2.9 Taking the sacred out of tribalism
What does sacred mean? The dictionary says it means…
Highly valued and important.
But check the lexicon of tribalism and you’ll see that sacred means…
Not to be questioned.
It means privileged, inviolate, and unassailable.
Whatever is declared sacred, you have to submit to it. You don’t dare protest it.
So what role did sacredness play in the life of a tribe? This is an interesting question because usually we think that it was the tribe’s god that was sacred, and the tribe’s perspective was…
Our god has chosen us as his favorites, and he watches over us and protects us, and some of his sacredness rubs off on us. Which means even though we are humans, and mortal, there’s a touch of sacredness to us.
But when we look at other tribes we don’t see any sacredness at all. There’s nothing special about them like there is about us.
We knew that other tribes had gods of their own, but we knew that our god was the best, we just knew it. Or if we shared a god with a neighboring tribe, still, like sibling rivalry, we considered that this god loved us best.
So far, so good. Nothing surprising there.
But when we break the spell of tribalism, we get to see the solipsistic circle…
We declared our god sacred and then to return the favor he declared us sacred.
But let’s dig deeper. If we go all the way down to the bottom of the human operating system, our genome, what we find is that it’s made up of DNA. And…
What’s sacred to DNA?
It’s for an organism to…
Survive long enough to reproduce and send its genes down the line into succeeding generations.
And for us humans our tribe was the unit of survival. It was the key thriving so we could reproduce.
And this means that in biological and evolutionary terms…
The tribe is sacred.
That came first.
The tribe’s way of life was not to be questioned. You submitted.
With one exception, If conditions changed, if the environment become hotter and drier or wetter and colder, the tribe would make changes and adapt. Or if a new tribe moved in next door and started muscling into your territory, your tribe might make changes to respond effectively to this threat.
But once those changes were made…
The new tribal way of life become absolute.
Because it was a matter of life and death. The tribe needed every single one of its members to conform and obey and contribute.
So how does the tribe’s god fit into this? Or let’s ask it this way…
What was the survival value of the tribe’s god?
Of course early humans made up gods to explain things they didn’t understand. And they were living in a scary and dangerous world, so they called on their god to calm their fears and give themselves a sense of security. They decided to believe that a human–like figure with a human–like heart was watching over them.
But…
The most important function of a god was to strengthen tribal identity and allegiance and discipline.
The tribe declared its god sacred, so that god could bestow sacredness on the tribe to reinforce the tribe’s sense of itself. And make the tribe’s mores, or rules, sacred. Meaning you could not under ordinary circumstances, question those rules or protest them.
The god was the moon and the tribe was the sun. The moon only reflected the tribe’s sacredness.
But now we live in mega–societies where we have multiple tribes all mixed in together.
We’ve got all these tribes each claiming…
We’re special and sacred and you’re not.
You hear this in the argument for “religious liberty” which really only means…
Me and my tribe are sacred to ourselves and get to do whatever we choose to do and are not to be questioned.
And the Lord of the Universe backs us up.
But what you and your tribe want is profane and vulgar and disgusting.
This ongoing tribal bullheadedness keeps us blocked from working together like we need to.
We humans are not sacred, there is nothing sacred about us. We need to get self–critical, to the max. We need to make radical changes in how we’re living, we need to make a total break from our tribal past and begin to put together a trans-tribal future…
We can’t afford sacredness anymore because it’s hurting us.
We need to.
Stop believing we’re sacred.
And admit that what we really are is…
Scared.
