Tribe and Community

[cjsmith]

A friend posted a question about the words Tribe and Community. What do they mean, and what would you do for members of your Tribe? Here is my answer.

Above all, Tribe means people I trust. (While some people consider Tribe to mean something close to "family", "family" is a loaded word with me, so if I try to use that in a definition or analogy I don't get far.) So anyway, trust. Tribe also means people I care about and would miss deeply were they gone. I would stretch myself a lot to help someone in my Tribe who needed it. Someone may be part of my Tribe at one time in my life but not another, for a variety of reasons that could include but don't have to include angst or drama.

I'm still looking for my Tribe. So far, I think it's got three people in it, two of whom may or may not consider me Tribe in return. Any of this could change. Life has a way of handing that out.

I consider Community to be a group of people who have something in common, anything from simple physical location to odd sexual interests, and who communicate with each other (about that thing or other things). They may not be friends; usually they're not. I may not trust or respect them; often I don't even know them well. Chance made this grouping. However, I may have common cause with them, and I try not to piss them off.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I should have noted that this was in the context of a group of people who commonly redefine the word to mean something like "chosen family" or, basically, "people I like a lot and would help and would probably expect help from". This word "tribe" would be at best a derivation loosely related to its earlier meaning(s). Given that context, I talked about how I would define it in my own life.

I don't use the word that way myself. In conversation, in that context, I could use it as described above. In general, I'm not much into deliberately redefining words to fit what I wish they meant. I'd rather invent a new one. Less confusion that way.

[yoak.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. :-)