Word: tribalization
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...world, a little uncertain whether to expect fun or disaster, eagerly watched another one of those strange American tribal customs-the Republican National Convention. A corps of 45 foreign correspondents tried its baffled best to explain the proceedings to the folks back home. Wrote the Manchester Guardian's Alistair Cooke: "The art of conveying to a European audience the rules of the convention game eludes us all. Like baseball or the twelve-bar blues, it is seemingly too fluid a thing to be grasped...
...shameful mystery about sex, no need for repression; there are no spinsters, no prostitutes. The African feels that his strength and stability come from the fact that he is a part of a larger organization; he does not have to bear economic trials & tribulations alone. He enjoys observing tribal rules, does not like thinking for himself: "There is no room for free thought . . . and even secretive, solitary or outstandingly successful people are suspect...
...profound and devout difference between the Africans and modern sculptors: the former believed implicitly in the ends of their art; they made their carvings for a definite purpose. Like the Navajo sand painters (TIME, Feb. 23), the African sculptors were magicians, who carved figures and masks of tribal gods for magic uses...
...Christian Graeco-Roman one, and at worst a pernicious backsliding from the path of spiritual progress. In our Western world of today, the worship of Leviathan-the self-worship of the tribe -is a religion to which all of us pay some measure of allegiance; and this tribal religion is, of course, sheer idolatry...
Geoffrey Gorer is a British anthropologist who writes of the American people with the poker-faced detachment of an anthropologist studying the tribal dances and customs of an Indian tribe. Most Americans, reading his book, will probably feel that they have been made fun of, mocked and double-crossed, for having let an outlander into the midst of their tribal rites...