Thoughtless Usage

I would really like the current repetitive and essentially meaningless use of the term “tribal” to stop. It is used as shorthand to stand in for opposing political sides that are marked by thoughtless or automatic hostility. I would prefer to hear something like “mob” used to mean a group that is easily led and given to unpremeditated behavior. A mob, or mobbish behavior, would at least conjure up images of a group that is prone to violence and has a history of being irrationally driven such as a lynch mob. Using “mob” would also have the advantage of not distorting a reference to a group that has much worth admiring.

A loose dictionary definition of a tribe is “a division within a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect.” These affiliations of people can be more or less neutral or can be a chosen relationship rather than one that occurs automatically.

In the US, a tribe is most commonly conceived to be a traditional group of Native Americans, and in no small part this renders the current usage racist. Such intent may be far from a user’s mind but nevertheless political usage carries a reminder of the first European colonizers’ enmity with native peoples. There is no reason to rehearse that history here other than to point out that the deadly violence generated in succeeding centuries was made to seem inevitable, and this notion of inevitable hostility is still carried by the word in today’s political climate.

But tribe need not refer only to an ethnic origin. An accurate meaning of a tribal experience might refer to people who share a common history, or a common belief. People of a tribe join together, among many purposes, for mutual comfort and survival, to enact a common culture, to create a home.

Using the word “tribal” as a careless stand-in for automatic opposition in this current political time is not just a semantic error, but part of the danger that increases daily. When Hannah Arendt accused Adolph Eichmann of banality that permitted his capacity for evil, she was referring to just this sort of thoughtless language that maintains stereotypes while sliding past any real meaning. 

Gemstone: Blue topaz