Home is Where the Walls Are

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.                                                                               Friedrich Nietzsche

The individual mind is an open system, and all of its content comes from the world. That means various tribes have their hooks in you; experience shapes the mind and if you believe it plays the largest part in building your identity, you have to accept that you belong to each of them to some degree or another depending on their individual contributions. And, even if you declare yourself to be proudly not a member of this, that or another tribe, you remain susceptible to their influence, even if only slightly, if they had any role in creating you. The danger of the human tendency toward tribalist behavior, though, manifests itself most insidiously when we interact with others who hold many of the same deeply held beliefs that we do while we each in turn hold onto the belief that we are completely autonomous individuals. A sudden turn of events can quickly conspire to polarize thinking and drive the individual into the arms of the tribe, and the more fiercely independent we think ourselves to be, the more ashamed we feel at such times.

If you think you are a completely autonomous individual not susceptible at all to the calls of a mob, than you are in great danger of joining one.

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