The "Tribe" aspect of this project came about because our modern society has become so individualist, we basically live on a social island in the middle of the ocean. We just kind of bumble through life, alone. Some of us may have a partner, and maybe a friend or two we hang out with once every few months. For most of us, though, our social world is a barren desert.
There are quite a few reasons for this, but the main culprit is simple - we live in a ridiculously safe, prosperous society. We don't NEED other people. Take a look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs from the bottom up:
Here in our small town of Montrose, we have three grocery stores, a Walmart, a Target, A Dollar General, a Family Dollar, and a host of other small convenience stores and gas stations. The biggest struggle we have to get food is deciding which store we're going to buy it from.
We get an unlimited supply of clean water from the faucet. If we're concerned about what's in the water, we can buy 872 different varieties of filtered, flavored water from the aforementioned stores. Have been in the water aisle lately? WATER has become a lifestyle brand. Le Croix if you're a hipster, Smart water if you're an intellectual, Aloe water if you have an internal sunburn, BLK water if you don't own an RV... it's insane.
Warmth and rest? The biggest challenge there for most of us is figuring out which setting on our electric blanket is "just right" while we stay up too late trying to figure out if "That bitch Carol Baskin" really did kill her husband.
What about security and safety? Well, we can look at the date and see we're currently living in the safest society in the history of humanity. But we're emotional creatures, not logical. The fact is, we carry a device in our pockets that can, if needed, summon law enforcement in a matter of seconds. Or that we have doorbells that record everything that happens around our houses and beams a feed to that same device. Yeah, violence and other crime still happens, but we sometimes take for granted that we don't have to worry about our personal safety 99% of the time. When we do, it's usually because we've made a stupid decision.
It's safe to say all but the most down-trodden have all their basic physiological needs met all the time by our technologically-advanced society. So much so, most of us have no idea how any of the things we rely on come to be. Where does that quinoa come from? Where was your weighted blanket manufactured? What's the name of the police officer who routinely patrols your neighborhood at 3am on the weekends?
What about those psychological needs? Intimate relationships, friends, a sense of belonging, prestige, a feeling of accomplishment... where do we get those? Some of us have partners, and maybe a few friends. Maybe we belong to the Gold's gym down the road, and maybe we got "employee of the month" a few years back. But when we take stock of our social world, it's usually pretty... sad. For our grandparents and their grandparents, they had tight-knit towns or neighborhoods where everyone knew everyone else. Kids played in the streets until dark. Neighborhood parties were a thing.
Today, we're lucky if we could recognize the family who lives two doors down if we saw them in the store, and we've lived here for a decade.
Why?
Again, it's probably modern society. Technology. Whatever device you're using to read this blog? That's what we can blame. We meet and interact with friends on social media. We win prestige and feelings of accomplishment by winning arguments about politics with memes and Tik Tok vids. We find true love with Match.com. And more temporary love with Tinder. In essence, The Internets provide for all our psychological needs.
Or do we?
It's not to we get to self-actualization, the top of Maslow's pyramid, that we really start to see modern society is really a bit of an illusion. It's way too hard to be creative for most of us. It's way too hard to actually make a positive difference in those around us. It's way too hard to make our world a better place. When we try, it feels forced and is usually fleeting. There's an internal resistance. There's hesitation. There's self-doubt.
Yeah, we DO actually have all those physiological and psychological needs being met, but is it really quenching the thirst of those needs? The more you examine your own life, the more you realize just how unfulfilling and unsatisfying all those things modern society provides really are. WHY isn't much of a mystery. It's all manufactured. Artificial. Fake. But it's convenient. And easy. We like easy. Laziness helped our distant ancestors survive by saving precious calories, and that inherent laziness is still hard-wired in our brains today.
Don't believe me?
Try this experiment. Pay attention to how you feel right now. Notice how you feel kinda tense, sort of like you have low level anxiety. Maybe you feel kinda "blah." Now go for a walk in nature. if it's possible, take off your shoes so you can feel the ground under your feet. Get away from buildings, traffic, and noise. Breathe in the air. Notice the trees and how they sway in the wind. Listen to the sounds.
When you return, notice how you feel now. That tense feeling disappears. That nagging stress kinda retreats. You feel... better. Happier More fulfilled.
Why does nature have that effect on us? It's pretty simple, actually. Our brains, whether we consciously recognize it or not, are exceptional at judging authenticity. Modern society is a drug that makes us feel good in the moment, but our brain knows it's not real. It's a cognitive process our brains likely developed to determine if strangers were potentially dangerous. Our distant cave man ancestors had to figure out if Kevin, the cave dude from the neighboring tribe, was actually a nice person or if he was just pretending to be nice so he could club us over the head the moment we turn our backs. Basically, our brains don't *trust* our fake, manufactured society we come to rely on to meet all our needs. And it stresses us out.
And really, our brains aren't wrong. Look how quickly those social connections broke down on social media over the last few years as we argued about our president. Look what happens when the electricity goes out in the middle of winter. Look what happens when it turns out our municipal water supply gets contaminated with lead from 200 year old pipes. Look what happens when a global pandemic hits and everyone hoards toilet paper. Our brains are right to be skeptical of our modern, artificial lifestyles.
Since my late 20's, I've collected a weird set of pursuits. Hunting. Barefoot running. Ultrarunning. Male-only groups. Fighting. Each and every one of these pursuits had an undeniably positive effect on my soul. When I was immersed in any of them, I felt a feeling of fulfillment and completeness that can't be described with words. It was like each of these pursuits satisfied a primal hunger I didn't even know I had.
THAT deep sense of fulfillment allowed me to actually reach the top of Maslow's pyramid - they allowed me to reach my potential. And holy shit, is that awesome! The absolute best work I've done in my life, great work, work that helped people become better versions of themselves, ALWAYS occurred when I was fully immersed in these "primal" activities. In psychology, we call this a "flow" state. But even these moments have been temporary. As soon as I stop the activity, that low-level anxiety of modernity returns. Getting and staying in that zone has been a puzzle I've been trying to solve for years. How can I get there and stay there, and how can I get others there? And can I surround myself with those people? I've been able to do things in my life the younger version of me would never have imagined. What could I do if I surrounded myself with smart, motivated, open people who were also in that flow state of primal fulfillment? What could WE do?!?
Then, by complete accident, I stumbled upon the answer.
Which I'll describe in Part Two. If you're skeptical that your misery is the result of modernity, give this Cracked article a read. Yeah, yeah, it's that same Cracked we read as kids. Well, some of us, anyway (fist bump to Gen X.) I'll give this teaser - it doesn't involve abandoning Starbucks and Netflix to move to the desert and live in an adobe hut.
Check out the next part in the series here.
~Jason
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