Tribal rule 1: You do not talk about Fight Club...

Tonight, I saw tribalism at work.
Honestly, I would say that I've seen tribalism at work my entire life. It's not that hard to find.
In particular, social groups and friendship circles are tribalism in this day and age. More so, there is nothing more tribal than a church youth group that evolves into the church young adult group.
Growing up, I belonged to a church youth group. I use the word belonged loosely because I always felt like the outsider, but for the purposes of this, I belonged to the group. The church I spent most of my adolescence in was relatively small, but a close-knit bunch. The church branded itself a family church and that mentality permeated everything. I would say there was about 20-25 of us that were very close in the church context. We sat together, hung out together after services and ran the Sunday School. Mostly, we played volleyball. Frankly, it was akin to a cult ritual. Every Wednesday before youth service, every Thursday when we traveled to Huntington Beach and the high holy holiday, the Memorial Day Picnic, we played volleyball.
Yet outside of the church, we were complete strangers. We went to different high schools and while we might congregate at the Bible Club during the week (well, not at my high school), we didn't associate in the same peer groups and pretty much didn't acknowledge each other's existence.
It's an odd dichotomy. Outside the religious sphere, the same concept is prevalent. Most people in their 20s and 30s--maybe even their 40s--band together. It's almost like the new family, except that it isn't a family. There are family values, for sure. But the shared interests are in things to do, not things people are.
But the church youth group I grew up in was a tribe. And like tribes in the past, once you leave the tribe, it's near impossible to return. You're out, you are out.

I bring this up because much of the people that formed the tribe of the church group I grew up in have formed another tribe at another church. Because of school and such, I don't associate with most people from way back then. Every so often, I'll see them at social gatherings. Nevertheless, nothing has changed. Just like it was for me when I was younger, they hang out together, go to parties together, club together, then go to church on Thursday night together. Since they are older than 21, they really drink together. Really, really drink together. Tonight, many of them were in the back yard of a house, listening to bad 80s music before the cops came and cleared out the joint.

In a way, I feel sorry for them. I used to think they are stuck and combined with an environment that doesn't encourage growth, they have nothing to gain from growing up. Yet, I'm starting to understand it know as just another expression of something that is deeply rooted in all of us: the desire to belong. That transcends religious and secular.

With a tribe comes tribal rules. They are different for each tribe, but usually they go along these lines: Join the tribe, take on the values of the tribe, stay within the boundaries of the tribe and most important, don't join another tribe. Once the tribe is set, other members have to go through an initiation of some sort to join. Once you're in, you are in.

I wonder what is the difference between a tribe and a community. There are community values and expectations and roles that people play, just like a tribe, a group and a family. Those things are common, but what are the differences? Like I said, the instances where people said something was a community was really a tribe. My church upbringing was tribal in every sense of the word. APU's attempt at being a tribe and calling it community is laughable and yet quite sad.
So, what's a community? How does community work for those that are waiting to get married until later, having children until later and taking longer to ascertain identity and commitment? Is community worth sacrificing individual wants and desires?

NOTE: I often wonder if people reading this and other blogs are taking these as advice to stay the hell away from religion. I come from a religious viewpoint, yet it really has nothing to do with religion. What I trying to do in my quirky at 2 a.m. way is make sense of the dynamics in people being in groups and it becoming more than hanging out with friends on a Friday night. But I do caution anyone and everyone to never attend a church that says it's a "family church." Trust me.

Transcribing a paradox

It's almost midnight on Thursday and I find myself in a peculiar position.

Before I go on, I have to say that it is very peculiar to have to bless yourself after you sneeze. Try it sometime. It feels weird, trust me.

Anyways, I'm trying to motivate myself to further the transcription of the interviews for my thesis. I should be done with them by this weekend, which was the goal and I should be done with the first draft by November 15, which was the goal as well. However, I've hit that point that I knew I would hit when I first took this topic and idea on a few months back. I thought I had prepared myself for when this moment came, yet the moment has come and I'm truly not prepared.

My topic is religious identity and interfaith relations, specifically with this organization in Los Angeles. I wanted to observe an interfaith community and see how they deal with religious identity on a personal and collective level. So far, so good. The problem is that this topic doesn't lend itself to a nice, tidy thesis that such topics as "Why MySpace is factually the Anti-Christ" or "Branding cheese in the 21st Century" do. Not dissing anyone else studying cheese, but this was the decision I made.
By going through these interviews and meetings and examining the research and what is happening, it becomes obvious that this is just the starting point. It's not even the starting point, it's the point that one starts. There is a very long, robust, diverse documentation that needs to be done out there, much longer and better than this clunky thesis for a clunky masters.
Nevertheless, here it is. I refuse to give absolutes because there are no absolutes. I refuse to create theories because one theory works in one context and another theory works in another context. Plus, academia is for wimps.
Thus, what in God's name do I write about?

It really dovetails into my current state of mind at the moment. There is SO MUCH out there, SO MUCH to do, SO MUCH to see, SO MUCH to experience, SO MUCH to live. Where does one start with SO MUCH? Annie Lamott would say start where you're at. Right now, I start at a paradox: the urgency to make money because I'm about to run out of reserves and I want to leave L.A. and breathe new air (literally) and finally create a community and finally meet somebody and finally start a family; and the patience to wait for the hottest coal that's burning, the patience to wait for the right time, the right place, the right girl, the right (....).

That is the paradox of the bridge from kid to adult. At some point, values and priorities are going to line up and take their place. When the list solidifies, the moment comes when you wake up in the middle of the night or somehow stop cold in your tracks and you have to pay attention. You have to care.

Yep, the brakes work...

It has been a while since a last post.

I was driving on the 110 this morning for the last observation of the group I'm studying for my thesis. The meet starts at 7 and, with a quick stop at Starbucks, it takes about one hour to get there from home.
I know all about L.A. traffic. Sans San Angelo, I'm a L.A. boy. That might change soon, but sticking with the now, I'm a L.A. boy.
And yet, it seem amazes me how crappy the traffic is at 6 in the morning. Long stretches of breezy cruising, then, the sudden stop because they built the damn freeway goofy.
Hitting that sudden stop and going stop and go until I reach Exposition Blvd., I thought this was a great metaphor for life. It might be stops and starts for a while, then a long stretch of cruising, then the sudden stop to make sure you don't hit the person in front of you.
Of course, this is at 6 a.m., pre-coffee, mid-straining to finish my thesis and post-trying to figure out metaphors on how to live life.

I haven't decided if this past year and a half was a cruise, a slow crawl or just a turn on the surface streets. In any case, it is about to end all too soon. Or maybe it's all too late?
That I'm not sure of either.

Eh, no matter. Life moves forward, traffic continues to get better and worse and luckily, I won't have to be waking up at 5 a.m. for some time.
Until I get a job, that is.

In other matters, I'm making a concerted effort to keep the M.A.Y.A. Years going. Trying to engage the shift toward a standard that seems to always be changing.