The Three Tribes: The Present Moment
“To subsume another is to subsume yourself. If you act like your enemy, you become the enemy. To help another is to save yourself. If you see your enemy as just a hurt version of yourself, there is a wonderful opportunity to evolve into something new.”
Coran Foddering
The Three Tribes
This piece came from a dream.
I did not set out to write about politics, nations, or conflict. What arrived instead was an image — simple, almost childlike — of three tribes locked in endless struggle, convinced of their differences, unable to hear what they shared.
Dreams often speak more clearly than analysis. They bypass the argument and go straight to the pattern. When I woke, I wrote this quickly, almost without thought, sensing that it pointed to something older than any single war and closer than any headline.
Years later, the world feels as though it has caught up with the dream.
What you are about to read is not an opinion piece, nor a judgement. It is an invitation to notice a repeating human habit — one that continues to shape our lives in this present moment.
There were Three Tribes, all called the HUA, people who were in a constant war of attrition, of conflict, generation after generation. Yet there were periods of calm, moments when leaders and people alike grew weary of the deaths and injuries inflicted by neighbouring tribes.
So each tribe would agree to halt hostilities. And for a generation or two, this would hold — until new leaders arose, driven by ego and self-interest, believing that they, and they alone, should be in charge.
The three tribes were essentially identical, the same in every meaningful way. Yet each believed they alone had the correct pronunciation of those three letters: HUA. This simple belief had driven wars, disastrous conflicts, and the deaths of millions over centuries.
Three letters.
Three sounds.
Endless graves.
Children were born into this inheritance — raised to see enemies before neighbours, handed weapons before understanding, taught to hold lines drawn long before they were alive.
With such constant focus on the “enemy”, on the right to be right, they could not hear what was missing. Two letters. Quiet letters.
M and N.
HUMAN.
And so it continues.
Across the world, tribes still argue over pronunciation — over names, borders, beliefs, bodies, and identities. Leaders speak of security while teaching fear. People are taught that safety lies in sameness, and that difference is a threat.
Lines are drawn on maps.
Lines are drawn around bodies.
Lines are drawn through communities.
Those on the “wrong” side of the line are told this is necessary. That it is for order. For protection. For the greater good.
Have we really learned anything from history, as we continue to make the same errors of judgement — fighting over territory, over belief, over whose Light is superior, seeing difference as danger rather than richness?
Nature breeds difference.
Nature cannot exist without difference.
Nature cannot evolve without difference.
Humans ARE different. Each human carries gifts no other human has. Each sees the world from a place no one else can stand.
There can never be a one-size-fits-all humanity.
No single colour.
No single sex.
No single gender.
No single way of being.
The more fiercely difference is extinguished, the more fiercely nature resists. Nature is far more powerful than the stories humans tell themselves about control.
When societies try to erase difference, they do not create harmony — they create fear. And fear always looks for someone to blame.
ALL humans have value.
To blow out the light of even one person is to blow out a possibility for change — not just for them, but for everyone.
Perhaps the work of our time is not to decide who is right, but to remember what we are.
HUMAN.
As G’Kar said in that wonderfully rich science fiction series, Babylon 5:
“It no longer matters who started it. It only matters who is suffering.”
Why I Wrote This
I wrote ‘The Three Tribes’ because I am interested in what lies beneath conflict, not just what appears on the surface.
Across history and across the world, humans continue to divide themselves into groups defined by belief, ideolgy, identity, territory, or power. Each group tells itself a story about being right, about being threatened, about needing to defend something precious. And in doing so, something essential is forgotten.
What is forgotten is not information, but recognition.
When we lose sight of our shared humanity, it becomes possible to justify almost anything — exclusion, segregation, displacement, even violence — while still believing ourselves to be moral. This applies as much to global conflicts as it does to the quieter ways societies decide who belongs and who does not.
I am not interested in blame. I am interested in remembering.
Remembering that difference is not an error in human design, but its very condition.
Remembering that safety built on sameness is fragile.
Remembering that every time we deny the full humanity of another person, something in us also dims.
This piece is offered as a way of seeing — not to persuade, but to pause. To listen. To notice the missing letters.
HUMAN.
In Closing
If The Three Tribes speaks to what happens when we forget our shared humanity, then When Needs Require Permission is its continuation — an exploration of what it does to a human being when belonging, safety, and recognition are made conditional, and why remembering one another is always the beginning of repair.
I keep asking, “What pain might they be carrying?” rather than “What is wrong with them?” This is itself a form of resistance to the world as it is.
The piece, The Three Tribes, in its original form, was written by me alone. It was dreamt in 2020, right in the middle of the COVID lockdown. I wanted to expand it to bring attention to the conflicts the world is currently experiencing without directly naming them. ChatGPT helped expand my thoughts and gave voice to what I had in my head, as J. Michael Straczynski did with Babylon 5 over its five seasons, starting in 1994. Yes, that long ago.