example, two short books called The Book of the Damned and The Tales of Adam contain some of the most powerful expressions of my ideas I've ever achieved, but everyone agrees they're not “commercial” properties. These will be offered by New Tribal Ventures as a two-volume set entitled An Animist Testament.

  Tribal tasks and organizational patterns

  In the neo-futurist company, all members of the tribe do everything—write, perform, sell tickets, clean up, and so on. The same is true in the Culpepper and Merriweather Great Combined Circus, where all do everything—set up the tent, take care of the animals, perform, and so on.

  The East Mountain News was organized differently. Hap and C.J. gathered news and sold advertising. I assembled the ads and did the typesetting and copy-editing. Rennie assembled all the news, did the layout, and was responsible for a host of managerial chores—far too many chores, as it turned out. Since no one had presented himself or herself to assist in a tribal way, we needed to hire people to shoulder some of her burdens, but we weren't making enough money to do that.

  We failed to see that one important chore was not being done by any one of us, a chore that might be called marketing. No one presented himself or herself to extend the living of the tribe by performing this function. As a result, through lack of business sense and expertise, we ended up running into a wall we couldn't get around. We needed to hire support for Rennie, but were unable to do so because we were missing a tribal member we didn't even know we were missing.

  A self-sustaining tribe needs to perform all the functions that will make it successful. A tribe of cabinet
makers is not going to suceed without a member who knows how to sell cabinets.

  Cradle-to-grave security?

  Undoubtedly the greatest benefit of the ethnic tribal life is that it provides its members cradle-to-grave security. As I must always begin by saying, this isn't the result of the saintliness or unselfishness of tribal peoples. Baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees enjoy exactly the same sort of security in their social groups. Groups that provide such security are obviously going to hold onto their members much more readily than groups that don't. Once again, it's a matter of natural selection. A group that doesn't take good care of its members is a group that doesn't command much loyalty (and probably won't last long).

  But will occupational tribes provide such security to their members? Not instantly, obviously. If you and your brother start a conventional business on Tuesday, he can hardly expect to retire on Wednesday with full salary for the rest of his life— though he may hope to do that in twenty years, if he helps to build the business during that time.

  The fact that ethnic tribes can provide their members with cradle-to-grave security is a true measure of their wealth. The people of our culture are rich in gadgets, machines, and entertainment, but we're all too aware of the dreadful consequences of losing a job. For some people—all too many—it seems to spell the end of the world; they go “postal,” pick up the nearest automatic weapon, open fire on their former bosses, and finish off with a bullet in their own brains. These are people who are definitely short on feelings of security.

  What about care for the elderly?

  I've been asked if “retired circus performers are cared for by young performers” the way the elderly are cared for in ethnic tribes. This isn't how circus life works—but it also isn't how ethnic tribal life works. Old hunters aren't “cared for” by young hunters.

  To begin with, a circus isn't just performers. Performers are vastly outnumbered by people who do all sorts of things, just as the actors you see on a movie screen are vastly outnumbered by the people involved in putting that image on the screen. Next, to talk about “retired circus performers” doesn't reflect the reality of circus life—or the reality of life in an ethnic tribe, where there's no such thing as a “retired hunter.” When performers can no longer perform, they move on to other jobs in the circus. They don't need to be “cared for” just because they're no longer working the high wire or performing acrobatics.

  What's your model of “care” for the elderly? If it includes all the services of a state-of-the-art hospital, then obviously no tribe is going to provide such a thing. IBM and General Motors don't run hospitals for the use of their employees; they offer them health insurance, which any tribe is free to do as well.

  If your model of “care” for the elderly includes food, clothing, shelter, and the same sort of attention that elderly people in ethnic tribes receive, then this is perfectly well within the scope of an occupational tribe.

  Tribes of the mind

  People tend to imagine occupational tribes in a sort of postapocalyptic fantasy world. They're startled when I point out that they can have health insurance and retirement plans (if they want them) or that the government is going to be just as interested in collecting their taxes and social security payments as anyone else's. But if that's the case, they then ask, what's the point of what we're doing? If the world is just going to go on as before, why bother? These are questions that can't be answered often enough.

  Mother Culture teaches that a savior is what we need—some giant St. Arnold Schwarzenegger who is a sort of combination of Jesus, Jefferson, Dalai Lama, Pope, Gandhi, Gorbachev, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin all rolled into one. The other six billion of us, according to Mother Culture, are helpless to do anything. We must simply wait quietly until St. Arnold arrives.

  Daniel Quinn teaches that no single person is going to save the world. Rather (if it's saved at all), it will be saved by millions (and ultimately billions) of us living a new way. A thousand living a new way won't cause the dominant world order to topple. But that thousand will inspire a hundred thousand, who will inspire a million, who will inspire a billion—and then that world order will begin to look shaky!

  (Next someone will ask, “But if the dominant world order gets shaky, what about my health insurance?”)

  The tribe IS its members

  In a famous interchange at Columbia University, a faculty member who asserted that the faculty is the university was immediately told by the president of the university (former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower) that the faculty are employees of the university. Mr. Eisenhower isn't on hand to contradict me when I say that the members of the tribe aren't employees of the tribe, they are the tribe. Indeed, that's the whole difference.

  Because the tribe is its members, the tribe is what its members want it to be—nothing more and nothing less. If the members of your tribe expect it to provide exactly the sort of cradle-to-grave security that members of ethnic tribes enjoy, then make it so. But this isn't a requirement and may end up making little sense in a world of open tribes. In such a world, for example, it's perfectly conceivable that a husband and wife could belong to different occupational tribes—and that their children might want to belong to different tribes as well. Indeed, this openness to diversity is the whole point.

  A tribe is a group of people making a living together, and there's no one right way for this to be done.

  Be inventive.

  Why make a living at all?

  People sometimes react to my proposals as though there were something slightly distasteful and superfluous about the whole idea of “making a living”—tribally or otherwise. They seem to feel that if the New Tribal Revolution is all it's cracked up to be, then we shouldn't have to “make a living” at all, we should be able to live like the birds of the air.

  Exactly so. That's the whole point, you might say.

  Their misunderstanding isn't about the New Tribal Revolution; it's about the birds of the air. Sparrows may be “free as birds,” but this doesn't mean they don't have to make a living. On the contrary, every living thing on earth has to do this. Gnats, geese, dolphins, chimpanzees, spiders, and frogs all have to expend energy to get what they need to stay alive. There is no creature that spends its life just lying there inert while needed resources flow in and do the work of keeping it alive. Even the green plants have a living to make. Each one is like a cottage industry, a regular little factory that takes energy from the sun and busily converts it into its own substance.

  The tribe, in fact, is just a wonderfully efficient social organization that renders making a living easy for all—unlike civilization, which renders it easy for a privileged few and hard for the rest.

  Another tribal example

  The Neo-Futurists are an ensemble of artists who write, direct, and perform their own work dedicated to social, political, and personal enlightenment in the form of audience-interactive conceptual theater. (These words from the group's online Statement of Purpose.) Working in a “low/no tech poor theatre format,” the group put together a unique postmodern dramatic endeavor that features an ever-changing collection of thirty plays performed in sixty minutes under the umbrella title Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. This signature work has (as of this writing) been running in Chicago since December 1, 1988, and had a successful run at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City in 1993. In 1992 the Neo-Futurists opened their own Neo-Futurarium, boasting a 154-seat theater and an art gallery.

  As many as thirteen members are active in the company at any one time, though the average performance tends to involve only eight or so. In addition to writing, directing, and performing Too Much Light, these thirteen perform virtually all chores associated with the theater and the production—manning the box office, cleaning up, recycling, producing the programs, buying the props, and so on.

  Scuffling in the usual way

  In a study of Gypsies and other itinerant peoples, anthropologist Sharon Bohn Gmelch lists some reasons these
groups survive. They keep overhead low and have little interest in “material accumulation and capital expansion.” They're willing to “exploit 'marginal' opportunities,” to “fill gaps” in the economy, and to “accept a narrow profit margin from multiple sources.” In short, they're experienced scufflers, as were all the residents of Madrid when we lived there—and as were all the members of the East Mountain News, none of whom made one hundred percent of his or her living from the newspaper.

  The same is true of The Neo-Futurists. Though their goal is to make a living from the theater, most were probably deriving only twenty to fifty percent of their income from it in 1998, according to founder Greg Allen (who supplements his income by teaching theater history at Columbia College). Others have part-time jobs as massage therapist, physical trainer, CD-ROM writer, ultrasound technician, astrologer, secretaries, traditional waiters, and one “honest-to-god rock star in a famous punk band.”

  One of the company, Geryll Robinson, writes: “I wish I could lead my life without supporting/being supported by corporate America. I can't. I engage in a number of odd and often messy activities that people give me money for … I visited Chicago. I saw Too Much Light. I wanted in. I moved here. I auditioned. Now they own me. My life is good. Very good.”