We Are Multi-Tribal

Image Credit: iStock / metamorworks

I’ve been reading a lot lately about human tribes: Sebastian Junger’s excellent book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, and The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow, to name a couple. And all of these works make good points about our basic need to be part of a small, supportive community.

But here’s one observation that seems to me to be getting too little consideration, among all this interest in early human tribes:

We modern humans are multi-tribal.

That is, we tend to belong to, not one, but to many tribes.

As examples, here are some of the tribes to which I belong:

• My immediate family;
• My extended family;
• The neighbors on my block;
• My local neighborhood organization;
• Fellow alumni of the University of Michigan;
• Fellow alumni from Big Ten schools in the Midwest;
• Fellow liberal arts majors;
• Fellow programmers;
• Fellow fans of computing devices made by Apple;
• Fellow owners of big dogs;
• Citizens of Seattle, the city where I have lived for the past sixteen years;
• Citizens of the state of Washington;