I was talking to my brother recently about the concept of sacrifice. One way to think about a sacrifice is that we give up something in order to get (or keep) something that we value more. By this definition, a sacrifice sounds a lot like an investment. But I think there is a difference.
Specifically, I think that a sacrifice is a sacred investment. That is, in order to be considered a sacrifice, the investment must be in something bigger than ourselves.
But there is a particular kind of “something bigger than ourselves” that I want to discuss. I don’t have the right word for it yet, but consider the class of entities that are capable of sustaining themselves through some kind of cycle.
Living organisms are one example. Our DNA includes instructions for building an organism that then goes about reproducing. A meme is another example. We see something funny on the internet, and then we pass it on to everyone else we know. Corporations, churches and nations are other examples. I use a wheel as a symbol for this kind of entity, because its motion is a self-replicating cycle.
So my question is, are you doing any sacred work? And if so, is it the kind of work that is part of a self-sustaining entity that is bigger than yourself? If not, consider putting your shoulder to the wheel.
In my view, a “tribe” is candidate for sacred work. The foundation of a tribe is the human cycle of reproduction (as it is for a nation, a church, and to a lesser extent all other human institutions such as corporations). It persists when people have children and pass to them the secrets of living.
In many ways, my conception of a tribe is similar to a family. But it is more than a family because it is associated with a set of ideas, a model for how to live. Because it is concerned with developing and propagating ideas about the right way to live (i.e., as opposed to just the right DNA), a tribe is similar to (or based upon) a church. However, a tribe is more limited than a religion because it is associated with a particular group of people that is somewhat smaller than a typical religion.
A tribe is also like a corporation because it is concerned with organizing how people work. That is, ultimately I think a tribe will be associated with an economic entity, like a family company, that seeks to provide a suitable work environment for its members.
So a “tribe” is a kind of social entity that combines aspects of a family, a church, and a company (i.e., a quasi-religious family company). As with any social institution, for a tribe to persist, a few aspects need to be present:
First, as mentioned above, there must be some distinguishable set of ideas about how to live (which include, but aren’t limited to, the concept of a tribe itself).
Second, those ideas must influence the lives of a particular group of people who understand themselves to be a part of the tribe (i.e., the members).
Third, there must be some effective means of recruiting new members and transmitting the ideas (and hence, the behaviors) to the new members of the tribe.
Creating a tribe (or keeping one spinning) is a big project, and as they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. At this point, the main work involved in pushing this particular wheel is to articulate an explicit set of ideas (including the generic tribe concept) that could be a candidate for a tribal ideology.
One way of approaching this is to simply put down on paper your own ideas about the right way to live (e.g., your theory of happiness) and then try to teach it to your kids. This a sufficiently ambitious project even if your theory of happiness doesn’t include the notion that the family should be involved in organizing the economic labor of its members (i.e., the ‘company’ part or my particular tribal concept).
So if you are reading this, I challenge you to ask yourself the following questions: first, what is your secret knowledge? (i.e., If you could pass one thing one to your children that would help sustain them, what would it be?) Second, how are you going to actually pass this knowledge on?
I know plenty of people who have tried to pass on a religious identity to their children with limited success. Maybe you are one of those children that didn’t adopt their parents’ worldview. So perhaps the kernel of knowledge you try to pass on won’t be as comprehensive as a religion. It doesn’t need to answer every question about the universe. It also doesn’t need to replicate all those aspects of being happy that are part of society’s prevailing Standard Model.
But give yourself some credit. You know something special. Write it down, and start thinking of how you can pass it on. It is sacred work.
