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The rhetorical question at the beginning of my last sermonette was “WHAT’S YOUR TRIBE?” A lot of pilgrims and seekers were intrigued by that question, judging by the number of links that were generated by it. Next question: What is an internet tribe? Another way of putting it: What is a virtual tribe’s natural evolutionary function in the context of the environment of the World Wide Web? In two shakes of the old magic 8 ball, pilgrims, Dr. Omed will have the answer.
The natural function of an internet tribe as a collective cultural organism is the creation of memes; memes of survival, not only for the individual members of a tribe, not just for the survival of a particular tribe, but for the survival of the World Tribe, and ultimately for the survival of our species, aptly renamed by Jared Diamond in The Third Chimpanzee, as Pan Sapiens.
Some of the nascent tribes coalescing in the logosphere are destined to embody these memes of survival, and act—are already acting, unknowingly—as the collective “Lamed Vov” of the Global Village. Lamed Vov means Thirty-six. According to Talmudic tradition, there are 36 just souls in every generation. The rabbis tell us that if but one Lamed Vovnik were lacking, the human race would be destroyed by its own evil. My friend Clarissa says a Lamed Vovnik “…can be any soul who goes forth amongst the wounded, tending to the underdog in particular, to the despised, to those the overculture sees as untouchable, worthless, expendable. The Lamed Vovnik don’t know themselves, do not know they are Lamed Vovnik. They ask for nothing, go on to the next, are…the pillars of the world…the world would fall apart if the Lamed Vovnik were not on earth. They are to my mind usual humans doing unusual things, sometimes fire in their hands for healing, sometimes fire in their eyes for seeing far; extraordinary abilities in the usual human.” She also sees dark twins, the shadows of the Lamed Vov.
I see the tribal lamed vovnik of the blogosphere as ongoing flash mobs of first responders, the shadow warriors, ghostdancers, holy clowns, and healers who are running into the towering inferno of this our daily apocalypse to save who and what they can from the machinations and madness of their evil twins, the neuromancers and soul arsonists.
The internet tribe is very similar to Kurt Vonnegut’s concept of the “karass,” explicated by his fictional prophet Bokonon in the novel Cat’s Cradle as “a team of people who do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing.” There are false karasses as well as true ones. A false karass is called a granfallon, defined as “a seeming team that is meaningless in terms of the way God gets things done.” Among the examples cited: “Any nation, anytime, anywhere.” Unlike Bokonon, Dr. Omed prefers to leave God out of his religion, but he ain’t gonna throw the baby out with the holy water.
We may try to discern “the limits of karass and the nature of the work God Almighty has had it do ... but such investigations are bound to be incomplete.” But when we contemplate “how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is,” we must whisper with Bokonon, “Busy, busy, busy.”
“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
13 Corinthians 9,10
Busy, busy, busy. |
