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Sparks + Embers Episode No. 012 - Leadership of Tribe & Community
90 Plays2 months ago
We begin this episode with the context of this last week's events (September 20205)
Different cultures have developed vastly different approaches to tribal leadership and wisdom transmission. Some emphasize consensus-building; others rely on elder councils; still others rotate leadership based on expertise areas. The Khasi bridge-builders blend these approaches: elders hold ultimate knowledge, but every community member participates in bridge maintenance, and decisions about new bridges require village consensus. The challenge is identifying universal principles that can adapt to diverse cultural contexts without imposing one model as superior.
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Transcript
Incident Report: Nearby Gunfire
00:00:00
Speaker
This happened really just moments ago. Shots were fired from a nearby building. We're not clear. We have very few details um so far coming in on this. That's the subject of this that we're talking
Free Speech Concerns on Campuses
00:00:10
Speaker
about right now.
00:00:10
Speaker
Democrats are trying to shut down free speech. This is what happens. We are able to be in that dialogue and go to college campuses without fear of this kind of thing. To cynically weaponize this, it's escalated his attacks on the political left, saying, quote, we just have to be.
Violence: A Threat to Society
00:00:25
Speaker
They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false. think it's important that we, with eyes wide open, understand what what's happening in our our country today.
00:00:35
Speaker
Violence is tragic everywhere, and every life taken deserves our love and respect and dignity. It is much bigger than an attack on an individual. It is an attack people.
00:00:48
Speaker
All of us. It is an attack on the American experiment. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been, and who we could be.
Transcending Current Issues
00:01:03
Speaker
We try to focus on the timelessness of long-held wisdom here at Good Pain. We hope the conversations we document can be picked up at any time and find a way to enjoin the specifics of whatever conversations are being held, regardless of what is happening in the political, social, spiritual, or professional domains.
00:01:24
Speaker
We hope that what we're producing here is a part of that human condition that crosses generations, crosses wisdom traditions, crosses time. There's times when the noise in which we find ourselves is so loud, we ask whether we should be doing more to address the specifics and leaning into what's happening.
Leadership and Tribal Dynamics
00:01:44
Speaker
This is the wrestling of distilling what matters and what we feel called to focus on, what we refer to as the signal that we want to follow from the noise.
00:01:56
Speaker
And this week was noisy. Our discussion this week around apprenticeship and leadership, while timeless, also felt very timely because we're talking about the importance of tribe and the beauty that comes out of being in tribe, while the noise of this week seems to indicate we are witnessing tribal breakdown.
00:02:18
Speaker
We stripped away any of the atmosphere and aesthetic you've come to expect with these Sparks and Embers episodes because for me and those close to me, this is a moment of not pretending.
Choosing Responses Over Reactions
00:02:30
Speaker
The current atmosphere is thick, muggy, and claustrophobic. In that picture of leadership is calling back to what does this mean about us? And if there's anything that we know is is that we always have choice.
00:02:43
Speaker
We have the choice of how we're going to respond. Nothing is automatic. As much as we want to make it that things need to be purely reactive, that's a myth.
00:02:54
Speaker
In Tribe, we do better reaching for the highest versions of ourselves, both as individuals and as
Modern Life vs. Tribal Wisdom
00:03:01
Speaker
a collective. And we don't know how to do that anymore. We've forgotten. For millennia, humans organized in groups of 20 to 150 people who knew each other well enough to work together despite disagreement.
00:03:16
Speaker
These kinds of tribal structures taught us how to hold that individual conviction and collective responsibility. But modern life scattered these natural groupings.
00:03:28
Speaker
And we replaced tribal wisdom with pseudo-communities, social media that amplify outrage without requiring relationship. We replaced tribal wisdom with geographic dispersion that separates us from extended networks of accountability.
Collaboration Over Demonization
00:03:45
Speaker
We replace tribal wisdom with institutional hierarchies that substitute bureaucratic rules for the patient relationship building that creates trust. And we need that.
00:03:55
Speaker
And when we say patient relationship building, that's talking about endurance, time, learning how to bump into each other, how to bump into ourselves, and rather than run away or demonize each other, how to come together effectively. And we do not know how to do that any longer.
00:04:15
Speaker
But throughout history, we know one thing as well. We can transcend the not knowing how, and we can learn again. So where we've lost the skills for community, that space where we learn to live with the person we least want to live with, we can learn how to do that again.
Historical Guidance in Turbulent Times
00:04:34
Speaker
This week, our conversation talks about and draws from history because right now, there's not many places where we do this well. We need to be reminded that others have seen this before.
00:04:46
Speaker
We are not alone in this. We have compatriots across time who have endured this kind of despair, this kind of turmoil, this kind of reckoning.
00:04:58
Speaker
One of the models within tribes that is discussed in this article is the various stages of tribal culture. What we really want to do as the highest versions of ourselves is at the very least strive for stages three, four, and five.
Community Functioning and Fulfillment
00:05:14
Speaker
Because levels one and two describe communities trapped in despair, where individual survival trumps collective wisdom because people believe the system itself is broken. where people blame external circumstances while avoiding ownership of their part in creating change.
00:05:30
Speaker
Higher stages, stages three, four, and five are the ones we aspire to. We may disagree on the how to get there, but at the very least, we aspire to be operating at a closer level of whole functioning, where we are fulfilled in our individual states and as a collective.
00:05:49
Speaker
And we discuss those in this article. We do this because we're trying to create the invitation for ourselves. The invitation is what if we stopped seeing political opponents as enemies and started seeing them as fellow tribe members working toward that perspective of legacy that gets us out of short-term retributive thinking and calls us to longer-term legacy thinking.
Essential Community Skills
00:06:13
Speaker
As things continue to evolve, I would encourage all of us to consider five of the skills that we can cultivate now. The first one, gift circulation or moving things and creating flow and abundance is something for me when I have been stuck in my own family. fears and anxieties centered on my own ideas of what the world should be, volunteering or finding ways to gift or finding other people who are gifting helps me to stop looking at things transactionally, to stop keeping a score sheet of who owes me what or who is blamed for this or that, and instead start offering support without expectation of return.
00:06:56
Speaker
The other aspect is connecting with those who see and witness and clinging to one another and reminding ourselves that that level of clinging and belonging is something that we believe everyone deserves.
00:07:10
Speaker
And oftentimes, the lack of that is what convinces us to move towards other means that are dehumanizing and brutalizing, not only of others, but of ourselves.
00:07:21
Speaker
The other aspect is start thinking about what are the things that I can do today, regardless of the situation that creates that sense of legacy, that creates that opportunity for seven generation decision making, where if I decide to do something today, it's not because I may even yield the fruits or the benefits of that decision today, but maybe seven generations away from now, one of my kin, one of my ancestors will.
00:07:48
Speaker
The fourth is to look at how do I create real community, community that is not a product, not a community that I go and pay to belong to How do I stop making community happen through events and programs?
00:08:04
Speaker
And instead, how do I start recognizing and receiving the community that already exists around me? Smiling, offering kindness and compassion to the people that I find myself in the crossroads with on a daily basis, regardless of whether they have anything to offer me or me to offer
Innovative Collaboration Paths
00:08:21
Speaker
them.
00:08:21
Speaker
Finally, i encourage all of us to start confronting the limits of our imagination, that we stop seeing the probabilities of moving towards greater harm And that we remind ourselves that we always have the ability to choose and see the untrodden path of possibility that allows us to collaborate, to build consensus, to practice mutual accountability without retribution, blame, or bloodletting.
00:08:50
Speaker
This week is a reminder that the patient cultivation of relationships, they oftentimes become the strongest under pressure. That in tribes, there is ripe opportunity for finding frustration.
00:09:06
Speaker
having grievances and seeking redress. And when we find no outlet for those, rather than looking inward and holding ourselves accountable, it is oftentimes so much easier to lash out.
00:09:19
Speaker
We know that communities that measure success, not by how much they've completed, not by how much they've produced, not by how much they've won, but by people capable of growing bridges together, bridging the gaps that keep us separated.
00:09:35
Speaker
That is where strength and growth and humility and beauty starts to emerge. This is the invitation. Not that we're going to eliminate difference, but for us to reclaim those tribal skills that make difference productive rather than destructive.
00:09:53
Speaker
This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been, and who we could be.