Project Summary - The 30,000 Foot View - Version 3.0

 

This is the third version of the outline for this project. To see how these ideas have evolved as we've developed them, read the first version here and the second version here. 

The Big Idea

We're a collective of people, organized as a club, who care deeply about improving ourselves, our families, the members of our Tribe, and the members of our communities scattered throughout our Western Slope region. We affectionately refer to our club as "The Tribe." The Tribe is run by a Council of elected officials, and we've established several committees that are carrying out the various tasks related to the research and development of the project.

We achieve self-improvement through intentional actions that address the seven dimensions of wellness. Each member of the Tribe actively and continually grows in each of these dimensions, and actively and enthusiastically helps other members of the Tribe do the same. The dimensions are:

• Physical Wellness - Includes engaging in healthy behaviors like exercise, good nutrition, abstaining from harmful substances, identifying early signs of illness, and protecting yourself and those we love from injury and harm.
  
• Emotional Wellness - Includes developing the ability to feel and express the entire range of emotions in a healthy way, having the ability to love and be loved, and achieving a deep sense of purpose and fulfillment in life. This also includes developing optimism, self-esteem, self-acceptance, and an ability to share feelings.
  
• Intellectual Wellness - Includes engaging in creative, mentally-stimulating activities, especially creative problem-solving applied to ourselves, our Tribe, and our community. We want to expand our knowledge and improve our skills, which includes staying up-to-date on current events and how they affect us, and routinely seeking out activities that actively engage our mind.
  
• Social Wellness - Includes learning to interact with our families, our Tribe, our communities, and our world more effectively, and live up to the demands and expectations of our personal roles in each. We do this by learning better communication skills, developing intimacy with others, and creating a support network within our Tribe and our broader community.
  
• Spiritual Wellness - Involves seeking harmony between what lies within us and the outer world. We accomplish this by developing a set of guiding principles, beliefs, and values that give our life direction and meaning. We develop high levels of faith, hope, and commitment. We question everything and develop an appreciation for that which cannot be readily explained or understood.
  
• Environmental Wellness - Includes developing an awareness of our daily habits and how they impact our physical environment and developing a way of life that maximizes the harmony with the earth and minimizes harm to the environment. This also includes not just protecting our physical surroundings, but actively improving them as much as possible. .
  
• Occupational Wellness - Involves making use of our gifts, skills, talent, knowledge, and experiences to gain purpose, happiness, and enrichment in our lives. We want to integrate a commitment to our chosen occupation into a total lifestyle that is satisfying, rewarding, and helps others in a tangible way. 

Different members of the Tribe have special skills, knowledge, and experiences in each of these dimensions, which allow us to help members who may struggle in one or more of these dimensions. In this way, the Tribe is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle with each member playing a role to creating something bigger. This cooperative interdependence, coupled with our diverse Tribe, creates a powerful collection of symbiotic relationships that forms a virtuous cycle of positive self-improvement for our individual Tribe members and the Tribe as a whole.

 

I call this process "Holistic Lifestyle Design." Each one of us considers each of these seven dimensions, our goals, and our values. Then we figure out what we really want in life, and how that can be integrated into the Tribe to develop mutually-beneficial win-win relationships. Finally, we develop a personal roadmap to make that happen in a a way that integrates every aspect of our lives that really matter to us.  

 

The Tribe, in turn, helps provide the guidance and resources to make real, concrete changes to improve the lives of the Tribe Members in a way that aligns with the values, goals, families, and community. 

Outlaws University - Teaching Holistic Lifestyle Design

Our Tribe is the vehicle we use to improve the individual members of the Tribe. While this certainly makes an objectively measurable improvement in the lives of our Tribe Members, the effects on the rest of our community are only limited to the impact we can make through our own self-improvement. We can radically amplify the positive effects we can have on the world around us if we teach others how to improve themselves across the seven dimensions of wellness. 

Enter Outlaws University.

As the name implies, we're a school that breaks the rules of education. We care about affecting real, positive change in the world in general and the Montrose and surrounding communities in particular. As a lifelong public high school teacher, I've spent my entire adult life trying to solve the riddle of how to help each and every one of my students. The system itself, though, creates barrier after barrier, usually in the form of rules, policies, and procedures, that severely limit our ability to reach every student. These barriers are usually created by well-meaning people who simply cannot foresee the unintended consequences of their actions. 

Our school solves this problem by distilling education down to its most basic element - we have a teacher who possesses some useful skills or knowledge and has a desire to teach something, and we have individuals who have an intrinsic desire to learn those skills or knowledge. We bring them together and allow them to negotiate how that transfer of knowledge will happen. We will be there to offer suggestions and guidance based on our own expertise in the psychology of education and learning, but we are a resource. Nothing more, nothing less. 

The specific topics we'll teach could be anything covered under the umbrella of the seven dimensions of wellness, but we adhere to the "oxygen mask" principle. When you're on a airplane and the cabin depressurizes, you're instructed to put your own oxygen mask on before you help others put their oxygen mask on. In the same way, our teachers will be people who have successfully applied what they're teaching to their own lives before they teach it to their students. This prevents a strong personal pet peeve of mine where so-called "life coaches" take money from people to give them guidance about living a better life when their own lives are complete train wrecks.

In future posts, I will spell out exactly how this will work in a practical sense.

The Current Lay of the Land

The State of the Tribe

Currently, our Tribe and the Outlaws University are in the development phase. Our Tribe has five Founding Members, one additional Tribe Member, and around four other people who are considering becoming Members. Given we're still developing these ideas, we're not actively recruiting new members. Too many chefs in the kitchen and what not.

Our Tribe members have a few extremely diverse shared interests, and we're currently weighing how to incorporate those interests into the project. The most notable shared interests include:

• Regenerative agriculture and accompanying animal care
  
• Brazilian jiu jitu
• Boxing and kickboxing
  
• Mixed martial arts
• Yoga
  
• Healthy nutrition
• Developing social connections
• Prepping
• Teaching and learning primitive skills
• Helping kids and adults navigate the negative effects of the COVID pandemic
• Firearms and other self-defense training
• Off-grid living
• Personal self-improvement
  

This isn't a comprehensive list, but these are a few of the major topics we discuss, do, or are in various stages of implementing. Each item on this list satisfies one or more of the seven dimensions of wellness, and we either teach them now to people outside our Tribe, or likely will be teaching them in the relative near future. 

Our Surrounding Community

Making a positive impact on our community is a major goal of this project, so it will be helpful for readers to understand some of the features and problems that define our community. We define our "community" as the valley communities of Montrose, Olathe, Ridgway, Delta, Cederedge, Hotchkiss, Paonia, and surrounding areas loosely bordered by the Grand Mesa to the north, Black Canyon to the east, Uncompahgre Plateau to the west. and the San Juan mountains to the South. The area includes approximately 65,000-75,000 residents. 

Our interest in regenerative agriculture stems from the historical agriculture industry in the area. Outside of the aforementioned small towns, ranches and farms define the valley landscape. Western Colorado is in a bit of a pickle in regards to agriculture. For 140 years, irrigated agriculture has defined the area. But the rising temperatures of climate change, coupled with drought conditions seen only once before in the last 1,800 years, are slowly killing agriculture in the region. Simply put, there's not enough snow falling in the mountains, too much is evaporating as the snow runoff melts and fills reservoirs, and too much water is being diverted for use on Colorado's Front Range and the America Southwest. This article explains the problem in detail. 

The life of the typical rancher and farmer in the region has always been difficult, but it becomes increasingly difficult with each passing year. Not only is the water slowly disappearing, but the political winds of the state are shifting due to a population explosion on the urbanized Front Range corridor. As the population of the state becomes more urbanized, more and more laws and policies are being developed and passed that actively harm our rural farming communities. Like the reintroduction of gray wolves. Or the dumbass ballot initiative 16. Hopelessness, depression, and despair are rampant; far too many people are living exceptionally unhealthy lifestyles as a means to cope as their lifestyle slowly slips away.

These problems are exasperated by a growing trend where ranchers, due to impossible economic situations and no hope for the future, sell their land to developers and sell the water rights to various municipalities. This trend is creating a patchwork of developments being built in and around existing ranches. Given Western Colorado is a popular place to relocate, there's plenty of demand for houses in these new developments. City folk in Denver and the uber-expensive West Coast are searching for a quieter, slower, more affordable lifestyle, and the ample outdoor activities in the region prove to be a powerful draw. Indeed, the City of Montrose has been recreating itself into a regional outdoor recreation hub for a number of years.

Regenerative agriculture practices may or may not be able to save the area, but maintaining the status quo will result in a predictable, painful, tragic end to agriculture in the region. But more is needed than just altering the land management practices. The people themselves need support. This is where the Tribe and Outlaws University come in - modeling and teaching the seven dimensions of wellness with the goal of helping to make our neighbors healthier, happier, and better able to cope with the stressors of our rapidly-changing region. 

Our Tribe and the University can also play a role in helping smooth the relationship between the people who have lived here for generations and the flood of outsiders moving from cities. Rural America is a different world. I know; I grew up in the sticks of Northern Michigan. There's an entirely different culture with different norms and different ways of relating to each other, all born out of necessity. Many of the topics we would teach at the University, such as agricultural and animal-based skills or primitive skills, would be geared towards complete novices. Learning these skills would help urban and suburban dwellers understand and empathize with rural living, and help them gain an appreciation for the hard work that provides the food they buy from the grocery store.

Likewise, we can also play a role in helping the agricultural community see the influx of new people as a resource, not an intrusion. Regenerative agriculture practices requires significantly more advanced planning, as does advanced water management strategies. The influx of people usually brings some significant skilled labor, which will help integrate technological advancements in current and future agricultural practices. 

Or maybe we'll see a significant shift away from large-scale agricultural operations, and see a proliferation of small "hobby farms" popping up. In this case, our Tribe and the University would be well-positioned to help teach the basic skills required to run said hobby farms in a sustainable, responsible way.

Or perhaps the confluence of conditions proves to be too great to overcome and the entire irrigated agriculture industry in the region dies. While this would be our worst-case scenario, the Tribe and University would be an excellent resource to help people transition to other endeavors that would fulfill each of the seven dimensions of wellness. And, given the nature of the University structure, we could adapt whatever we teach to any sort of regional demographic shift. If the region does become an outdoor recreation mecca, we have the ability and infrastructure to teach any outdoor recreational skill. 

Conclusion

 

This is a far-ranging, ambitious project born out of a genuine desire to make our world a better place by a small group of talented, driven people. We believe, with the right structures and practices, that we can make a significant, positive difference in our lives, our families, in our Tribe, and in our community. 

The project is still in its infancy, but our goals and strategies get more focused and detailed as the project planning evolves. We have the structure of our Tribe established and have started interacting as a social group, and we're creating the structure of the University. Within a few months, we should have a bare-bones version of the University up and running.

This likely won't be the final version of the project, but it's getting relatively close. Stay tuned for more info, and check out some of the older posts on this blog to get a feel for some of the ideas and principles that are driving our vision. 

~ Jason

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Choosing Your Family: A Discussion on Tribes and Voluntary Kin

Tribes serve all kinds of useful purposes. At the most basic level, they can be a safety net that can provide housing, food, and other life essentials should Tribe members fall on hard times. Tribes can help keep us safe and secure in a dangerous world. Tribes can make us feel respected, valuable, and deserving of dignity. Tribes can help us reach our full potential and give our life meaning and purpose. Tribes can also provide us with the physical and emotional intimacy we often associate with family. 

This post talks about that last concept - Tribes as a replacement for the elevated kinship we usually associate with our "real" family, whether we're talking about our blood relatives or the families we create legally through marriage.

The Nature of Family

In a perfect world, our family is a collection of people who, through thick and thin, are always in our corner. Family accepts us for who we are. Family wants us to reach our full potential. Family celebrates our success and comforts us when we fail. Family protects us and keeps us safe. Family steps back when we're ready to tackle life on our own. Family sees us at our best and worst, and loves us regardless. 

An authentic and real family is that which respects us as we are. Our minds, our individual voices, our personal choices, and our way of understanding the world. It gives and asks nothing in return. Reciprocity is not a game of power, but rather a balance in which recognition, loyalty, and understanding are key. Family does not need a reason to be with us each and every moment. We carry it in our hearts because we look after them, and they us. We give each other confidence, and we are always together and support each other. Any distance between us does not matter. We stick together through the bad times, and we enjoy a mutual understanding of each other in the good times. - Citation

Unfortunately, our world is not perfect. Sometimes our given family isn't so great. Sometimes the family to which we were born doesn't, won't, or can't fulfill those physical and emotional kinship needs. 

Maybe it's simply a matter of logistics. We move away from our families and we don't see them as often as we need. Or maybe death takes parts of our family from us.While these reasons are perfectly valid, I'm not going to focus on these particular dynamics in this post. Having (or having had) a loving, supportive family is certainly something that can be dearly missed, it doesn't create the slew of negativity in these next few scenarios.

Sometimes our families are... toxic. This toxicity can occur for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes the families we're born into don't accept us for who we are. When I was in college, I had several gay or lesbian friends who's family basically disowned them simply because they weren't attracted to the "right" sex. 

Sometimes a family might not provide the support we need. Family should be a solid foundation we can rely on to provide moral and emotional support as we venture out into life. Family should be our safe harbor; the thing we can rely upon if the challenges of life get too rough.

Or the reasons might be more toxic. Sometimes families are wrought with anger, blame, cruelty, disrespect, or chronic hurtfulness. When our families make us feel like shitty people, life becomes far way more challenging than it should be and prevents us from reaching our potential.

Or maybe the reasons are flat-out dangerous and overtly abusive. Sometimes families hurt us emotionally, physically, or sexually. In these cases, families can actively destroy any hope of a normal, fulfilling life. 

When our families create a toxic dynamic in our lives, we're often placed in the horrible, painful position of having to decide to maintain the shitty relationship or create distance. While that distance may provide much-needed relief from the chronic, insidious pain that defines dysfunctional families, it creates a slew of other problems - loneliness, a sense of emptiness, helplessness, and perhaps worst of all - hopelessness. 

Making the decision to create distance with a toxic biological family is never an easy decision. It's a strong taboo in our society. We live in a society that constantly reinforces the idea that we should tolerate any and all abusive behaviors because "blood is thicker than water."

Unfortunately, that's one of the most misquoted quotes there is. The actual quote is "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb", meaning the bonds we create by choice are stronger than the bonds we have no say in. When confronted with a toxic family environment, the family we choose is a far stronger, more impactful "family" than the family we're given simply based on genetics.

As such, I strongly believe this misguided "family obligation" society forces upon us is among the most damaging beliefs we hold. Being socially shackled to people who do not provide the unconditional love and support all humans need is stunts our growth and potential. When those people actively harm us, it's simply unconscionable.

Choosing Your Own Family

 

If our given family cannot or will not provide what we need to survive and thrive, we have the power to create our own families. We can voluntarily choose the people who are willing and able to fulfill those familial needs of physical and emotional intimacy. 

The idea of "choosing your own family" is not new; historical records indicate the practice goes back as far as the first century. Over the centuries, this idea has went by many names - ritual kin, othermothers, alternative families, adopted families, voluntary kin... all describe a close-knit social unit we create.

The advantage of choosing your own family is obvious - we can choose members who are psychologically and emotionally healthy. We can choose people who build us up, not tear us down. We can choose people who treat us with respect and dignity, not people who use to to prop themselves up. We can choose people who bring us joy and happiness, not despair and misery. We even have good data supporting this idea.

The Tribe as a Chosen Family

A well-designed voluntary Tribe enriches the lives of the Tribe members. The Tribe provides safety, security, friendship, and most importantly - kinship. If the individual members of the Tribe are hand-picked to be trustworthy, humble, emotionally-healthy people driven by a genuine desire to help each other reach their full potential, a Tribe can serve as a perfect Chosen Family.

Why does such a Tribe serve as a great Chosen Family?

First, the Tribe members don't have to be there. Voluntary association, free of a misguided sense of societal, cultural, and legal obligation, matters. When people are there because they genuinely care about you, the bonds are far more meaningful.

Second, we can escape generational dysfunction. Far too many families have real, substantial problems that have been passed on through each successive generation. Problems like addiction and abuse pass from parent to child generation after generation. Breaking that chain often requires you to break free of the problematic family members and surround yourself with healthier friends.

Third, the Tribe lets us be ourselves. The Tribe is formed based on shared interests and like-mindedness. Tribes don't require us to conform to whatever outdated, misguided beliefs our biological family may have. Our Tribe shares our ideologies, which allow us to live real, authentic lives instead of creating a facade to create an appearance of normal. 

Fourth, the Tribe allows us to trust without being repeatedly burned. Dysfunctional families usually involve a pattern of sucking you into a trap of demanding trust, then breaking said trust. This usually happens as a function of obligation - your biological family will exploit the social pressures to maintain those familial bonds no matter what. Given the Tribe is voluntary, a breach of trust can and often does result in expulsion from the Tribe. As such, maintaining trust matters in the Tribe.

Tribes can give us all kinds of things that matter may be absent in biological families - providing protection and security, giving us a feeling of belonging, fostering emotional closeness, and giving us social support.

Our Tribe isn't explicitly designed to be a Chosen Family for all our members, but it does serve the purpose nicely. When Shelly and I were bumming around the country a few years back and when we eventually settled in San Diego, we learned a lot of life lessons. Living those lessons led us to develop some wonderful friendships that, for the first time in our lives, made us understand the value of surrounding ourselves with like-minded people who enrich our lives. Importantly, our circle of friends provided a foundation to embark on adventures. A safe-haven, if you will. When we settled in Western Colorado, we continued that trend. The people we befriended here created the foundation of what has become the foundation of the Tribe we're building. For us, our Tribe IS our Chosen Family, though the Tribe may not serve that same role for every member. Our Tribe, after all, provides all kinds of positive benefits beyond being a surrogate family. While our Tribe is still in its infancy, its certainly enriched our lives in an incredibly positive way.

Conclusion

We can't choose our biological family. For some of us, the luckiest of us, this works out perfectly fine. Our biological families provide all the unconditional love and support we need to survive and thrive. For the rest of us, though, our biological family may not be enough. Or they my be outright toxic. In that case, we have the power to choose our own family. A well-designed and deliberately-constructed Tribe can serve as an excellent Chosen Family. Yes, it's a little unorthodox, but it's your life. YOU get to make the rules.

Interested in exploring this idea more? Join our discussions in our Facebook group, which serves as a literal Think Tank for this project.

Live in the Western Colorado area and interested in forming your own Tribe or joining ours? Shoot me an email at eldiablobjj "at" gmail.com.

~Jason

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Post Script - If you're really interested in the academic aspects of voluntary kinship, check out this paper by Braithwaite and Wachernagel Bach (2010).

Project Summary: The 30,000 Foot View 2.1

 

This is the second version of the summary. The first version (1.0) can be found here. This second version updates how the the Tribe and the School are framed within the Project, a change in our structural organization, the implementation of the club model (officers, meetings, committees, etc.), and a few other details.

This post outlines the plan, structure, and elements of our jiu jitsu and mma social club, which we refer to as "The Tribe." This plan is currently in development. As such, every aspect of this post may change in future versions.  

We're a jiu jitsu club made up of diverse but open-minded, adventurous people who are united by three motives: our desire for personal self-improvement, desire to help each other be safe and secure, and our desire to have fun with good friends.

• Personal self-improvement is accomplished by empowering each other to become the best version of ourselves possible.
• Safety and security is accomplished through assisting each other in times of need, making each other more physically, mentally, and emotionally resilient, and helping each other prepare for bad situations.
• Finally, we have fun by treating training like play, holding frequent social events, and going on cool, exciting adventures together.

So that's the tentative elevator pitch. The club is what we refer to as the "Tribe." We're like a motorcycle club, but instead of riding bikes, we train jiu jitsu (and mma.) From this point on, I'll use "Tribe" and "Club" interchangeably. Aside from the tribal organizational aspect, the Tribe also runs a School (tentatively called "Outlaws University") that operates as a private, for-profit business that operates the gym where we train and offers classes in three major domains:

 

1. Health and fitness (including martial arts)

2. Primitive skills (survival and "frontier" skills)

3. Personal self-improvement

 

The profits from the school fund the physical space utilized by the Tribe for training and social interactions (kinda like our clubhouse), provide funding for the Tribe's adventures, and provide some income for the Founding Members of the Tribe. Tribe members basically get the benefits of belonging to a "family" of good, fun people that will meet a whole bunch of their needs (think Maslow's hierarchy.)

 

Guiding Principles

 

The Club's guiding principles include:

• Teach what you know, learn what you need. We take a collaborative approach to martial arts training where our members’ expertise and past experience is highly valued. 
• Training is a fun, socially-immersive event. We take our arts much more seriously than we take ourselves. We fully embrace the psychological value of laughter and play.  
• Self-improvement and resiliency. We make each other better, tougher people.  
• Competition and cooperation go hand in hand. Iron sharpens iron. The harder we push each other, the better the training partners we create, the better we get ourselves.
• Community matters. We value our club, the friends of the club, and our wider community in the Montrose area. We want to foster a community with good jobs, strong families, safe neighborhoods, and a vibrant culture.
  

The Current Lay of the Land

Currently, we have a 3,000 square foot jiu jitsu and mma gym (El Diablo Combatives) in Montrose, Colorado, which has been operated by Shelly and I for about 16 months. Montrose has about 20,000 residents in the town and another 15-20,000 in the surrounding county. We're located about half way between Denver and Salt Lake City, an hour south of Grand Junction, Colorado, and about 45 miles north of the San Juan Mountains.

We operate the gym with a fairly standard martial arts school model where we offer yearly, six month, and monthly memberships for individuals or families (parents and their minor children.) We also sell ten class punch cards. 

We have six coaches, but we embrace a "share what you know" collaborative model that encourages everyone taking on teaching and mentoring roles. We have about twenty-five students, most of which have been with us since the beginning. Our student numbers are slowly ticking up, but COVID is still suppressing our numbers. Part of the rationale behind this project is to dramatically expand our student base by offering a wide variety of classes, workshops, and seminars. Based on market research, we have just under 1,000 potential students in our area.

Financially, the gym has not been profitable since we shut down for three months last winter/ spring due to the pandemic. We're getting closer to the black, though. Aside from COVID, we were also negatively affected by our last two buildings being sold, which forced us to move twice in three months.

We have two other jiu jitsu gyms in our town. While it reduces our student base, it gives our community several options as each gym has a distinct culture.

Who is Involved

Currently, our team consists of myself, Shelly, Brandy and Brandon Dalton, and Heather Keppen, which we designate as the "Founding Members." Prior to bringing the other three folks on board, I had mostly done the planning and testing of ideas on my own, though I regularly solicited advice and ran ideas by two of our coaches and a few other members. 

The new additions to the planning team has been a hugely important development as it's brought a lot of really good ideas to the table. Importantly, this has allowed me to solve some problems without having to run experiments, which is incredibly time-consuming.

We may add more people to the planning team, but because the Founding Team is also the beginning of the "Tribe" (discussed below), we carefully vet who we involve. The vetting process will consist of a "Prospect" phase and an "Apprentice" phase, which is intended to fully vet new members. The qualities we're looking for are based on the "Humble, Hungry, and People Smart" model explained in the book "The Ideal Team Player", a complimentary skill set and personality type (as measured with the Myers-Briggs-inspired test at 16personalities.com, and most importantly, trustworthy people who express an interest in socializing with each other. After all, we'll be spending a lot of time together. I discuss this in more detail below.

 

The Organizational Model

 

 

Our organizational model starts with the "Tribe" we're naming "El Diablo Tribe" (members referred to as "The Diablos"), which is a social club organized around our shared love of the combat sports in general and jiu jitsu and mma in particular. The Club is governed by a constitution and bylaws, which are currently in draft form. The Club is run by a Council made up of elected officers. Our current Officers include The Chief (president), General Manager (vice president), Secretary, Treasurer, Social Liaison, and Competition Director. 

The Club maintains the School, which serves multiple purposes.   

First, it allows the Club members to share knowledge and skills with each other, which helps each member improve as a person.  

Second, by offering lasses to non-members, we generate revenue for the Club.  

Third, this allows the Club to maintain a physical space for training and socializing (a clubhouse, of sorts.) The School offers classes in three subject areas:

• Health and Fitness. This includes all combat sports and programs related to strength, conditioning, flexibility, and nutrition.
• Primitive Skills. This includes "pioneer skills", survival skills, and other practical hands-on life skills. 
• Self-Improvement. This includes anything not covered in the other two subject areas that make us the best version of ourselves possible. 

 

Details of the Tribe

In the most simple terms, the 'Tribe" is just a collection of people who like each other enough to spend time doing stuff together, and organized as a Club.

The purpose of the Tribe is to provide for the five different things humans need to maximize our potential (yay Maslow!) Based on what we've discovered from fMRI brain data, we're pretty sure 'tribalism" is hard-wired in our brains. It's what allowed our ancestors to survive as cooperative social units. As I discussed in my Tribal Hypothesis post, forming the right kind of Tribe with the right kind of members can solve a whole slew of problems we face as individuals, as communities, and as a nation. In short, forming tribes is probably the answer to solving the bitter divisiveness that occurs as a function of the relative safety, comfort, and technological advancement of modern society. 

I've spent A LOT of time studying the history, psychology, and sociology of tribalism, and I've spent even more time observing different types of "tribes" and how they affect the members and their wider communities. I've also spent a lot of time observing people who do not have tribes. Without reservation, I can confidently say almost all humans absolutely NEED a tribe. The problem with our modern world is a great deal of the options we have for tribes are piss-poor. Many are simply poorly-disguised marketing plays (think "people with Apple stickers on the back of their car), quite a few are toxic (#MAGA and Amway), and a few are cults (Jonestown and Heaven's Gate.) Some are generally good, like most church congregations, fraternal organizations, or intentional communities and communes, but they're inherently ideologically exclusive. As I explain in the Tribal Hypothesis post linked above, that seriously limits their ability to survive and thrive, or even provide what is necessary to address all five of Maslow's fundamental human needs.

The other major problem with most of our tribal options in the modern world is leadership that ranges from mediocre to god-awful. Good leaders require a host of skills, which Jocko Willinck addresses in his excellent book "Extreme Ownership." But one skill in particular is absolutely essential to lead a tribe - the ability to really empathize with each and every member of the tribe. If an effective tribe has the required ideological diversity, the leadership must understand everyone. The reason is simple - every decision made has to be both good for the tribe and good for every member. If that's impossible and a decision negatively affects the tribe in general or an individual member in particular, the leadership needs to be able to a) actually make that hard decision with compassion and kindness, and b) explain the rationale behind the decision to the member or members who are negatively affected in a way that doesn't destroy tribal harmony. This is no easy task, and really good leaders also need to be willing and able to enlist as much help as they need. For our ancestors, good leaders were apparent as they matured from childhood to adulthood. For us, identifying good leaders is a far more difficult task. 

Taking all this into consideration, how do we build THIS tribe? As it turns out, a Brazilian jiu jitsu gym is a wonderful social filter. For our tribe, we're looking for a few very specific characteristics:

• We need people who have a sense of humor, prioritize having fun, and aren't overly prudish, hence our gym's name and goofy chicken logo (if people know the joke, they're always "our people") and the URL of this blog. This means we need to avoid the overly politically-correct and the people who don't laugh at dick jokes.
• We need people free of serious mental illness, drama queens, or prima donas. All people create problems; that's the nature of social interactions. But some people cause GOOD problems, like "I should clean the house, but I really want to go watch the UFC fights with the Tribe!". Other people cause BAD problems, like intentionally stirring up drama because daddy didn't love them enough.
  
• We need people who are open-minded enough to accept ideological differences. While we can improve acceptance over time, people who have an emotional attachment to extreme ideologies, which includes belief in conspiracy theories, is a non-starter. It helps that I personally tend to identify and scare off bigots and overly judgmental people pretty quickly.
  
• We need people who genuinely enjoy socializing with the existing group beyond just practicing jiu jitsu.
• We need people who are genuinely kind and selfless. Selfishness and tribal harmony are incongruent. 
• We need people who are humble. Ego always leads to toxicity.
• We need people who are people-smart. They need to be able to read the room and absolutely cannot have grating personalities. Sometimes we call this "emotional intelligence." 
• We need people who are hungry. Specifically, they need to understand that the benefits they receive from tribalism is directly tied to their personal contributions to the tribe. The more you put in, the more you get out. And the better the tribe gets. With the right tribe and the right matching of skills, personality, and roles within the tribe, contributing to the tribe and receiving recognition from the tribe is incredibly intrinsically-motivating. 
• We need people who bring tangible skills, knowledge, or complimentary personality traits that will help the tribe in some positive way, and be willing to contribute to the welfare and improvement of the Tribe. Tribes absolutely cannot have dead weight. Freeloaders who are capable-but-unwilling to contribute cannot be part of the Tribe.
  

Each and every one of these traits can be discovered after training with someone on the mats for a few months, usually far less. In general, people can be good training partners, but may not necessarily be good tribe candidates. As such, our vetting process will end up being rather extensive. It's important to note not all students in jiu jitsu classes are Tribe members; jiu jitsu is merely the shared interest that unites the Club.

If you're reading this with the goal of maybe starting your own tribe, note these are the traits WE look for. Shelly and I have spent a long time meeting a lot of different kinds of people. It also helped that Garrick, the guy who started the gym before we bought it, had already started recruiting a lot of people that had those very characteristics. We're intimately familiar with the kinds of people we love spending time with and what kinds of people we need to avoid. The exhaustive list is a function of experience and really knowing who we are and what we value. Your mileage may vary.

So what purpose does the Tribe serve? Beyond the meeting of human needs, the Tribe serves three basic functions - mutual aid, protection, and socialization. We help each other when help is needed, we protect each other when we face any kind of threat, and we have fun together. These three dimensions cover a lot of territory, so I won't go into the intricate details here. But generally, in good times, the Tribe helps each other navigate the little shit, often logistical in nature, that pops up. Like maybe picking up another Tribe members' kids from school because they had a minor emergency, or dog-sitting while another Tribe member goes on vacation. Fixing a leaky faucet. Giving advice on how to cook macaroni. Stuff like that. 

And of course, socializing. We're building the Tribe with the kind of people we want to be friends with,which creates a really cool, fun group. Making friends in the modern world, once you leave school anyway, is one of the more difficult aspects of adulthood I would not have anticipated. While we train with each other a lot, we've found adding in social events gives our group the opportunity to really get to know each other, which is a tremendous tool for developing new, lasting friendships. This is especially helpful for spouses and significant others who may not train.

In the bad times (think "complete breakdown of the social contract"), the Tribe functions more like the tribes that allowed our ancestors to survive. As I mentioned above, the reality of what this would look like is likely wayyyy different than what most prepper-minded people imagine. We're not likely going to have a scenario where we're holed up in a fortified bunker we have to defend against roving bands of marauders. While there is always an aspect of protecting your resources against bad people, the reality is the vast majority of society would organize in their own tribes, and those tribes will mostly work cooperatively. There would be occasional bad people and there would be some bad tribes. But humans under stress don't turn on each other en mass for the same reason animals rarely if ever kill their own species - self-preservation is baked into our DNA. We wouldn't be here if our survival instinct led the majority of us to be ruthless killers.

Having said that, the organization of the Tribe does factor in the aspect of power. If the shit hit the fan, it would be better to be the most powerful tribe instead of the weakest tribe. Given the "power" of a Tribe increases as a function of the individual members' ability to work cohesively in specialized tasks, the tribe that has the most practice at this will be the most powerful. Further, if that tribe is benevolent and already has a great working relationship with the surrounding community, that tribe has an awesome capacity to lead the entire community in a way that would maximize survival. Thrive, even. Further, any community that consists of a collection of united tribes would be an incredibly powerful check on dangerous, malevolent tribes or individuals. That's kinda the meta-strategy of the development of this Tribe. 

 

The Details of the School

We chose a School as the cornerstone of the Project because knowledge is a flexible, versatile, valuable commodity that has infinite scalability and many opportunities to develop passive income steams. It can provide immediate, tangible, inexhaustible value to the Tribe and the wider community, will bring people together from diverse backgrounds, and can be used as a tool to unify people socially. Given the present state of the country, this is something we desperately need. Finally, s long-time professional educators and coaches, this is an industry we know inside and out.

The School will differ from other "schools" in that the primary focus will be on practical skills more than academic skills, though we'll likely develop some geeky stuff, too. The practical skills will cover life skills that are useful to survive and thrive in the modern world, and may cover anything from how to create a resume to how to do basic car maintenance. Part of the motivation for this stems from my experiences as a public school teacher. As we've increased our academic focus, more practical skills have fallen by the wayside. We will fill that "Why didn't they teach me that in school?!?" void.

Aside from modern skills, we will also teach more primitive skills that our society is quickly losing, such as food preservation, raising animals, gardening, and so on. Part of the motivation stems from a genuine desire to preserve the work of those who came before us, and part of the motivation stems from a desire to make our community in general and Tribe in particular more resilient. We're engaging in disaster preparedness, but doing so in a way that addresses the most likely reality. If we study the history and psychology of social collapse, circumstances rarely if ever play out like a typical "prepper" believes. If the shit really does hit the fan, our world will look less like "Mad Max" and more like "Little House on the Prairie."

The School will also be an extension of the jiu jitsu and mma gym we're currently operating. Given combat sports are THE common thread for the Club, this is an integral part of the entire Project. We'll expand the classes offered in the beginning to include a few classes that will be taught by members of the Tribe. Currently, we offer adult Brazilian jiu jitsu and MMA classes, and a youth jiu jitsu class. In the near future we'll be adding a striking class, a competition class, a "yoga for jiu jitsu" class, and a women's boxing class.

In addition, we all have expertise in specific subjects outside the martial arts paradigm, so these will be the classes we offer initially to test things like scheduling, duration, payment plans, different ways to utilize our physical space, etc. The school will use a variety of different educational models ranging from universities to public schools to homeschooling. The ideas borrow heavily from community life enrichment schools and the free school movement. 

The school will be the primary revenue stream for the project, which will pay the bills, fund future expansion, and possibly provide an income stream to the Tribe Members. Will will probably use the Profit First financial model for operations, which is a Dave Ramsey-esque accounting system.

Long-term, the goal is to acquire land to develop the new aspects of the School that we cannot do in our current downtown location. This land will also be used for the Tribe's recreational activities. Specifically, it will allow us to teach a wider variety of primitive skills and develop an infrastructure that will assist the Tribe in social bonding and provide resources in difficult times.

Conclusion

As of this second version of the project summary, this is still a tentative plan that's currently in development. The collaboration with the Founding Members will likely tweak aspects of the plan, or even change major elements. In the coming weeks, we'll have A LOT of conversations about these topics. New perspectives will give me new insight. New, better ideas will likely replace that which I've planned. We have a group of smart people with a lot of different areas of expertise working on this project, and we have even more smart people in our Facebook Group who may have thoughts and ideas. If this entire concept interests you and you'd like to be part of the conservation, join the group!

~Jason

 

Relevant Links

These are the posts I've written explaining more aspects of this project in greater detail.

The Theory Behind the Project

Why I Think This Idea Can Fix the Bullshit Divisions and Craziness We See in America Today

Why We Need Tribes in Our Lives

How Tribes Can Make Your Life Better

The Process We Use to Find the Right People for the Tribe

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Our Tribe is Our Port: When the Sea is Angry, the Tribe Keeps Us Safe

In an earlier post, I laid out the tangible benefits (and real costs) of belonging to a Tribe.The Tribe, in a sense, is kinda like a port on a small island. Normally, all of us are venturing out into the sea of life, carving out a living, raising kids, creating cool adventures... stuff like that. Our modern world is filled with amazing opportunities, and we should spend as much time as we possibly can exploring those opportunities.

But it gets a lot easier to really explore our world if we know we have a reliable "home base" to use as a foundation. A place to return to when needed. The Tribe is essentially a port. When the journey of life gets hectic, the Tribe is there to provide for us and protect us. It's a safe place to refuel, fix broken stuff, and most importantly, have fun. 

All those benefits I outline in that post I linked to in the first sentence align with some aspect of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which is intentional and the reason I love the Tribe model of social organization. The very organization of the Tribe puts the individual members in an excellent position to do great things because they're routinely getting all their needs met. Let's walk through each need, starting at the bottom of the pyramid.

Physiological Needs: Under normal circumstances, the Tribe isn't going to be providing these things, but the Tribe WILL be an important safety net if a Member of the Tribe isn't getting these needs met for whatever reason. Knowing you'll always have something to eat and drink and a warm place to sleep alleviates a nagging concern many of us have floating around in the backs of our heads, and hopefully gives us a baseline of security to allow us to take bigger risks. 

Safety Needs: By virtue of modern society and our effective law enforcement infrastructure, safety and security is one of those needs we frequently take for granted... until we're in a situation where we're not safe and secure. But there are times when we can't call the police for a variety of reasons. In that case, it helps having a Tribe who'll have your back. There's power and safety in numbers, especially when the Tribe trains all the time. 

Belongingness and Love Needs: Socializing with friends is one of the reasons I was deeply interested in this project in the first place. Once you reach adulthood and start having kids, friendships get logistically difficult. A major aspect of the Tribe are the social connections among the members. Given our vetting process, the Tribe itself is filled with kind, friendly, socially-intelligent, funny people who don't take themselves too seriously. In short, the Tribe is pretty decent at making friends and having fun. As you navigate life, casual friends come and go, but the Tribe offers a foundation of lasting friendships. 

Esteem Needs: The Tribe is, by design, a group of people who care for each other. These connections provide a powerful feedback loop where all of your significant accomplishments get recognized and celebrated by a group of people who respect you and admire you. No matter how good you are at internal validation, this kind of love and support is incredibly powerful and a prerequisite to taking that next step to...

Self-Fulfillment Needs: This is that motivation for personal growth and to reach your full potential. The Tribe's explicit goal is to make our world a better place by making our individual members the best people they can be. In a perfect world, all of us would be doing this all of the time. But you really do need every one of the other lower needs to be met first. This is where the purpose of the Tribe really shines. By providing a basis for each of the four lower needs, our Tribe Members can spend significantly more time becoming the best version of themselves possible. 

There you have it. The Tribe is a Port of sorts, providing our Members with everything they need to survive and thrive. 

~Jason

***

The Vision for the School: The Microscopic View 1.0

 

Purpose of the Post

This post is the first public explanation of the details of the School aspect of this project in its completed form. This will be the end goal, not our starting point. This is essentially the first draft of the plan, which will be changed as our ideas evolve with collaborative planning and goal setting with the Tribe and others, such as in our Facebook Group. This is only the first step post-brainstorming, so it is pretty rough around the edges. The goal in releasing it now it to get critical feedback on the basic ideas at the BEGINNING of planning versus the END of planning. It's just a more efficient way to collaborate. 

The plan, as it is in this form, has quite a few complex parts. Future versions need to be refined, clarified, and simplified. 

The Vision and Plan

Mission Statement and Rationale - What is the ultimate goal, and why?

Our mission statement is as follows:

The Lab Project improves our local community by creating a hub of skills, knowledge, and wisdom that unifies diverse members of our community to solve tricky problems within our community.

Our ultimate goal with this project is to improve our local community by creating a centralized hub of skills, knowledge, and wisdom that unifies diverse members of our community to solve tricky problems. This is accomplished by creating a non-compulsory, non-accredited school offering life-enrichment classes to members of our community. Out Tribe runs the school, our Faculty teach classes and lead collaborative community-improvement projects, and our Students learn and assist the faculty in completing their projects.

The summary of the project can be found here: Project Summary: The 30,000 Foot View (v.1.0)

The hypothesis that creates the foundation of the project can be found here: The Sociopolitical Tribal Hypothesis: The Foundation of the Project

As is explained in the "hypothesis" post, this project requires ideologically-diverse people to work together to solve real problems affecting our local community. In the simplest terms, this means sociopolitically-diverse people - liberals, conservatives, and everyone in between.

Our school is not a replacement for formal K-12 or higher education. It is meant to be a supplement. 

Vision and Rationale - What is the school going to look like, and why?

Our School will be organized using a model similar to a university (with an administration, faculty, and students who teach, learn, and work on solving local problems around our community here in Montrose.) The school will use basic psychological principles to motivate these people to collaborate and innovate using a project-based learning framework. 

How We Use Motivation

Per Abraham Maslow, humans have five basic needs. We utilize those five needs to create an environment where participants are intrinsically motivated to make a real difference through improving themselves and their community. Human curiosity and a genuine desire to help others are the engines that drive this project.

The Tribe and Faculty are assessed for their personalities, strengths, passions, skills, and knowledge to place them in a role within the school structure that allows them to reach their full potential in a deeply-fulfilling way. They identify what they want to get out of life, and we help them achieve it while giving back something of value to the Tribe and to our community. In this sense, we create win-win relationships. 

What Do We Teach and Why Do We Teach It?

The classes our School teaches are life enrichment classes, where "life enrichment" includes any topic or subject matter that improves our students' lives in a measurable way. This can range from Brazilian jiu jitsu to knife-sharpening to writing a resume. Any and all topics may be taught depending on the the expertise of our Faculty and the needs of our Students.

The School also provides all the tools necessary, and removes as many barriers as possible, to use what we teach to create a safe, healthy, unified, resilient community.

Our school's pedagogy (how we teach) is heavily inspired by the Unschooling movement, benign neglect parenting, homeschooling, the apprenticeship model, and my own "Organic Learning" experiential learning idea.

How do We Share Ideas?

Our school adheres to the principle of open knowledge, which is based on the open source software movement. As much as possible, we make teaching and learning free and open to anyone and everyone. The free sharing of ideas allows others to adopt ideas, experiment , and improve them. To accomplish this, we will use various Web-based technologies, such as this blog, a podcast, social media, our website, and video hosting sites such as Youtube.

How do we build a sustainable and resilient Tribe, School, and Community?

One of our goals is to assure our Tribe, School, and Community can weather any storm we may encounter to guarantee our long-term success. To this end, our first S&R (sustainability and resiliency) goal is to make the Tribe sustainable for one year with no external support. Our second S&R goal is to do the same for the School (Faculty and Students.) Our third S&R goal is to do the same for our Community. For these goals, "sustainable" means "meeting all five levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for all members of these three groups. 

We will also accomplish this by creating and projecting a culture of kindness, empathy, and compassion backed by a rock-solid culture of strength, courage, honor, and mastery. We will use our martial arts program to instill this culture across all aspects of our Tribe and our School. 

How will we unite our Tribe, School, and Community to assure different people are all working towards the same mutually-beneficial goals?

To accomplish this, we will actively teach leadership skills to our Tribe, then our Faculty, and finally our Students. The idea is to create as many high quality, capable leaders as possible to improve the pool of leaders for each of these three groups. Better leadership makes for better outcomes for everyone.

We will also do what we can to assure our school includes Tribe and Faculty that are an accurate representation of our community. This will help these groups understand and empathize with anyone and everyone in the greater Montrose area, which will make the school's project-based learning methods more effective. 

Finally, we will utilize cooperative interdependence (the Jigsaw Classroom model) and Organic Learning as much as possible. These systems, when working in conjunction, allows different people to use their different knowledge, skills, and experiences cooperatively to solve real problems in our community.

Guiding Principles - What are they and why do we have these specific principles?

Our Tribe and our School are run based on a set of principles that affect every decision we make. This method of operation assures we stay true to our mission statement. 

Principle #1: The best way to solve problems is to give diverse, motivated people tricky, relevant problems to solve, a barrier-free environment, and an easy way to communicate. 

Principle #2: Holistic goal-setting is used for every level of planning for the Tribe and the School. Within the school, holistic goal-setting is used for department planning, class planning, pedagological experimentation, and projects. 

Principle #3: We embrace open knowledge. Everyone should have free, open access to the information we produce for the purposes of improving themselves and those around them.

Principle #4: We embrace the Gift Economy, which is the idea that freely giving with kindness and altruism improves the lives of everyone. Capitalistic Altruism. 

Principle #5: We will utilize intrinsic motivation and curiosity as primary motivators for the Tribe, our Faculty, and our Students.

Principle #6: Diversity is strength. All sociopolitical ideologies working together open-mindedly and cooperatively are necessary to produce a fully functional Tribe, School, and Community. We hate echo chambers of any sort. 

Principle #7: Every member of the Tribe, School, and Community are both teachers and learners. Everyone is expected to contribute their knowledge, skills, and experiences to improve the collective.

Organization -Structure and People

Role of the Tribe

The Tribe is the heart and soul of this Project. Made up of hungry, humble, people-smart members, the Tribe uses the School as a conduit to make our world a better place.

The Tribe is the School's compass assuring it stays on the right path and act as the School's cultural stewards, which includes developing the mission statement, vision, goals, and guiding principles. The Tribe also runs the Administration, Academics, and Projects. The Tribe provides all the tools necessary for the Faculty and Students to do good in our Community. 

The School, in turn, supports the Tribe by providing for their five basic human needs, which is loosely based on the relationship between Native American tribes and casinos. 

The Tribe serves as brokers for knowledge, skills, and wisdom in our Community. This allows the Tribe to develop symbiotic relationships with individuals, businesses, and organizations within our Community. The Tribe is about connecting people and ideas in meaningful ways. 

Tribe Members can also be Faculty or Students, and may take classes free of charge.

Departments

The "Academic" division of the School is divided by Departments based on groups of expertise. The Department is a way for Faculty from related fields to easily collaborate. Inter-Department collaboration is encouraged.

Departments can be started with a minimum of two Faculty members is a related area. New Departments will be given a blog and Youtube channel, and start with zero budget. After completing three successful Projects, the Department may petition the Tribe for funding for Projects.

Each department will have an organic goal setting session once per year for the entire department, needs their own principles, goals, and vision, and need to have at least one problem to solve that will make community better per term.

Faculty

The Faculty have two primary roles - teach classes and propose, plan, and complete Projects. No formal requirements are needed for Faculty other than they meet the Tribe criteria (hungry, humble, and people smart), and have ideas, knowledge, skills, or wisdom to share.

Faculty have access to physical space within the school to teach classes and complete Projects, have access to the department blog, and have access to the Department Youtube channel.

The total number of Tribe Members, Faculty, and Students will not exceed 100 per term.

Faculty will develop novel, creative ways to teach their subject area expertise to others in the community effectively, and teach others how to utilize their methods. The goal is to continually refine our methods to make them simpler, cheaper, more efficient, and more effective.

Faculty and their families can take classes for free.

Students

Our students will come from our local community, and will include anyone with an interest in the classes being offered.

Operations

Curriculum

 Our initial curriculum will focus on the expertise of the Members of our Tribe, and the Teachers we have immediately available. This will likely include the teaching of primitive skills, self-improvement, health, fitness, and self-defense. In addition to our Tribe already possessing the knowledge to teach these topics, these are also valuable skills that can create an immediate positive impact on individual members of our community. 

Our Founding Members of our Tribe are currently curating a list of possible topics to be taught. 

In the future, our curriculum will widen to include any topic that is of interest to our teachers and students, of value to the Tribe, or will improve our community.

Scheduling and Cohorts

The School will operate on a "term" schedule, much like colleges and universities. We will have a fall and winter term lasting 16 weeks, and a summer term lasting eight weeks. Classes may be offered for shorter periods of time within each term. 

The purpose of the terms is to facilitate planning, give our Faculty the opportunity to spend time working on Projects or plan vacations, make payments easier to collect and process, and make improvements to our facilities. 

Each term, students will be organized into a Cohort, which will be used as another opportunity to build social connections between the Tribe, Faculty, and Students. The Cohort will meet at the beginning and end of the Term at an event planned by the Tribe. The end-of-term event will feature a Conference/ Party for Faculty and Students to present their Projects.

Each Cohort will elect a Student Council who will represent Student Interests at the Tribe meetings held monthly. The Student Council will work in conjunction with the Tribe Social Committee to plan the end-of-term Conference/ Party.

Classes

Classes can be different lengths, but the typical class will be one term long. Classes will be planned eight weeks before the beginning of a Term to allow for schedules to be produced, facility use to be determined, and distributed and students to be recruited. 

Every class should begin and end with a five to ten minute social session. The purpose of this is to increase social bonding, thus increase the sense of belonging among students.

Projects

Projects are the equivalent to research conducted by university professors. The Projects will be something tangible that uses Faculty expertise and collaboration with the Tribe, Students, and Community to make real, tangible improvements to our community.

All projects must be: Cheap, simple, effective, no unintended consequences, make our community better in a tangible, measurable way, and is enjoyable (fun, play, etc.) 

All projects approved by Tribe, sort of like Human Subjects Board, uses holistic goal setting. Faculty and Students present results at Conference Parties at the end of each term. Ongoing projects present what they've learned thus far. All of this is written up and kept in searchable database (the equivalent of our "journal."

Department needs three successful projects done at zero cost before they can ask for funding, individual faculty need two.

Campus (Homestead)

The Tribe will purchase land and build structures to support the Tribe and School.

Eventual goal is to allow faculty and Tribe to live on area of homestead to allow for collaboration. Homestead needs living quarters for Tribe and Faculty, areas to use for teaching purposes,.a shooting range, a great hall, a community kitchen, a community garden, etc.

Finances

 

The School finances use Profit First methodology and Dave Ramsey financial concepts - no debt, emergency funds for one year of operations with zero income, and all the things related to stockpiling (prepping) for one year of no outside help. The Tribe and School will also help individual community members (families) do the same by teaching these skills.

Everything will be done on lowest budget possible (free if possible) ala school computer lab idea from Kenowa Hills.

 

Income streams will come from student tuition, our retail operation (online and brick and mortar), information products we produce, other goods and services we produce, affiliate marketing, ads, and any other streams we identify.

 

Spreading the Idea

 

All aspects of the Tribe and School will be designed as a series of simple systems that can be used anywhere, which will allow the idea to be spread elsewhere. 

Conclusion

 

This is obviously a VERY convoluted first draft of the School model. While it is not complete, I needed to get the ideas out into the world for much-needed critical input. More than most parts of the project, I REALLY need feedback on this one. If you have any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions, either leave a comment here on the blog, OR join our Facebook Group here. 

~Jason

 

 

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Using the Myers-Briggs and Holisitic Decision-Making to Build a Tribe

 

I've been using the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator (MBTI) personality test (actually the 16 Personalities variation) for years in the classroom. The format is simple - you answer a bunch of questions, and the test assigns you to one of sixteen different personality "types." This is one of the tools I will use to help construct our Tribe, which is one of two major components of this project.

Now, before I go further, it's important to note personality testing itself is problematic and the MBPI is one of the worst. The gist of the problem? Since the tests are self-report, they reflect how you see yourself, not necessarily how the rest of the world objectively sees you. There are other problems with any personality test, but this one's a biggies. For the purposes of this project, though, the flaws of the test are okay.

According to my hypothesis about Tribes, the more ideological diversity a Tribe possesses, the more effectively that Tribe will be able to navigate the world. Why? Because the diversity gives the Tribe a large repository of different opinions, perspectives, skills, knowledge, and wisdom. The various members of the Tribe can contribute their perspective. Using the right decision-making framework (we're starting to implement the Holistic Management decision-making framework in our Tribe... only we're applying it to our circumstances instead of reversing grasslands desertification), all of our major decisions are, by definition, collaborative. 

The general idea is to get as ideologically-diverse of a Tribe as we can, which means we need a convenient method to roughly assess people's world views. If you read through the personality types on the 16 personalities site, you'll see they represent a really wide range of people who typically play fairly specific roles within society. Or on a smaller scale, within a Tribe. Leaders, planners, logistical managers, nurturers, artists, rule-enforcers, mediators... and so on. Every important role is represented within these 16 personality types. 

As we're assessing WHO will be part of our Tribe (using the questions from this post), we'll also be assessing WHERE each Tribe Member fits in WHAT role. How can they best serve the Tribe in a way that utilizes their strengths? This is where the self-report aspect of the MBPI comes in handy. Because people are answering the questions from their own perspective, they're sort of projecting their desires through the test. The personality type they receive is the personality type they WANT to be, which means they're likely highly intrinsically motivated to fill that role.

One of the criteria we look for in that blog post I linked to in the last paragraph is "Are they hungry?" As a general rule, we're all hungry for something. This is a rule I learned in my twenty years as a public high school teacher - even the laziest, unmotivated, unfocused kid will play the latest Call of Duty game for 37 hours straight. We all have a carrot that is our desired role within a group, and the MBPI is a great tool to reveal that carrot.

 In the early stages of the development of the Tribe, we'll use the 16 Personalities tool to help figure out what roles Members should fulfill. At some point, we'll actively start searching for the personality types that aren't well-represented throughout the Tribe. Ideally, we'd have about three or four of each of the sixteen types, but for an optimally-functioning Tribe, we'd likely need at least one of each type. This will give us the raw diversity we need to make the Holistic Decision-Making framework an even more useful tool. The formula: 

Diverse people + Holistic Management Methodology = Excellent Creative Problem-Solving.

I've sort of used this kind of idea before in the classroom, but it was quite informal. But damn, was it ever effective. It should be even more effective in the Tribe environment.

~Jason

***

 

Interested in this project? Join our Facebook planning and idea group that discusses these ideas in detail!

The Importance of Courage

 

John McCain's words, in my experiences, always ring true. Far too many people believe bravery and courage is acting without fear. Which is evident by the fact that those same people live kinda "blah" lives.

Instead, real courage is acting in spite of fear. And the people who do are immediately distinguishable from those who don't. These are the people who do extraordinary things, surround themselves with extraordinary people, and live extraordinary lives.

Courage Requires Risk

Courage implies a risk. It implies a potential for failure or the presence of danger. Courage is measured against danger. The greater the danger, the greater the courage. Running into a burning building beats telling off your boss. Telling off your boss is more courageous than writing a really mean anonymous note. Acts without meaningful consequences require little courage.

- Jack Donovan

Courage is a habit, just like anything else. Get in the habit of taking risks. Real risks, with real consequences. Start small. Find that little thing you've been wanting to try, but fear was holding you back. Do it, then celebrate the courage it took to act. That's how you develop the courage to face bigger risks with bigger payoffs.

If you're afraid to try something new, you will miss out on countless adventures. If we worry about failing, we never have the opportunity to learn how to get up. If we worry about what people will think, we never learn to blaze our own path. If we never take risks, we never end up going to your grave filled with regret. I can't think of anything more sad.

Find something that terrifies you. Maybe it's a new skill you've been wanting to learn. Maybe it's some new knowledge you've wanted to acquire. Maybe it's a trip you've wanted to take. Maybe it's that secret dream you've been harboring for years. 

Whatever it is, do it. Despite the fear.

~Jason

***

The Importance of Curiosity

 

 “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
― Albert Einstein

Curiosity just might be the most powerful force in the universe. It's the motivation that's never exhausted. Curiosity is the engine of learning. Curiosity is the driver of innovation and positive change. Great things, amazing things, are routinely accomplished through curiosity. Spark a person's curiosity and you give them the ammunition to conquer the world.

Or something like that.

The science of motivation tells us curiosity is one of the most powerful intrinsic motivators there is. Humans inherently love learning. Our brains are the most complex structure in the known universe for a reason. Curiosity and that love of learning is what drives me to develop this project, and it's no coincidence it's a foundation of our Tribe and our School.

I've long been interested in curiosity. As a public school teacher, I've long understood the sheer value of sparking curiosity in my students. It makes the entire school experience for students infinitely better if they want to be there because they're curious. Grades improve, retention and the ability to apply ideas and concepts gets way better, behavior problems disappear, students become empowered and have the ability to solve real problems, etc.

Unfortunately, it's exceptionally difficult to spark curiosity in a public school setting, at least among every kid. Class sizes are simply too big, we waste too much time preparing for and taking standardized tests, and we have too many required classes and strict curricula. We certainly try; every administrator, teacher, and support staff knows the inherent value of fostering curiosity. The systems, just too big, too impersonal, and too structured. Curiosity requires freedom and maneuverability. Curiosity requires flexibility and the removal of barriers. Our schools can't provide this because we expend all our resources trying to meet totally unrealistic expectations. 

Our School will utilize curiosity as a basic foundation of everything we do, from deciding which classes to offer to deciding who will teach them to exactly what students will learn. In future posts, I'll expand on this idea. But curiosity is also hard-wired into everything we do. Including our Tribe.

“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.”
― Roy T. Bennett

Our Tribe (and our gym) is filled with genuinely curious people, which includes curiosity about each other. If you eavesdrop on any conversation at our gym, they're never like "so how's the weather" conversations. They're conversations about who were are, what we do, what motivates us to train, or other deeply-inquisitive questioning. It's clearly obvious we have a gym filled with people who listen to understand. 

It's no surprise our gym is filled with people who experience grand adventures; their curiosity towards each other applies to a curiosity about life. And that curiosity about life is what pushes us to experience new, exciting things. It's what allows us to overcome fear and experience real adventure.

It's rare in today's world, and it's one of the things I think makes us a little different. It's why I think we can make a real dent in the universe.

~Jason

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