Sober Addendum

In comments, Mikey discusses the eminent Alan Fox, professor of comparative religion at U. Delaware, whose winter session class on intro to world religions once blew my effing mind. Fox makes a good point, which makes good sense to me, which is that another aspect of modern society which is missing is a rite of passage, or coming of age, ceremony. One of the weirder aspects of our culture is how we have extended adolescence well past when it used to be considered appropriate. Until the last 50 or 100 years, very rarely did you make it into your 20's without being married, whereas now that expectation has been pushed back 10 years, or even more.

With people going off to college, then doing grad school, or unpaid (or nearly unpaid) internships, or joining the Peace Corps, it seems like adolescence just goes on and on and on. Somewhere along the way you become a grownup, but nobody ever really tells you where that point is. That's the purpose of the tribal coming of age ceremony; it tells you when you are officially a grownup, and when it's time to stop screwing around and get on with the job of continuing the tribe, by hunting, gathering, growing, marrying, reproducing, etc.

Mikey then says (whole paragraph is [sic], Mikey's a great guy, but a terrible speller.)

He believed that this was why gangs flurished as they did. They offered both. The gang exists both for and by the members. People belong, the suffer, they overcome, and the gang becomes stronger.

Ever since then I've had a dream to become a Cryp. That's the real reason I moved out west.

This is, of course, said mostly tongue-in-cheek. But it brings up an important point to the idea of tribal identity. Tribes are funny things. They're not like the Kiwanis Club, or your club Ultimate team. You don't just sign up and voila! You're in the tribe. Historically, you only joined a tribe if you were born into it, married into it, or captured by one of its members. Modern tribes (such as gangs, cults, and even the circus) aren't quite so difficult to join, but it's still a whole lot more intensive than simply saying you want to be a part of one.

Being in a tribe is a very time-consuming thing. Again, it's not a job. Your job is probably part of your being in the tribe (for instance, a street-runner for the Crips), but when the job is done, you're still part of the tribe. The modern fascination with independence, living on one's own, joining a wide variety of activities; these are the antithesis of the tribal lifestyle, and one of the modern ideas that is going to have to be either deconstructed or modified so that they can coexist.