Violence, Healing and the Need for Tribalism

Violence, Healing and the Need for Tribalism

by Sunny Strasburg

  It is at least 130 degrees, muggy, pitch black, and so crowded I am touching the strangers around me. In this absolute darkness, I smell the sage smoke and wet soil, and the stink of the repulsive man seated behind me -- he is my shadow. Feeling the humidity of the sweat dripping from his meaty body, I vigilantly listen for his movement, to sense where he is in this tiny, crowded space.
I can't stand it, I want to run, to get some fresh air. I have to escape him. Why is he here? Anyone but him, with his backwoods dialect and his brutish, scarred face. My mind is racing. I am dizzy with fear and hate and panic. I heard he killed someone. "Open your heart," I silently chant," You should be past this...come on! You're a therapist!"
Before us, in the center, hot, melon-sized rocks pulse with an almost imperceptible glow. Water is thrown onto them and the steam and heat force me to drop to the cool earth. My shadow bends forward as well, his arm leaning against my flank. The heat is overwhelming. It is breaking us. My judgment and fear subsides into the immediate threat of suffocating heat. The heat becomes the enemy, and we all psychically band together against it in order to survive.
The man hacks and then sighs a low moan. My heart finally cracks open, and I feel the connection to him and everyone else in the lodge, as we all sweat, heave and wrestle with our inner demons. The sound he utters builds into a pitiful, mournful wail. My thoughts suspend and I listen...no, I hear. He sounds so lonely. "Momma, I'm so sorry....Mommy?" He sobs like a child; his shoulders curl forward and heave. My anger falls away, and the fountain of my own isolated sorrow rises. My breath catches with an animal wail, and I join in a harmonizing cry.
In a tribe, even this temporary one comprised within a sweat lodge, the shadow cannot be "othered" by turning it into an enemy or scapegoat but rather must be faced and worked, turned like a grit of sand in the oyster turned over and over until it is polished into a pearl. In a small tribe, the population density doesn't allow one to push the shadow out of one's awareness. He shows up at the campfire night after night. The shadow as I experienced it had a physical form -- Joshua, a convicted murderer and gang member on the path to rehabilitation. The sweat lodge maintains an ancient tradition deeply relevant to the healing of alienation and disintegration.
In the sweat lodge, we all cook in the womb and own up to the parts of ourselves that are ex-cons and murderers. The lawyer talks about his secret cocaine addiction, the CFO admits being raped as a boy. The midwife, two Native American elders, and homemaker all reveal their personal torments. But these shadows are not labels; they are verbs, events that happened to these heroes along the way. And we are all in the process of changing, unfolding along our paths and discovering meaning along the way. We all suffer and hate, love, hurt, connect, withdraw, and grow.
We need tribe. We need to belong. This is hard-wired into us. And in modern life, there is a disconnect. We live in little fenced-in square shelters, not only isolated from the collective shadow -- the murderers and rapists, but also the desirable parts of community -- the sense of tribe, belonging and a collective purpose. The more docile among us attempt to satiate this need to belong by staying in and locking our houses and communing with our television alone, watching episodes of Seinfeld and Friends. Or maybe we keep up with the latest Hollywood love trysts as if Angelinia Jolie is our B.F.F.
I'm finding that many of us have been on a long quest to find and co-create a deep community -- a tribe -- somewhere to belong. The modern experience tends toward isolation and loneliness. Alone in offices, we peer through windows of pixels to connect to one another via Facebook. We drop our kids off at daycare to drive to work alone in a metal box. Then we work in that cubicle for eight to ten hours a day, come home, flop on the couch and crank the volume on the TV. We glean meaning from sitcoms and myth systems from film. We are desperate for meaning -- and tribe.
Our desire for tribe has been hijacked by Hollywood and I've often wondered if we would be less apathetic and more involved with local community if TV had never been invented. Worse than that isolation, perhaps, are the generations born into this isolation, latchkey kids so desperate to feel alive, and to fill that essential need for rights of passage and belonging to tribe, that they join violent gangs and act out their projected rage upon one another and the neighborhoods where they live..
Many primordial languages in the Americas had no words for guilt or shame. For example, the Apaches say those words were developed by white men to control one another. Actions that we think of as unforgivable actions were considered by many native cultures as mistakes which created opportunities to discover more about themselves and growth toward deeper wisdom.

Anthropologist Rupert Ross said that primordial languages often center on the use of verbs rather than nouns. Native Americans for example, tend not to label individuals, but look at people as a process rather than a static thing. Ross says, "When we apply such labels to real people, however, they tend to stick. And when they stick, they cause us to start denying the complexity and wholeness of the human beings we are speaking of."
The belief that we create our lives (as masters of our own fate) rather than being the victims of events which happen to us involves overcoming guilt and shame and speaking our own truth. The meaning, and therefore our reality, created by us through our actions fills us with a sense of purpose and self-actualization. But creating reality from within a framework of shame or guilt stunts growth. Shame combined with lack of opportunity can lead to social apathy at best and violence at worst. We are social, story-telling organisms, propelled by an archetypal drive to create tribes and community. Tribes are bonded through a sense of meaning.
When living close to nature, everything is in a constant flux of change. Nothing stays good or bad forever. Judgment and expectation get us in trouble. They become shorthand for a dead-end label that some thing or some one is good or bad.
Like most, I have a deep fear of murderers and rapists. Whenever I am in the presence of someone I know has committed a violent act, I am engulfed by fear. In most sectors of my life, I avoid these situations, but when my therapy practice brings me in contact with such people, it seems street-smart to maintain cold detachment and distrust.
A few years ago, I volunteered to teach art classes at a lock-down center for homeless drug addicts in mandatory rehabilitation. I entered the position with a gung-ho, hopeful attitude.  I thought I could go in, roll up my sleeves and genuinely connect with each of them, providing the love and mirroring they never had. I believed this would somehow immunize me from dipping down into their dirty world.
I was eaten alive.
They were wise to my naiveté, and my blind enthusiasm enraged them. On the second day of class, I trembled as a huge, toothless gangster named Chola hurled herself toward me and screamed three inches from my face, "Don't you be dis-re-specting ME! I aint your dog, your f*cking project! You can leave.... self-righteous BITCH! I can't!" Her spit sprayed my face. I started to cry. She flopped back into her chair with a nonchalant grunt. I stood there, not knowing what to do. I desperately wanted to disconnect from the situation. I wanted to defend and save myself from the visceral reality she had articulated.
After that, I was much more cynical and careful. I had a new kind of respect. But I remained determined to stay real with these people. And within all the crazy-making drama, darkness, and defeat, some shining moments sparkle in my memory. One night, the women were all working on a large mosaic together. The scene rekindled a feeling of the tribe within me. A southern woman started in her low, gospel voice, singing, "Lean On Me." One by one, the entire group joined in. Once again I cried, this time for the beauty and tenacity of the human spirit. She sang the song of community, of tribe, of connection.
Each of us individually struggles with the paradox of good and evil within, but a tribe creates a container that holds these disparate elements. Tribalism is a perennial archetype that re-emerges whenever it is absent in the dominant culture. In our decidedly non-tribal culture, the archetype may appear as belonging to a gang, being a Dead-Head, or talking about what Jerry Seinfeld did in last night's episode with the coworker in the next cubicle. In all these cases, the tribe creates a feeling of belonging through unified meaning.
This meaning, implicit or explicit, becomes the group's mission statement and raison d'etre. And the mission statement can be anywhere along a spectrum of possibilities. They can be syntropic, healthy, and positive or destructive, dystopic and entropic.

Gangs are tribes. It is not tribalism which creates the problem of gang violence, nor is violence inherent to gangs. It is using violence to create meaning which is the problem. This raises the question, why would anyone choose violence as a source of meaning?
Violence is the lowest common denominator. Perhaps it's a rite of passage spun out of the web of projected rage these isolated kids have toward our alienating society.
What do we do with those whose drive for meaning is based around risk and violence? Rather than taking away all opportunity for growth and change, such as school suspensions, denying voting rights, and refusing to employ ex-cons and recovering addicts, our society would benefit to help establish a positive meaning for gang members that creates syntropy rather than entropy.
For many former bad boys who are good men today, some sort of spiritual experience turned the direction of their lives. So in paying full homage to good parenting, education, counseling, real justice, community support, and economic opportunity, it would be remiss not to acknowledge the power of a spiritual community or teacher to restore a child's moral compass to working order.
In creating meaning, and thus reality, our internal compass of morality guides our choices, rather than an externally imposed didactic moral code.
To clarify this internal morality, we need to experience our edges. We need to be pushed in experiences and mirrored in that journey. This is why rites of passage like the sweat lodge or peyote vision quest are essential to realigning the compass of those who have lost their way -- whether in gang life, addiction, or just on the day-to-day journey of life in American culture.  For ex-con Joshua, participating in sweat lodges, exploring rites of passage facilitated by a medicine man fills his need to belong to something with a higher purpose. He told me later that the sense of belonging he feels in the sweat lodge tribe creates a container for him to explore honesty, vulnerability, and personal responsibility.
As with tribes, rites of passage must be activated by a sense of meaning, and that meaning travels along a spectrum of possibilities. Childbirth and prison tattoos seem to have no similarities, but both are rites of passage. Getting jumped into a gang, peyote vision quests, running a marathon, Bar Mitzvahs -- these are all archetypal rites of passage. One primary rite of passage is the boy's journey into manhood. A medicine woman once explained it to me this way:
A woman's vision quest is always childbirth... there is no other vision quest for men or women as powerful as childbirth. But for men, it is different. The vision quest is the sacred sweat lodge. Vision quest is suffering. It brings you to your knees. No more lies. I don't care how old you are. You are not a man until you go on your vision quest.
The remaining essential factor in creating and sustaining a functional tribe is mirroring by elders. Without the witness of someone who has been on the path, the meaning and the importance of ritual are lost. The psyche acts out the rite of passage in endless repetition until it is witnessed. For example, in the rave, participants seek ritual ecstasy through ingesting "X" (Ecstasy or MDMA), which produces a cathartic merging and sense of belonging. This emulates a rite of passage, but often the meaning is lost when the psychedelic pilgrim sobers up because no shaman witnessed, digested and reflected the meaning for the seeker.
The same is true for gangs. Drive-by shootings, hazings, school yard bullying -- all  these acts are repeated and escalated until someone takes notice. Elders and mentors are essential to de-escalating violence. For troubled youth one of the most important ways through which to receive that guidance and wisdom is a caring and capable adult. Many kids just need someone to guide their journey toward responsible manhood and illuminate them to the fact that each of them has a unique gift to give the world.
Racism, lack of opportunity, culture and socio-economic stress create a culture for inner city kids in which fathers are often absent or abusive. A strong, grounded and positive masculine hero maps the path for lost souls. Bad boys can see that another reality is achievable. Participating in a positive tribal community, building love and a sense of growth and possibility, can create a hopeful future.
I don't want to negate the very real concerns of serious psychological disorders and abuse which complicate rehabilitation for "bad boys." There are psychopaths and sociopaths, but in differing times and circumstances, people are people.  All of us need to be witnessed in a space in which such labels can be set aside.  Some part of the spirit remains unbent by circumstance and regret and yearns to connect, to shine in its own way and have its contribution acknowledged. 
Creating intentional tribes and rites of passage can restore a sense of purpose, belonging, respect, and morality. Regardless of the method, the ultimate success depends on whether the tribal morality can inspire. Then it may be assimilated and accommodated into the psyche, to emanate from within to create a lasting frame of relevance for the individual's gifts. The tribal morality must be able to allow and integrate the intrinsic diversity of personalities and how they react to the stages and challenges of the life journey.
Joshua and I get something from the sweat lodge medicine that we can't find in mainstream culture. There is patience and a slower rhythm in the intentional witnessing.  I left the lodge that day feeling that connection to a tribe and longing to cultivate that in my daily reality.
 
Top Image by andrew_j_w courtesy of Creative Commons license. 
From http://www.realitysandwich.com/violence_and_need_tribalism

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Secede and Succeed

Secede and Succeed If you want to help save our planetary home from the destruction and despoliation wrought by the barbaric so-called civilizations of the early Third Millennium, save and nurture nature where you live. Encourage the plants and animals that have evolved to best suit the place you inhabit and help expand a healthy diversity of life-forms sharing your environment.       We need to take a slow step backward to successfully secede from the madness of human myopia, to develop a broader perspective on the dumb programs that we are trained to see as normality.  Self-sufficient confidence grows from the realisation that all human society is based on insecurity, fear of death and fear of the self-governing world of nature – including our own nature. All walls and fences keep the demons in, as well as out.            In the great urban drift of the last century the custodians of the Earth have been removed from their roots and most of the great forests, rivers and magical places protected by them for millennia have been trashed by greed and ignorance. Now compassionate and conscious people are needed all over the world, outside the toxic stewing cities, where they can make a real difference protecting and rehabilitating our common heritage – the real capital of humanity.            How long does it take to grow a thousand year old tree? The answer isn’t as simple as it may seem; such a tree would usually need an even more ancient forest to support it – an intact ecosystem at least five or ten thousand years old. How long does it take to cut down a thousand year tree with a chainsaw? How long does it take to grow an old-growth forest? For how long does it need to be protected?            The best way to save intact ecosystems on a planet full of rampant humans is to have ecologically aware humans inhabiting them. The only forests, rivers and ecosystems that can be saved from ‘progress’ and ‘development’ will be those that have active, compassionate and aware custodians living with them to gain a true understanding of their nature. Ever it was thus, before the coming of Guns, Oil and Drugs to the lands of native peoples. Without indigenous custodians and with no ecologically aware new settlers, the sacred earth – soil, plants, animals, water and air – are replaced by the privatized deserted desert that has already replaced so much of our only home. Rivers become dry chemical drains and land is treated as industrial waste, to be disposed of and replaced by those whose wreathes will be made of gold leaf and whose shrouds will be stitched from plastic money when their cancerous souls implode their mortal coils.            Unfortunately, with the vitality of the world being sucked into the tumours that are cities, these seats of civilization have become the root cause of planetary turmoil and chaos that is now beginning to be felt in the lives of all the dwellers within the walls. Cities are the problem and no amount of tinkering with their inputs and outputs will save them in time – before the feedback loops of ecocide turn the tables on those who think plastic walls, windows and screens protect them from reality. No amount of change from within will save those who benefit from their toxic luxuries and dubious divertissements.             This is no mere prophecy. Take a look around. Do you have any idea of what’s already been destroyed, the irreplaceable virtues of nature’s realm that have been ignored to extinction? How can you know the riches that have been lost – that have truly been lost beyond redemption or human memory or awareness? Ignorance is bliss if you know not what you miss, but blindness is worse than a long memory’s curse.            You can help the planet and open your own horizons by stepping out of the confines of the corporate cells hemming in the lives, dreams and aspirations of all behind the walls. You can ally yourself to nature instead of feeding its destruction by your very existence while feeding yourself and your family on the system’s systemic poisons. The New You   Merely inhabiting intact, natural surrounds is no help – it’s the kiss of death. A deep examination of your own true, essential needs and nature is required before any real awareness of the reality, needs and directives of Nature can develop.  Without changing ourselves we simply propagate the problems we claim to seek to solve. The lies, false beliefs and inherently destructive programs built into us by the warlike, clannish cultures in which we’re embedded have adulterated our links to nature and to our own true natures. Beyond the illusory veil of the grasping, imagined supremacy of humankind over the world,  transcendence and transformation may be found along with a healthy sustainable life. Or you can hug cold gold metal and see how fast it sucks the warmth and life out of you.            When left to your own resources - no longer continually distracted by petty social dramas or mediocre mediated media diversions, pecking orders and egocentric displays, privatized, preservatised bread and circuses – you can find yourself. It’s never too early or late to abandon the false security of monoliths and edifices, offices and temples.            But replicating the suburban nightmare by simply transferring a ‘nuclear family’ to a larger performance stage will only destroy the planet more quickly. We must hang together or we’ll surely hang separately. We’re designed- have evolved – to live most happily in tribal groups of between twelve and sixty individuals. This is also a good range for the economies of scale that make the ongoing tasks of life (chopping wood and carrying water) tolerably or enjoyably easy and human culture and dialog possible.            The structures we build and inhabit define or restrict our relationships with each other and the land. An isolated nuclear family home is a multitude of disasters waiting to happen. A large shared dwelling or series of dwellings located around shared facilities and utilities can replicate the tribal comfort zone. It’s a great way to share the planet and its resources and to care for and about each other. Balancing the needs of privacy and sharing are what sustainable human society is all about. Intentional Communities – Intense or In Tents?   You don’t have to live like a refugee to share your life with others. Whether inside or outside cities, learning to share can make us healthier, wealthier, wiser and enable us to be worthwhile parents and family for the children of the new millennium. It’s time for nuclear families to fuse and combine, time for individuals to find people they can successfully live with. Above all else, one thing makes a community possible (or not) – the chemistry between individual people. With the best will in the world, some people rub each other up the wrong way and are simply incompatible - but most can learn to get along and enjoy each other’s company.            It’s not enough to just clump together in the hope that something better will emerge from the scrum by default. A group needs to share, develop, understand and declare a common ethos and similar dreams and aspirations if it’s to rise above the suburban wage-slave backgrounds of its members and create something new and sustainable. Shared beliefs have made communal living possible for religious and spiritual groups throughout history; today’s great challenge is for ‘sea changers’ and ‘tree changers’ to thrive together without a leader, guru, mythical deity or fixed hierarchy waving a proverbial or literal stick or enticing obedience with a tasty carrot. This is what’s required if we’re to be freely cooperating self-aware beings.            What other type of people would you consider living with?            -          R. Ayana See more by R. Ayana images - author's @  http://hermetic.blog.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/00/01/39/97/1399780/files/feral-hippy-naturism/star-horse_0.jpg http://www.flickr.com/photos/new-illuminati/194486293/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/new-illuminati/194501532/  For further enlightening information enter a word or phrase into the search box @  New Illuminati or click on any label/tag at the bottom of the page @  http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com And see The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com  New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com  New Illuminati on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Illuminati/320674219559    The Prince of Centraxis – http://centraxis.blogspot.com This material is published under Creative Commons Copyright (unless an individual item is declared otherwise by copyright holder) – reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged, if you give attribution to the work & author - and please include a (preferably active) link to the original along with this notice. Feel free to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember attribution! If you like what you see, please send a tiny donation or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far… From the New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com