TRIBALISM: I was thinking the other day during my drive to work (when I get a lot of my thinking done) that humankind’s biggest challenge right now is to change its mindset from a tribal perspective to a one-world perspective. A few weeks ago on The West Wing TV show, President Bartlett (Martin Sheen) asked the new White House speech writer why saving the life of an African citizen was not as important to him as saving an American’s. Will, the new guy, said that’s just the way it is, politics being what they are. However, there is a word for the phenomenon that Will and Jed were discussing. And that word is tribalism. In this instance, American tribalism, but tribalism nonetheless.

The human species found out only recently that we live on a globe populated by people of many different colors and languages. For most of human history, people presumed that everyone looked and acted pretty much like themselves. Only for the past 400 years or so has it been common knowledge that a whole lot of noticeable variations in the way that people look, act, speak and think crop up when you go a few thousand miles or so. And only for the past 100 years has it been common for most people to live and work and interact with different-looking and different-thinking people on a daily basis. So, it’s not all that surprising that most of us feel discomfort with this and quietly continue to seek the company of those who look and act most like us (even though our law and our science say that everyone is the same on the most fundamental levels).

Social customs and subconscious notions built up over many thousands of years do not stop on a dime. We are in a time of transition, somewhere between the tribal exclusivity that worked for us in the past and the post-nationalism that must kick-in if the planet is going to sustain 10 billion people in any sort of decent manner. Times of transition are quite uncomfortable, and I will admit to feeling some discomfort myself.

I don’t know anyone who wants to hear the Disney theme song “Small World After All” played since September 11th. But there’s no going back. As an eternal student, I will keep trying to learn more about people of all races and creeds and nationalities, and understand why we are different. Hopefully that will help me to realize what is incidental and what is fundamental. I still believe, based on what I’ve seen so far, that we are all pretty much alike on most things. Gotta keep the faith. And pass the duct tape.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KIDS TODAY: Although this isn’t news to you parents out there, I recently discovered that suburban kids today don’t just go out and play anymore. They have play dates booked weeks in advance. I guess that you need a Palm Pilot to be a suburban kid these days. Back when I was a kid, we went down by the tracks or out behind the factories after school and threw rocks and bottles around, without any formal schedule. Someone would occasionally bring firecrackers, and on a really special day somebody would show up with an ash can, so we could blow something to hell. I once read an article by humorist Frank Gannon, who has to be the most underrated humor writer out there today, about the explosive escapades that he and his buddies pulled off as kids. When they blew something up, they used to call it “Rat Patrol”, after a short-lived TV show on ABC back in the late 60s. Lousy show, but cool name. I would have liked to have had some “play dates” with Gannon and his friends back when I was growing up. However, the only place I’d ever heard the words “play” and “date” together back then was on New York pop-radio station WABC, which once upon a time was THE pop-radio station (now it’s just another talk station, dominated as usual by angry conservatives; why are conservatives always so angry?). When a DJ on ABC was introducing an oldie but goodie, say from 1970, he used a recorded jingle that went: “WABC play date, ninteen seventy.” (Dan Ingrim, the afternoon man and the best DJ that WABC ever had, used to then say “ah yes, solid gold from 1917”).

That’s what a “play date” was back then. Ah, you suburban kids today, you have so much more than we had, and yet you missed out on all the good stuff.