Tribes, Traitors, and “A Bargain for Francis” (I)

My kids love the books “Bread and Jam for Francis” and “A Bargain for Francis”—part of a series about a young female badger and her humanoid life.  Lately the latter book has been on request multiple times a day, allowing yours truly ample opportunity to perfect my Oscar-nominated voice performance as the scurrilous friend/villain Thelma.

After Thelma tricks Francis into a one-sided “bargain,” Francis cleverly pulls the wool over Thelma’s eyes in turn, winning her own back, leading Thelma to remark that she will “have to be careful” when she plays with Francis from now on.  (The author is fully cognizant of the irony and hypocrisy involved, even if not all child readers fully grasp them.)  Francis replies to the effect that it is not as fun being careful as being friends, and poses the book’s central question: “Would you rather be careful, or would you rather be friends?”

Of course, we’d all rather be friends.  To be able to trust those we meet and whose posts and blogs and editorials we read, whose radio shows and podcasts we hear—is pleasant.  And that, I think, is one of the reasons why human beings end up behaving in tribal ways.  Explanations for tribalism usually are negative, running the gamut from religious remarks about original sin to Machiavellian realpolitik observations regarding safety in ideological sameness to scientific accounts about the evolutionary origins of mistrust for the Other.  Most accounts explain tribalism as bad; and tribalism, as usually defined, is certainly pernicious, if also (again, as usually defined) ineradicable.

But there is something bigger than tribalism—I won’t call it the light side of tribalism; that gives tribalism too much credit—which is simply the desire for human connection, the desire to be able to trust and be at ease with others—the desire that the other be not Other but rather (to steal a page from Martin Buber) Thou.

So we make the choice to be friends.