Tribe as Truth

To follow a group’s view or one’s own mind may be the question in many situations. Hence, truth engineering must consider any interpretative viewpoint and its basis, since truth views can be held by a group or by an individual.

In a look at the group, it would not be pejorative (no such intent is meant) to use tribalism as its ethnocentrism (mean-centric tendency) pertains to truth. Considering the individual and truth would require a deeper look at cognitive issues and the fact that creativeness is more an attribute of the individual than the group.

In an example from where we have the most modern of thinking, any individual, who follows an independent path, say in pushing for a Kuhnian type of event in any discipline (a group), or for any non-mainstream idea, can end up being seen as crank or genius or even in-between.

That the balance may very well be resolved with a subsequent generation is immaterial for the moment.

Further complications can be brought forth by introducing computational issues, especially artificial intelligence and some types of applied mathematics. Generation, in this context, may include the shorter-term type related to improvements in computing, modeling, and algorithms.

In the modern world, most people are members (or adopt the view) of several tribes and have to balance, perhaps, conflicting positions.

For instance, any business can be thought of as a tribal entity which attempts to overlays cognitively those who are employees. How well this is done contributes to success. One might even say that if a CEO is a leader, rather than a pirate, this will help in the integration.

Yet, that tribe of the business does not supersede the many other tribal influences of the employee, except for the time of the work day. But, even in the work-day period, it is easy to see the different tribal views (is it not a characteristic of diversity to allow this?) in operation. In subsequent posts, we'll see how this might influence operations, such as in crucial areas like earned-value analysis.

Remarks:

05/09/2013 -- Eric Hoffer, longshoreman philosopher and autodidact, and his views apply here. 

04/25/2009 -- People matter.

01/27/2009 -- Now a new day and way to consider some of these matters.

Modified: 05/09/2013