Community, Tribe or Family

August 27, 2019

What is Community, Tribe, or Family?

Community

Community are groups of people that have formed to meet common needs. Members of a community have a sense of trust, belonging, safety, and caring for each other. They have an individual and collective sense that they can, as part of that community, influence their environments and each other. (1)

What does it mean to live in a “community”? It means you cherish a commitment to a lifestyle characterized by neighbors and friends—not amenities. Residents willingly give their time and energy to events and activities. People look out for each other and an injustice done to one in the community is answered by all. (2)

Tribe

"This book (Tribe) is about ... what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty and belonging and the eternal human quest for meaning,” Junger writes in the introduction. “It’s about why — for many people — war feels better than peace and hardship can turn out to be a great blessing and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary.” (3)

Tribes are characterized by having a common topography, sense of unity, endogamous group, common dialect, ties of blood-relationship, protection awareness, distinct political organization, common culture, importance of kinship, egalitarian values, and rudimentary type of religion. (4)

Family

A group of people, usually of the same blood (but do not have to be), who genuinely love, trust, care about, and look out for each other. Not to be mistaken with relatives sharing the same household who hate each other. REAL family is a bondage that cannot be broken by any means. (5)

Family consists of the people who support and love you, and the people you can confide in and trust. (6)

So what are the differences?

It seems to me that the biggest difference I have seen in my research is that a Tribe is a mobile Community. Tribes travel, where community is built in one location. I guess it would be safe to say that Tribe is built on shared shenanigans.

Tribes do seem to have stronger bonds than Community. Where the resources of a Community are pretty much set by the location of the Community, a Tribe has the option of traveling to new locations. In the making of the decision to move and the action of moving it seems is where the strengthening of the bonds happens.

What stands out to me in the difference in a Family bond is that is it is rather difficult to break if it every is broken and there is a much higher level of trust between members.