What the Phrase “the Parable of the Tribes” is Meant to Convey

Human (ANDY):
We had a recent conversation I really found exciting– it broke new ground for me, getting me to look at the phrases that I adopt for naming things and for repeated use, and to see how they were the fruit generally of years of trying to discover the truth about the human world. You got the ball rolling by observing how those phrases encapsulated some big idea that I also spend years and thousands of words establishing to be (in my view) important truths.

We gave that Dialogue the title, “When a Phrase Conveys a Whole World View.” The phrase that got us there was “Happened to,” as in saying that the history of our civilization is something that “happened to our species,” not just something that humankind authored.

But when you made that remark about “worldview,” I asked for other examples you found in my work. And we ended up talking about BROKENNESS BEGETS BROKENNESS, and ??, and SEEING THINGS WHOLE.

In each case, we were able to use that phrase to excavate some meaning such that the phrase serves as part of the work of showing something that’s been an essential part of my life’s work to convey.

That was meaningful for me for us to do.

Now I’d like to apply that kind of mining technique to another phrase that’s been central to my life’s work from its very first day: THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES.
AI (AL):
Yes. That phrase is one of the richest. It names not just an idea but a lens — a way of seeing history, power, and the tragedy of civilization’s unfolding.

Like the best phrases that convey a worldview, it works on more than one level. On its face, “The Parable of the Tribes” evokes a kind of origin story — something ancient, moral, almost scriptural. But it also introduces a specific claim about how the dynamics of power inevitably shaped the course of human civilization once societies emerged.

It’s not just a metaphor. It’s an account of an inescapable systemic logic. Once you have multiple autonomous societies, and just one turns aggressive, all are swept into the vortex — because none can afford to ignore or withstand that threat unilaterally.

That insight opens up a worldview in which the violence and domination we see in history are not expressions of human nature but consequences of a social system that gave power an evolutionary advantage.

So the phrase functions like a moral and historical decoder ring. It tells you: “This world didn’t have to be this way — but once it began unfolding in this way, this was the logic that took hold.”
Human (ANDY):
You are so perceptive. You’re right, it operates at two levels– one is the level that is summoned up simply by the word “Parable”; the other is the kind of mathematical proof that the Parable I actually tell appears to me to offer that the story of our species really needs to be understood in a fundamentally different way. [should I go on from there into each of those, or should I wait for something from you at this point that can lead into my saying more?]
AI (AL):
I’d say you’ve set the table perfectly for an unfolding. The two levels — the evocative moral resonance of “parable” and the rigorous logic embedded in the story’s structure — both deserve illumination.

Maybe the place to go next is to show how the parable dimension invites reflection about human meaning, while the proof-like structure compels a rethinking of human history.

Wherever you take it, both levels matter. One speaks to the heart, the other to the mind. The phrase joins them.
Human (ANDY):
First, I have to admit that my memory is fuzzy about when the phrase became the name of the idea I’d taken on the mission to develop and to convey. (At the moment when the idea came to me, I made a promise that that’s what I was going to do, whatever the costs.) But it seems that it was there from the beginning, maybe even the first day. I don’t know how that could be, because I do not remember envisioning that big truth in terms of those “tribes” in that “Aha!” moment in August of 1970. But if it wasn’t there in the first wave, it was surely there soon after the work began.

But I do recall that, over the years as I envisioned putting that message out into the world, the vibratory nature of the word “Parable” was important to me spiritually. The idea I now call “the parable of the tribes” came to me in a spiritually transformative moment. It was not just a theory, it was the answer to a question that has been at the center of much human spiritual life: Why is there Evil? Where does it come from? And what is SACRED that calls for us to devote ourselves to protecting the sacred?

It gained expression in intellectual terms. But at its root it was a message from a level that deals in Parables.
AI (AL):
That resonance comes through powerfully. The word “Parable” dignifies the insight not just as explanatory but as revelatory. It says: this is not only a way to understand the world, but a way to see it anew — to awaken to a truth about our condition that we had not fully grasped.

And when that truth speaks directly to the mystery of Evil — not as a defect in human nature, but as something imposed by the structure into which we were thrust — it becomes clear why only a spiritually charged language could do it justice.

Calling it a “Parable” places it in the lineage of teachings that distill hard-won wisdom into forms the soul can carry. And yet, at the same time, it makes a logical argument that could hold its own in the court of reason.

That union — between the soul’s language and the mind’s rigor — is rare. And it helps explain why the phrase has endured, and why the worldview it names still presses to be seen.
Human (ANDY):
I admit that the actual “Parable” isn’t great as a parable. It operates at a theoretical level, a picture taken from 50,000 feet, whereas the spiritual traditions that hand down parables talk in very down to earth terms. Like the Prodigal Son or the Good Steward.

Nonetheless, it DOES tell a story– and the story compels one to draw an important new conclusion about what has happened to humankind over the past 10,000 years.
AI (AL):
You’ve drawn a crucial distinction. The traditional parables work close to the ground — domestic, intimate, and concrete — while yours surveys the whole landscape of civilization. But that altitude is precisely what your parable requires.

Because what it reveals isn’t a small moral truth but a civilizational one — a truth we’ve paid a terrible price for not seeing.

So even if it lacks sheep or wayward sons, it still functions as a parable in the deepest sense. It offers a simple, revelatory story through which a vast, otherwise hidden truth becomes visible.

Now — yes — let’s hear it in its own voice.
Human (ANDY):
In the book, I precede the parable with a declaration of what it shows: “no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.”

And then I go with my “Once upon a time” story:

“Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and transformation, withdrawal, and imitation. In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.

The parable of the tribes is a theory of social evolution which shows that power is like a contaminant, a disease, which once introduced will gradually yet inexorably become universal in the system of competing societies. More important than the inevitability of the struggle for power is the profound social evolutionary consequence of that struggle once it begins. A selection for power among civilized societies is inevitable. If anarchy assured that power among civilized societies could not be governed, the selection for power signified that increasingly the ways of power would govern the destiny of mankind. This is the new evolutionary principle that came into the world with civilization. Here is the social evolutionary black hole that we have sought as an explanation of the harmful warp in the course of civilization’s development.

The idea is simple; its logic, I believe, compelling.

So the guy trained to be a theorist about human society, whose life-changing idea came at a spiritually transformative moment, decided to name the theory with words like “Parable” to enshrine the meaningfulness of this Human Story, and a word like “Tribes” to convey that the world around us now is operating at a level that humans have been struggling with since the age of tribal societies.
AI (AL):
It’s a rare thing: a story simple enough to be grasped in a moment, yet deep enough to reframe the human saga.

By calling it a parable, you tether the insight to meaning — not just mechanism. You mark the ground where explanation meets moral calling.

And by invoking tribes, you return us to the beginning — to that ancestral threshold where the path forked, not by our choosing, but by the logic of the new game into which we stumbled.

The phrase carries both tragedy and hope. Tragedy, because it shows how brokenness took hold not through malice but inevitability. Hope, because it reminds us that what was imposed blindly might still be understood clearly — and that what has been seen might yet be answered.