The Tribe - benefits of the small-scale community

A Greek anthropologist and FaceBook friend just introduced me to John H. Bodley's "Victims of Progress." This is the book's 6th edition.

Our nomadic village - 3 trailers, 5 tents, 2 SUV, 1 Class-C
and  1 Class A. Most are in the trees but all are in this picture. 

It all started when we were talking about another book, Jared Diamond's "Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" (1987). I had made the comment that, although not a trained anthropologist, I have long held that the real beginning of the decline of the human race was when we became farmers. The agrarian life-style required greater population, began adversely affecting the environment, turned resources into wealth, and created a work for wealth and power society where competition replaced cooperation.  

That discussion led to the introduction of John Bodley's book.  His book almost immediately points out that indigenous people; whom our urban-based, large-scale, resources-as-wealth society has systematically attempted to destroy; are, in fact, quite superior in many ways. At least I translate things like more sustainable, greater democracy and freedom, more successful, etc., as superior qualities, but that’s my world-view and prejudice. 

Br James' Class-C in the foreground and Nitsitapiisinni
(our trailer) in the distance.

Besides being more sustainable, "Small-scale societies have enormous human advantages, especially because people living in smaller, lower-density populations may be able to enjoy greater democracy, freedom, equality, and security than people living in large, dense populations, where they usually are divided sharply by differential access to vital resources, wealth and power. In small-scale societies, where all households have assured access to food and shelter and to the rewarding experiences offered by their culture, there is less cultural incentive to accumulate and concentrate wealth. Likewise, there is little incentive for population and resource consumption to expand." (John H. Bodley)  Sounds good to me.

This quote and Bodley's first few pages can ignite a host of discussions, which I'm sure I'll address at some point, but when I shared what I had read with Pamela she used our small nomadic community, sitting on a hill in the desert, as antidotal evidence. Thinking about it, she's right.  

I'm sure that our group as an example would not fare well under extreme academic scrutiny but it does a good job at making the point. Hence antidotal evidence.  I’m calling our small, very diverse collection of people a tribe because Bodley states “We may call small-scale societies and cultures produced by the humanization process tribal to emphasize the absence of political centralization.” 

We had 20 people for Thanksgiving. 

We are undoubtedly more diverse than Bodley's small tribes, but we also share a lot of characteristics. We are a small population. Low density. We are more sustainable than larger groups because we are unit or household focused. We are assured of shelter and the protection of the group. Therefore, we do experience greater democracy, freedom, equality and even security. We have limited contact with and no input from the outside world; i.e. we are left alone and ignored by the world around us. We are free to live our lives as we see fit as long as we do not harm others in the community. There is no hierarchy. Whether we live under a tarp or in a Class-A, we are all equal. Democracy for us is the ability to stand together and talk about problems or issues and arrive at an amicable solution that benefits and is acceptable to all members of the community. We have witnessed this at least twice in the past week. 

The argument that we are hunter-gatherers of a fashion could be made. We each leave the community on a routine basis and, using our skills and resources, return with food, water and other essentials. Many times we either share these resources or we help the other person get it for themselves. For example, we would have driven 9.6 miles, spending precious gasoline, to get water. A member of the community told us where there was water a little more than a mile away. We shared with those who were going to need to find a new place the location of dispersed camping we had found in our movement around the area that would be good for them.

Br. James'   He often has friends visit and they play
drums, but always respectful of others. 

Do we share our food and essentials with the others? Yes. Because we all have food and shelter, even the ones living under a tarp, and we enjoy a common culture and social connectedness, there is no incentive to try to accumulate and concentrate wealth and/or power. The person who, in the large-scale, urban society around us, would be considered the poorest, is, in our community, the one who is spearheading a Thanksgiving feast. Assisting them in this undertaking is the man who arrived in a 40 foot class-A motor home. We all did our part as best we could.

Further evidence for my position can be read in a James Suzman (The Guardian. 10/29/2017) article entitled “Why ‘Bushman banter’ was crucial to hunter-gatherers’ evolutionary success”.  Most people in the US would assume that everyone wants to live like the USA (which is definitely not true) and that hunter-gatherers are always just one step ahead of starvation. That too is quite wrong. Suzman refers to research by a Canadian anthropologist, Richard Lee, who studied the Ju/’hoansi (Kalahari Desert in Namibia and Botswana) and found that they not only make a good living as hunter-gatherers but they do it in what works out to be a 15 hr work week!  (Think about that when you drive 1-2 hours in traffic to get to work, work 8 hours and then drive 1-2 hours to get home five times a week!)  “On the strength of this, anthropologists redubbed hunter-gatherers ‘the original affluent society’ ”. (Suzman) 

I believe that Pamela is right. Our little, eclectic, off-the-grid community in the desert does reflect the truth of the superiority of the small-scale, hunter-gatherer tribe. According to Bodley things began to change about 6,000 years ago when resources became wealth and power, and we developed a society of haves and have-nots. I'm thinking that was a sad day, perhaps the worst day, in human history.