huerfano commented on Ruined May-26-2020 7:17 PM UTC
"Interestingly, tribal societies all had a role for those like you to play, and only civilized societies eradicate that hate-free space."
I've always been a loner too and never really fit in. It must be genetic: Dad and Son are the same. James, could you go into more depth on how tribal societies made us useful.
The Omega man is one of the only three masculine archetypes I recognize:
-The Alpha man is naturally suited to leadership, is rarely the smartest, is rarely the best killer, and is thrust into a role that necessarily limits his perspective. He sees the world from the ladder he climbs, and when he gets to its top his view is differently skewed and this assaults him with despair. His gift is that imposing his will does not injure his soul as much as it does others. In a tribal society this man is named chief, which generally means he takes the first and severest risk and when he is enriched tends to give it away.
-The Beta male is the natural follower, the approval seeker, the member of the insecure mediocrity. When he is placed into leadership positions he tends to become cruel and corrupt, dependent on the hierarchy of control and lacks dynamism, and does not seek success outside of the envelope of accepted wisdom. In a tribal society this man is a warrior, led by the alpha and guided by the Omega. An army lead by a beta will know unnecessary sorrow.
-The Omega man is the natural loner, who is not unduly tormented by his oddness. A chief evil of civilization is that many Alphas and Betas are thrust into this position—a cruel place for the normalized mind to reside. Omegas are just as likely to find success in individual combat as warriors and tend to specialize as duelists, berserkers, snipers, scouts and champions. The classic warrior parring of Alpha and Omega would be Robinhood and Little John, or Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. In Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, the fact that Aragorn and Borimor are both alphas causes the fractious tension. Some Omegas can be good leaders. However, this level of social interaction and stress tends to stress them at a high level.
The natural role of the Omega man or loner in tribal society is the shaman. In some highly spiritual contexts the chief and shaman roles may be reversed in terms of the typical personality polarity, such as Crazy Horse, the alienated “strange-eyed” war chief, a natural loner [The Lance of the Lakota] and Sitting Bull, a natural leader operating as a shaman [the Shield of the Lakota] working together against the enemies of the people, both of whom will be murdered by their own people.
In most tribal cases and in high-functioning warrior and soldier spaces, the loner serves as a specialist in direct cooperation with the Alpha in order to preserve the leader in his place and maintain the loner in his outer space, to the good of the group.
In Polynesia there was a type of taboo man, who had no tribe, but would have wives in various tribes and be beholding to the various chiefs as an itinerant subordinate and serve as a messenger and mediator.
In civilization we see the corruption of this specialized role most clearly in the cryptic Deep State, the murderous and manipulative agencies [societies in tribal parlance] who maintain the vast herd of humanity in stupefied and terrified obedience of their visible political leadership from their secret vantage. The police state, lacking true leadership and being served beta-style leadership in the form of management, is highly dependent on alienated, secretive force-appliers and spies—the shaman of the surveillance state housed in their government caves—to maintain control.
We must always be on the lookout for the usurpation of natural tribal roles by systems of control, such as the shaman becoming the priest, the champion becoming the assassin, the guide becoming the instructor, etc.
In retail food, a common relationship on the small tribal unit of the night crew is to have the most alienated worker stock the frozen food and the most leader-like be the night captain. These two are usually the best and second best at the shared activity and the night captain grants full or nearly full autonomy to the loner in frozen food, who then serves—in good circumstances—as an asset, a confidant, an extra pair of eyes—maybe just a guy outside the main crew to bounce an idea off of about a display, or in dealing with the manager who they may both interact with independently.
Modernity as a system thrives by first taking the Omega space and either denying it or making of it the monstrous place in the Beta-psyche [where in tribal societies the taboo place is where an understanding of the monstrous is gained to combat it]. This anti-status realm, no, instead of being a separate vantage space for the group, becomes its exile place. It is then stocked with rejected alphas and punished Betas and becomes a hell for the Beta, a purgatory for the Alpha and a tomb for its natural occupant who is denied identity beyond a declaration of defectiveness.
Modern gangs, in their attempt to use tribal structure to fight or thieve from the System often have an alpha-Omega leadership axis, with the shot-caller relying on a killer to keep order and impose its will on other gangs. This is unfortunate, for there should eb something better than rats gnawing at the bones of the ossifying notion of Modernity.
Very good insight re: the "Outsider" role of the spooks in the Deep State. Every Achilles needs his Odysseus when frontal assaults won't take Troy but when Odysseus uses his wiles on his own tribe instead of the enemy, he's the knife in the back, the most dangerous kind of chaotic rule-breaker to any honorable order.
The "benevolent Outsider," of the Tribe/for the Tribe but not within the Tribe, is a vital role in making any society work. They're the engine of beneficial change but tribal societies almost always depict them with a dual nature, sometimes beneficial, sometimes socially-corrosive (like Norse Loki or Amerindian Crow).
Tribesmen unlike modern Bugs were wise enough to know that not all change is "progress" and that a nation led by spies is an aberration to the natural order.
James, your own concept of the "paleface sorcerer/White Devil" is a spot-on-version of this "trickster" role, an interface between White & Black communities, acting as a sort of ambassador and diplomat between the two, someone who can show that things are not always as they seem and who is given tacit permission (if only by his outsider status) to violate the taboos of both.
thanks for the insight here. we certainly seem to be in a society that begs for management by outsiders, which as an outsider, I regard as an ominous and tragic state.
In these times, born shamans have no honor and become tools, mercs, or outlaws.
The pay sucks and the sun shines and the clouds are a work in progress.
Crazy Horse wept.
Yes.