The Rule of the Clan

by Mark S. Weiner

At the end of section 2 Weiner reveals his hopes, that clan mentality will continue to turn into the same sort of positive force as he portrays the modern form of the once infamous Scottish clans.

Weiner seems to assume that clans are bad. I can’t think of any exceptions but that’s his job at to make that claim. I heard a libertarian describe his recent travel in Somalia—a place ruled by clans. He described how inter-clan relations worked when they worked well. It was not all bad; not all conflicts between members of different clans resulted in war. (Weiner describes such processes at L 600.) Still the traveler admitted that he did not want to live in Somalia.

At L 724 Weiner says that you better not let the state wither lest the rule of clans return.

L 1512: Perhaps this is a good delineation between western individualism and clannish society:

People in Western societies are of course capable of feeling shame. But the far more common and powerful equivalent of that emotion in the West is guilt. The difference between the two emotions, and between “shame cultures” and“guilt cultures,” parallels the basic difference between Status and Contract.

In shame cultures it is not a person’s behavior that creates shame. It is instead the fact that the person’s community has witnessed or learned of the behavior.

(L 2077): About French colonialists:

These policies were not without benefits from a liberal perspective. French colonialists limited slavery, polygamy, and other social evils, and they curtailed many clan and intertribal feuds. But the impact on native legal institutions was disastrous, and the human costs were incalculable. French policy undermined indigenous, local legal forms while bequeathing to Africa a fully centralized state that could be used for the worst purposes by post independence rulers.

(L 2186)It occurs to me that Weiner contrasts central with distributed power and also contrasts individual vs societal values. I do not see the correlation between these two comparisons. Why does societal values (clan) stem from distributed power? What about the Soviet Union? Central power—societal obligations.

L: 3246 Weiner paints a picture of a modern world with the return of clan values. It is remarkably like the picture that Neal Stephanson paints in Diamond Age. They both sound slightly dystopian to me.