The Parable of the Tribes — Howard Rheingold

When I was working on cooperation theory with Institute for the Future, we observed that scientists and scholars working on cooperation issues in different fields were often not aware of converging work, so we set out to write a series of summaries. One work that came to my attention was The Parable of the Tribes. The story is simple: If peaceful tribes are threatened by an aggressive neighbor, they are forced to alter themselves by fighting, surrendering, or fleeing. How to deal with this? Game theory might have some hints: Transforming a prisoner's dilemma (neither of us can trust each other, so we agree to an outcome that is not as good for both of us) into a stag hunt (if we all stay home and hunt on our own, we might bring home rabbits, but if we can overcome mistrust and hunt together, we could bring home a stag) is one possibility. Which begs the question of how you do the convincing. Giving each other presents? When anthropologists encountered a previously uncontacted tribe, if they wanted to make contact they started with small gifts left at the border.

Title: The Parable of the Tribes: A new look at how the history of civilization may have been largely shaped by the raw struggle for power between societies

Publication Date: Autumn 1984

URL: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC07/Schmoklr.htm

Authors: Schmookler, Andrew Bard

Findings:

The evolution of civilization can be seen as a dialectic between the commonsense view of a benign striving for and choice of a humane world and a more problematic systematic selection for power and dominance over others.

The drive for societal survival makes the selection for power among civilized societies inevitable.

The synthesis of the compulsive spread of power with the benign choice for the diffusion of beneficial inventions through human and humane aspirations is possible. These different truths need to be combined in a balanced way.

One Sentence:

One Paragraph:

The parable of the tribes is used to describe schematically how one aggressive tribe among an otherwise peaceful group can force the spread of the ways of power throughout the system: power becomes a contaminant that, once introduced, becomes universal abetted and magnified through innovations in organization and technology. The way out of this dilemma for societal evolution is the realization that while the selection for power does govern much of the evolution of civilization, people can also simultaneously shape their destinies through humane choices. The parable of the tribes is not the sole force directing civilization's evolution, only an extremely important one. The balance is critical.

One Page: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC07/Schmoklr.htm

The commonsense view of social evolution as the product of choices made in the marketplace of cultural possibilities resulting in the continuous betterment of the human condition is flawed.

The rise of civilization, paradoxically, reduced the natural limits separating societies. In such a situation, Schmookler's Parable of the Tribes describes how, in a situation in which two or more actors desire to exploit a limited resource, power becomes important and a contaminant of the possibility of peaceful co-existence:

All of a group of tribes living within reach of each other choose peace. However, if all but one choose peace, there are four possibilities for the threatened neighbors:

Destruction.
Absorption and enslavement.
Withdrawal to a less desirable place.
Imitation of the aggressive behavior.

Technological innovation and improvement, far from making things inevitably better, can extend the reach of aggressors throughout the world.

Cultural homogenization and the diminishment of diversity happens both through benign, commonsense choice (i.e., innovations as improvements) as well as through compulsion by dominant aggressors.