It’s Valentines Day today and I thought it was time to
bash out a piece on a topic that many of us don’t think about – our need for a
tribe. Ironically, my “love-life” has been what you could call an opener into
the topic of tribes.
Let’s face it, the word “tribe” has “primitive” connotations.
Mention the word and you automatically think of “less sophisticated” societies
like “native Americans” or places in the outback of Sub-Saharan Africa.
However, the truth is that modern societies, like Singapore’s a in fact very
tribal.
As much as we talk about diversity and the need for “unity
in diversity,” the truth is, we as a species,” gravitate towards people who are
“like” us regardless of whether the “like” is based on ethnicity, religion, sexuality
and so on. I experienced this first hand, when I was a student. I lived in Dean
Street, Soho, which was the centre of the “Gay Tribe” of Europe (I used to hang
out in a Spanish bar where all the Spanish gay people who could not be gay in
Spain ended up.) At the same time, I was also a stone’s throw away from
Chinatown, which provided the comfort being able to speak Cantonese (or
anything other English), and I got to eat familiar foods like “Dim Sum,”
(Chinese restaurants in that part of London were great – the only exception
being “Mr. Wu’s” which was a Pseudo-Chinese buffet and I can proudly say I
never entered the place in three years of living there.)
In a way, this makes sense, particularly if you’re a
migrant, arriving in a place where you don’t speak the language and you don’t
know anyone. The most natural place where you gravitate towards is to the place
where there are people like you and who can understand you and hopefully get
you settled and started in the new place. It was your fellow clansmen who
helped you get work and if you started up a business, they were the ones who
would be your initial customers. The workings of how “migrant tribes,” whether
you call them “Tongs” in the context of a Chinatown in the West or a “Kongsi” in
Southeast Asia are best illustrated in the Netflix Series, “Warrior” which
shows how Chinese communities in 18th century San Franciso settled
and tried to build a life.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5743796/
https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7441812326333926673?lang=en
However, whilst the Kong Si’s had their uses, Singapore’s first tribal leader, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, decided that they were an impediment to build a “united” Singapore. As such, he went to war against anything that resembled a tie to an era he did not shape. Mr. Lee, for all his brilliance, had a blind spot against Chinese dialects, which he regarded as a relic of an ugly past. As far as he was concerned, Singaporean Chinese would speak English and Mandarin. It was good to learn other things to, except Chinese dialects.
In a way, his war against tribalism seemed wise. Racial
quotas in housing estates for example, meant that people of different
ethnicities and religions would eventually live side by side. No community
would dominate any particular neighborhood.
However, just as clamped down on “tribal” affinations
of the old sort, people found new tribal associations. One only has to think of
how old school networks play a part in certain industries. I think of my era
when I had a Commanding Officer from Hwa Jong as well as a div-arty and Chief
of Artillery from the same place. In my first case in the insolvency trade, I
notice that the partner in the law firm we were working with came from ACS. No surprise
where the associate came from.
Sure, with a new batch of immigrants, the old factors
like race and language come about. In my 13-years with Huong, a lot of our
social life evolved around Vietnamese girls and their boyfriends or husbands who
were inevitably Caucasian expats mainly from the oil and gas industry.
However, its not just race and religion. One of my
favourite Teddy Bears in a Chubby Boy who plays video games. His tribe is a
tribe of Chubby Boys who play video games. When the focus was the neurotic angel,
I discovered a tribe of “Over 50’s Party girls,” who were trying to get a tribe
of little party boys. Now that I’m spending Valentines Day with the Pillow, I’ve
noticed that a lot of her friends are also pillows. I look at myself. I am bald
and the guy who has kept me in a job for the last decade is also bald.
Now, there are advantages of the new tribes in that there’s
flexibility. You don’t have to be exclusive to any particular tribe. Some of
the Over 50s Party Girls are part of the Pillow gang as well. I, for example, happen
to mix with people with hair from time to time.
There is a use for tribes. Human beings need their
tribes. However, as shown in the Warrior series, there’s the issue of
insularity. If you watch Warrior, you’ll notice the way in which the Irish and
Chinese have a go at each other because they think killing the other community
benefits theirs.
So, whilst people will look for their own tribe, there
is also the need for a safe guard against breeding tribalism and insularity. To
an extent, its encouraging to see how some tribes do it from the ground up,
like a recent cross-chamber party I recently attended, which was jointly organized
by the Irish, Canadians, Italian, South Africans and New Zealanders. All these
countries are relatively small. Yet, they’ve found that working together on
such events does create opportunities for their members. Its something we
should all remember, we may be small but when we work together, we can do great
things.
