I have recently come across your blog. I find your topic selection fascinating and your approach very encouraging. It’s refreshing to see a local blog tackle the topics that I’m used to reading about in overseas ones.

I’m also in the field of building bridges. I’ve decided to contact you because I have written a book to aid me in this endeavour. I think you may find it interesting and hopefully useful.

The book is about living according to an internal standard. Its purpose is to show how to construct a comprehensive guideline for deciding what to believe and value and how to conduct oneself that does not derive from the beliefs, values or structures of our society. It follows a unique approach (as far as the self-help literature is concerned) in that it doesn’t instruct the reader on what he should believe or value or what decisions he should make, but presents a method that he can use to arrive at these conclusions for himself. I’m hoping to use the book to bring people with different worldviews closer together, to savour their shared humanity, so to speak.

You can find more information about the book at my website: http://fluffygroovy.com/living-deliberately.htm. If you would like to read it, just send me your postal address and I will post it to you.

Have a beautiful day!

Hrvoje Butkovic

What are you wanting to quote, and what is this assignment for? (High school?)

I studied engineering at university, we only had a one semester course in philosophy dealing with ethics, culture and philosophy of science. I don’t think I should call myself a philosopher, though I enjoy pondering philosophy. (Then again, what’s an “amateur philosopher”?)

On viewing adherents of a particular religion as a tribe, I don’t think it is “formally” the case, it is just one way of viewing things. Choosing the word might have been inspired by my having come across the title of a book by Seth Godin: Tribes / We Need You To Lead Us. (Having since listened to the audiobook, I found the book a bit underwhelming. But whatever.)

The point of this view: all the groups we form, in which we operate, could be seen as a tribe of sorts. The company we work for, the sports club we join, even the internet communities we take part in. Thinking about tribes in this manner is an exercise in looking for what we have in our contemporary lives that could serve us in a manner that our tribes used to serve some millennia ago.

Whether any of this is relevant to your assignment on “tribalism” depends on the nature of the assignment, depends on its definition/intention of the “tribalism” word.

Peeking at Tribalism on wikipedia, consider “The other concept to which the word tribalism frequently refers is the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group.” This does align well with religions, I think (in particular, fundamentalist versions of religions with explicit “we have the only answer” claims, but also generally due to religious groups typically having a strong cultural identity effectively separating adherents from members other religions).

In any case, the “less derogatory” sense of the word might be closer to what I tend to think about, considering a “tribe” in the cooperative community sense, a closely knit by shared culture and worldview-language, only optionally defined by the boundaries between groups. (In such a sense one can be a member of numerous tribes defined around varying interests.)

I would like to ask you to tell me a bit about yourself? Are you a philosopher having studied at a university?

This would help me very much and i would be greatful as it would help me to complete an assignment on “tribalism”.

Thanyou, and await your response!

Tan

hoop dit gaan goed! Race jy nog so af en toe? Google chat wil nie nou werk nie en kry ook nie ‘n email adres vir jou nie.

And when Angus Buchan saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he hired Loftus Versveld and charged them money,

Saying, God gave me also this power, that whomsoever also buys the DVD of me praying and laying on hands, and possibly my book and movie, he may receive the Holy Ghost for the reasonable sum of R100 each: Cash or major credit card.

But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be sold as a book, a DVD and purchased by the faithless and lazy with money.

Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.

Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

Act 8:18