Sup guys. Steve. Narelle. Conrad, good to see you dude.
So, it seems like a thing that been coming for a while, because I’ve touched on it very briefly before, but I would like to talk today about the concept known as the Threat of Exile™.
The less formal and anthropologically academic version being: why do we fight so hard for acceptance? To belong?
Because on a very real level we all want to be.
But why? Who gives a shit what Tiffany thinks or our new top when we head out to the nighties on Saturday night? Or what the team skipper thinks of our new boots at first day of footy training, just because they have pink stripes and bright purple soles? Even then, what the other faculty members think of your new direction in research concerning dwindling migratory flight patterns of the majestics Canadian Goose, the envy of all ornithologys! (If you get this reference, we are now extra proper friends. Go you!)
Anyway…
Why do we care?
There’s always more people to hang out with and be friends with, so why does it matter?
Because those chumps aren’t OUR friends. They don’t have a back history of seeing all the cool/dumb/funny/tragic/weird/”interesting” stuff we’ve done in the past and allegedly love and adore us accordingly.
But what if they don’t? What if we are treated with a certain amount of contempt and disrespect that is actually pretty obvious and transparent? And leaves you feeling pretty small and pathetic, which is rarely a good thing. What about then?
Why don’t we tell them to eat that big bag of Willy Wonka Bag-O-Dicks, washed down a cool drink from the shut-tha-far-Cup?
Well, because we don’t want to be kicked out of the gang. Because if we are that pick-on-able (I know, I’m inventing new word things today, but I’m pretty sure it still makes sense, right?) we likely have limited beliefs on our ability to find new friends because we suck and no one else will like us either so we have to stay and put up with it otherwise we’ll be shunned and die alone only to be eaten by all those stray cats we’ve inadvertently collected, just like that old gypsy woman you met on that Contiki tour in Romania said you would…
I would argue that is an evolutionary throwback to being exiled from the tribe waaaay back in the day when nomadic tribes were how humans rolled. It’s a bit more than an argument really. Fair bit of evidence to back it up.
To put it simply, back then, if you didn’t have a tribe, you were toast. Surviving in the harsh world filled with tribes who gave no fucks about killing strangers because they were a threat to resources, let alone things like starvation, exposure, predation, insanity, injury, infection. You know, things that having other people around makes MUCH easier, because then we don’t have to do two or more things at once to make sure we live to see tomorrow?
This is why the threat of exile was such a big deal. Because more often than not, it was a death sentence. To the point where it probably would have been kinder to just kill said exile right then and there. But then there’s all the effort of washing the blood stains out of your fur clothes, dragging the body away so the children wouldn’t be constantly poking it with sticks, the scavengers didn’t start to think that your village was a good place to hang out to find carrion to eat. Who has time for that? Just a hassle.
So, you did the equivalent of getting them to dig their own grave by getting them to drag themselves out of the village BEFORE they died rather than later. Clever, right?
So, why do we, as people who don’t typically find ourselves in a position to worry about other murderous tribes and scavengers, care about this concept?
Because it still exists in us.
How often do we tolerate treatment that we know is wrong, in order to keep the peace?
How much pressure do we feel to keep that status quo when someone else acts out of line with the person doing the deciding in the group? Especially if that person acting out of line might actually have a point?
Humans have a reliance on each other because that is where survival lays. If we all had to make our own food, keep our own electricity on, educate our own children, create our own entertainment, how many of us could honestly say they could do that? To the immense standard we have become accustomed to anyway.
Safety in numbers makes it harder for us to be picked off by predators too. Raiders, hyena packs, cross city/country/continent sporting team rivals for examples. This is why tribalism exists. And in a very short explanation version, why things like racism, classism, elitism and religious zealotry exist too. But that is definitely another blog topic.
So, a part of us deep down knows that we are pack animals that thrive when we have a squad to work with.
But what if we also know that sometimes our pack is actually a pack of pricks to us? We know that the treatment is wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t feel that way. So why don’t you leave?
Well, the answer is, we’ve been on the bottom of the barrel for so long that we have no faith and confidence in ourselves as individuals that we could survive the exiling we’d experience after telling Marla that she is a MASSIVE bitch and that there only so much makeup that will cover that fugly head up. You can pour glitter on a turd, but you it still smells and feels like shit when you play with it…
And so, on to my usual answer to pretty much every question that comes up in these things ever.
If you invested in you, maybe you wouldn’t feel so trapped. Maybe you’d feel differently enough about yourself that you could survive that social exiling by find new, better friends that actually saw some value in you beyond being Matt the Frustration spittoon (look them up if you don’t know what they are, I promise it’ll make waaay more sense.).
Yes, we are tied to the necessity of other people. That’s not a bad thing. We do seriously epic shit when we work together.
But what if you aren’t who you know you are in that group?
Is it worth it?
What do you want?
You are more than what people who are invested in controlling you say you are. And I’m happy to sit here and say that is true 100 fucking % of the time.
But it’s on you to believe that.
Good squad, crap squad, you set the tone for you.
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“If a regime is immoral, its subjects are free from all obligations to it.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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