Richard@DecisionSkills wrote: Imagine wanting to leave the tribe.
I can readily recall being ejected! Worst day of my life.
Put aside the physical ability, what about the knowledge. Do you have the knowledge to navigate, hunt, build a fire, shelter, a weapon, know which herbs are safe, deal with inclement weather, cure an illness, know which animals are dangerous, etc.
Come to think of it, I didn't have the modern equivalents. There were wolves everywhere and they soon spotted me. I knew what to do in a supermarket but I struggled with what to do when I got the stuff home. I've never had a driver's licence so I've been something of a nuisance to my friends, and when I wander off my (very small) turf my navigational skills lead me astray at least as often as they get me where I'm going.
I did have some natural advantages, probably the very attributes that got me ejected, but I can't claim to have charted my own course. Yet here I am.
I think groups would break off to form new tribes. The 'scapegoat' would work towards forming and/or joining these groups.
Scapegoats have a way of finding others, 'tis true, but we're saddled with relational difficulties and suspicion that naturally includes
of each other. According to my late father, I started running away when I was three, and I get the 'gotta go' feeling whenever I think I could be at my final address. It took decades to find my tribe and there were some life-altering mistakes along the way.
Having to break off a relationship without warning... that's something I've done many times. As I intimated to our OP, it's a matter of personal boundaries. If our own are pierced with arrows, we have trouble distinguishing I from thou. There's enormous
shame at having done it, and fear of running into that person again.
I also think elders might also arrange for "marriages" or relationships with other tribes to deal with family issues.
Indeed. When a wealthy and age-appropriate man took a fancy to me Dad truly hoped that was the solution.
My solution was someone much younger than myself (and potless) so we could muddle along together.
The bottom line, in our world the ability for an individual to leave a tribe is much easier. It is a luxury that our ancestors did not have.
Ability to leave is one thing; being ejected is another. It's the classic scapegoat, arrows sticking out of its side when it's driven off into the wilderness. It isn't the arrows that hurt so much as the being driven off. Possibly evolution of our huge brain is responsible for the fact that so many of us now need psychoanalysis in great doses.
Our OP asked "What are your thoughts?" My own, as you might expect, are that he hasn't told us about what goes on at home.