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[Kiki Truzhari]

So in a lot of ways, the matari clans are like the scottish highland clans in their functionality. They had their homes and domains and fought sometimes, but when the Amarrians start coming, they all united together.

[Ulphus]

So in a lot of ways, the matari clans are like the scottish highland clans in their functionality. They had their homes and domains and fought sometimes, but when the Amarrians start coming, they all united together.

Yes, that is one example of it. The Scots are not the only culture that behaved that way. Note that the Scottish low-land clans were just more annoyed at the highland clans than they were with the English, which might be why they ended up fighting on the other side. I could see that sort of thing happening if the Amarrians had come in with less than overwhelming force and just picked a side in some civil war. In some ways, I think the Amarrians are a unifying influence on the Matari.

If I was writing the long term story for CCP, it might be interesting to consider what would happen if the Amarrian Empire disintegrated into a civil war to the point where it was no longer a threat to the Republic (and all the slaves escaped/were released).

At that point, I could quite easily imagine the republic dissolving into civil war too, as the tribes lose the thing that's forcing them to work together.

Or to quote a GM character in a RQ Larp "But who'll be King of Sartar when the Lunars are gone?" (cue instant in-fighting)

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Matari civil war without the Amarr? I'm not sure about that.

I'm sure the tribes have fought amongst themselves but they had reached some sort of accord prior to the Imperials turning up. Mind you I wonder if there might not have been more than the seven modern tribes originally? It's just the others would have been on the loosing side of the conflicts that eventually led to Pator being a united planet.

As a rule I'm inclined towards Ulphus' view of tribal society and it's dynamics. Possibly the stuff in the original post might be an ideal, or just the way your clan does things?

Also to be considered. How are clans formed and accepted as part of a tribe? My assumption here is that some of the returning population might form clans amongst themselves and seek recognition by the wider tribes.

[Lyn Farel]

I am pretty sure that it is reasonable to think there were other minor tribes here and there on Pator at the beginning, especially in a low level technology civilisation as it originally was (before the first Minmatar Empire). The only things I could find in PF/evewiki is that the Starkmanir tribe was the biggest of all with the most influence, followed by the Nefantar tribe. The Starkmanir were mostly neutral entity while the Nefantars (kindof lawful) were at war with the Krusual (kindof chaotic), considering their opposite mindsets. The brutor tribe came out of the Starkmanir that exiled themselves on a specific island. The sebiestor used to live in the north alone, and the vherokior were mostly nomads and spreaded all around already iirc. Dont remember to have seen any mention of the early minmatar ages for the thukkers though. :/

[Ulphus]

Matari civil war without the Amarr? I'm not sure about that.

Maybe, maybe not. But one of the complaints made by people from time to time (including me) is that Faction War made it difficult for people to maintain rivalries and arguments with people on your side. After all, if the Empire/Federation/State/Republic is on the line, then arguing about whether Sebiestor is better than Brutor, or what they said about our Sharon is just silly.

Once it's not on the line? I can see a lot more internecine "disagreements", politics, power plays, and yes, actual fighting. (I'm not sure where the fracture lines are in Gallente society, but I could definitely see this for Amarr, Caldari and Minmatar societies. Remove the external threats, and will they stay together? Who knows.)

Also to be considered. How are clans formed and accepted as part of a tribe? My assumption here is that some of the returning population might form clans amongst themselves and seek recognition by the wider tribes.

I'd agree with that. I think that some clans will go off DNA (I play that my clan goes off mitochondrial DNA), maybe explicit lists of ancestors, and others will be collections of compatable people. I assume that if you got a collection of returnees together who didn't currently have a clan they felt they fitted into, they could form one, and apply for recognition by the Tribe.

Then the politics begins. Clans don't stand alone. They'll have people they can call on for favours, and people they owe favours. Getting into that web as a new clan would be difficult (though not impossible) and I'd expect a new clan would be less influential and powerful until some time (decades? centuries?) had gone by during which they accepted favours and granted favours, built up marriage matches in order to build up ties.

A new clan with significant resources (say, some capsuleers who donate time/isk to the service of the clan) would make a positive difference if the clan chooses to. You give gifts, you do favours, you buy a new medical doodad and let the neighbours use it when they need it, and you have more room to get people to owe you favours, which in my view is a lot of what power and influence is in a tribal society.

Yes, I think you get "rich" in power by giving stuff away.

[Kiki Truzhari]

Matari civil war without the Amarr? I'm not sure about that.

I'm sure the tribes have fought amongst themselves but they had reached some sort of accord prior to the Imperials turning up. Mind you I wonder if there might not have been more than the seven modern tribes originally? It's just the others would have been on the loosing side of the conflicts that eventually led to Pator being a united planet.

As a rule I'm inclined towards Ulphus' view of tribal society and it's dynamics. Possibly the stuff in the original post might be an ideal, or just the way your clan does things?

More of an ideal. Ulphus's point of view is honestly one that seems much better and more sensible then my original perspective.

Also to be considered. How are clans formed and accepted as part of a tribe? My assumption here is that some of the returning population might form clans amongst themselves and seek recognition by the wider tribes.

this is definitely something of interest, since there are some members of my corporation talking about doing this.

[Bong-cha Jones]

Or to quote a GM character in a RQ Larp "But who'll be King of Sartar when the Lunars are gone?" (cue instant in-fighting)

You are the coolest person.

Yes, I think you get "rich" in power by giving stuff away.

The coolest.

Uh, yeah, I agree with most of what Ulphus has to say on the matter.  Not that I play Matari, but there you go.  Gift-giving is generally, historically, an act of power, one that indebts the receiver to the entity giving gifts.  And it bears repeating how hard it probably is to be without a clan.  Not only do you not have access to clan resources, not only do you not have relatives who are situated to get you a job and connections, you also don't have any extended network to favor trade on your behalf.

For the clanless, you aren't just competing with the relatives of the guy interviewing you, you're also competing with however many favors each of the other interviewee's clans are willing to throw in.  You have zero.  They probably have more than that, because if they didn't he'd just give the job to his nephew every time.  You probably aren't so much better than them at the actual job to make it worth keeping a clan member unemployed and not getting any favors from the neighbors.

[lallara zhuul]

Sorry about the quotefest:
(Also I have to add a disclaimer, the terms that I am using may or may not be accurate.)

I would think that the spirituality/religion in the Republic would be a completely individual and a private thing.
Something that you would celebrate with your friends, family and community, but something that would be always kept on the down low and not enforced upon others in any way.

Uh, I'm not sure that "completely individual" and "celebrate with your friends, family and community" really match up. Have I misunderstood? I suspect that a lot of what defines a community is at least compatible religious beliefs.

All religious beliefs are compatible if we're talking about people that have mutual respect and each and every one is allowed their own spiritual path.
The problem with religion is that rules gets involved.

Let me put it this way, usually in spirituality everything is shades of grey.
In religion everything is black and white.
In spirituality there is no right or wrong, just different ways of doing things.
In religion there is only one way of doing things right and all the others are wrong.

For example in Burkina Faso, there is christians, muslims and the native animist religion living in the same community without any problems, because none of them really care about right or wrong in those matters. Another example from the same community is that the muslims and the animists just started to celebrate christmas because it was just another celebration that they could have.

Partially this practice would be baggage from the slavery and partially because of the one of the most central beliefs that the Minmatar share with the Gallente, personal freedom.

Uh, could I ask why you think that the Matari have personal freedom as a central belief? Not wanting to be slaves (in the strongest way) is not necessarily the same as believing in personal freedom. In my view, everything the average tribal Matari does is tied to their clan in some way, even striving for personal glory or power.

I think we hit a cultural wall here, which is the definition of freedom.

Freedom can never be given to you, it is something that is a birthright of every single human being.
No government, hair product, location or belief can grant you more freedom than you have.
Only thing that you can do, is to give your freedom away.

Why I used the word 'belief' before was intentional.
Gallente believe that they gain their freedom from their way of government.
I believe that the Minmatari believe something along the lines of what I wrote above.

I think that to survive and not be broken by slave masters and their religious manipulation you need a definition of freedom that is intrinsic, not external in any way.
Anything that is external to you can be taken from you or manipulated.

The problem with the released slaves coming from the Empire would not be the fact that they've got Amarrian religion, it is the fact that they are vocal about it and try to enforce it upon others out of kindness.

Interesting. Why do you think that? I disagree, but then I seem to be doing that a lot recently.

I think there will be a number of different reactions to Matari believers in Amarrian religion, from people shaking their heads and ignoring them, through to disgust that they've assimilated with the evil ones, through to out right hostility and violence against people who betrayed who the Matari are by siding with the evil god. I suspect there may even be a few Matari who grew up in the Federation who don't care at all.

As you may have noticed, the views I expressed before will explain this pretty well.

The problem for me with the view of the Matari seeing Amarrians as evil is completely contrary to a tribal mindset.

Sick, yes.
Perverted, yes.
Insane, yes.
Evil, no.

Evil as a concept is a part of a religious mindset with black and white morality, not a spiritual mindset that defines everything as shades of grey.
Let me elaborate.
In nature there is nothing evil.

Also... for me, trying to categorize and put the culture of the Minnies into pseudo-scientific-intellectual language does a disservice to it. It is more emotional and primal than something that can be caught, chloroformed and pinned down in a box.

Do I need to roll out rant #4 again, about how tribal is not the same as primitive? Matari had spaceships and a variety of technology better than we have on earth today before the Amarrians showed up to stomp their society and enslave them. I imagine that science was involved in that culture, rather than it being some special unique butterfly.

A tribal society is based on people, what makes it tribal is that the units of governing the population are social groups that can actually fit into a single individuals capability to maintain stable social relationships with.
We know this number, it is the Dunbar's number which is between 100 and 230.

It works okay in a system that has a low complexity, but when the system gets bigger, the complexity rises pretty harshly, which grinds the whole thing into a halt.

For the old Minmatar Nation to be efficient it could not have been tribal.

As you yourself have stated, a tribal society is rife with corruption, corruption stops progress, no technological advancements could have been made within a purely tribal society.

A tribal society, by definition, is primitive.

There is no magical handwaving in science and technology.
Technology only makes things more efficient, it does not change anything else.
Science changes the limits and the definitions of the world that people live in.
There is no super science that turns an inefficient way of government into an efficient one without changing it into something different.

Then back to the current tribalism within the Republic.

Personally I believe that the roots of the tribalism in the Republic is not in the the old Minmatar Nation.

It is in the enslavement of the Minmatar people by the Amarrians.

When they were enslaved their old governmental structures were destroyed.
To survive the Minmatar reverted to one of the most basic social structures known to man, which is pretty much genetic in each and every human.
Families grew and became clans, clans joined up with similar clans and became tribes.
The names and the defining identities came from their past, before their enslavement, before they had their space age government.
When they had their space age government a 'tribe' was as defining as being of any descent in any cosmopolite nation.

For some reason or another, those old defining characteristics of an ethnicity or a certain descent became the defining characteristics that the Amarrians used in their breeding programs to create better slaves, accidentally undoing the natural development that had happened in the the old Minmatar nation when the tribes mixed and almost disappeared as the old Minmatar nation raised its head.

For some reason or another the free Minmatar also reverted to tribalism, perhaps it was the most efficient way of keeping up the morale against a far superior enemy. Dunno.

Rebellion happened with the help of the Gallente, the Gallente saw the defining tribal culture and saw that it was inherently democratic and helped the Minmatar create the bureaucracy for the Republic and the Tribal Council.

tl;dr

To me, the enslavement of the Minmatar strengthened their spirituality and tribalism.
I believe that in the old Minmatar nation they were not very spiritual or tribal.

o.O Brekkies O.o

[Bong-cha Jones]

Lallara, I don't know why you think that tribe means band, but it doesn't.  Tribes can organize in very large, complicated structures.  Some modern tribes have over a million people in them; the tribal confederations of the late Roman period effectively met Rome on the battlefield and worked thousands of square miles of land.  The Dunbar number has nothing to do with tribal organization.

[Ava Starfire]

Tribal groups in India and central Asia can contain far more than 1 million people, ranging from primitive farmers to powerful warlords to successful businessmen (and women!) in the same group.

A person can only intimately know between 100 and 230 people. They can be connected ethnically to many, many millions.

All modern day people of Slavic, or Jewish, or Romani, or Irish, or Pashtun, or whatever, descent all share a common ethnic background; sure, theyre unlikely to all decide "hey, lets all of us form a nation-state and live there!" but the purpose of my saying it still stands. Hypothetically speaking, those myriad people could decide to form a nation. It dosent mean they will all be primitive.

[Bong-cha Jones]

Yeah, I was shooting for 'these groups get big enough to rival modern nation states' over exact numbers... I knew they got darn big, but my interest in tribal structures is basically based on its intersection with classical history, so modern examples are a bit out of my range.

[Louella Dougans]

In Scotland, prior to one battle, when the army of the King of Scotland was assembling on the field, two clans had a dispute regarding the order of precedence, which they settled by fighting to a standstill.

As a result, the depleted army lost that battle and was compelled to withdraw.

[lallara zhuul]

What can I say?

Guess I'll just say what I believe...

The Roman period tribes had developed from a tribal structure to a pre-feudal structure.
The Mongols had a feudal structure when they overran Europe.
For a societal structure to stay purely tribal the social network that the individuals have should cover the whole of society, everyone knows someone who knows the person you don't know, or someone who knows someone who knows the person you don't know.

I believe that when that social network covers the society and the ethnicity as well, then the 'tribalism' of that society is strong.
When the social networks and the ethnicities are separated within a society then the 'tribalism' of that society is weak.

When a society is incapable of changing because of these factors it does not develop, it does not question itself and therefore drive itself to new permutations so that it can adapt and overcome. If a society has no capability to adapt itself to new situations it is primitive.

The mindset that is portrayed for the Minmatars is very primitive (in this same respect all the empires are primitive.)

To a little tangent here...

There are plenty of tribes in the modern western world.

Each political party is a tribe, each workplace is a tribe, each subculture is a tribe, even these forums have created a tribe (there is a nice talk about the modern tribes on TED.)

Anyhoos, hope that cleared things up a bit...

[Gottii]

With all do respect lallara, I think you have a rather idealized view of "tribalism". 

Being tribal does not mean one cant be religious.  Like Ulphus said, many Muslim countries (such as Iraq) are built around a tribal viewpoint, and they're certainly religious, and their view of tribalism is just as valid as anyone else. 

If anything, having very, very strict taboos, of black and white views of behaviors, us versus them, of allowed and forbidden, of good and evil, is a hallmark of most tribal societies.

"Shades of grey" is a very modern, particularly modern Western view.  Tribalism lends itself very much to black and white, us vs them thinking.

[Ulphus]

Or to quote a GM character in a RQ Larp "But who'll be King of Sartar when the Lunars are gone?" (cue instant in-fighting)

You are the coolest person.

Yes, I think you get "rich" in power by giving stuff away.

The coolest.

I've been blushing for days....