We used to live in tribes. A tribe provided each member with the essential necessities, like food and shelter, but also covered our medical and social needs. This was possible because at any given time everyone in a tribe had his or her specific duties. As a tribe member, you may have been responsible for getting water, hunting or collecting food, cooking, taking care of children or treating the injured, or for something else.
Let’s assume your tribe would have encompassed 50 people. Then you would not only know every one of these 50 people, you would all depend on each other. If one of the hunters got sick, likely the hunters were enough in numbers to absorb this temporary loss or maybe one of the ‘cooking squad’ may have jumped in.
Now look at yourself. How big is your immediate tribe? How many people help you with your daily needs?
In my case, my immediate tribe counts four: me, my wife and two kids. You can’t call this a tribe. Let me call it a small survival unit.
A survival unit is a group of people who have a vested interest in each member’s survival and who can act and decide immediately for the benefit of the unit.
A family is a small survival unit. A tribe is a large survival unit. In fact, the tribe is the largest SU possible because anything bigger is prohibitive to immediate action mainly for the reason that not everyone knows everyone (see Dunbar’s Number).
In my small survival unit, almost all of the essential tasks are done by two people, the parents. Sure, we can always hire outside help, but it’s two people who are responsible for the survival of four.
You can argue if you are worse off if you are living alone, but you are certainly in a tough spot if you are a single parent. Either way, only one person calls the shots, and only one person carries all the weight to ensure the survival of this micro survival unit.
So, all the while we were busy forming states with bigger governments, we successfully made survival units smaller and smaller.
The flipside of progress is that we eliminated all redundancy that had been necessary to guarantee survival of the group. Now we operate so efficiently that we can’t get a break anymore.
If we fail no one can catch us.