The Hostile Tribe

He looked at his four children. “I presume they talk about that other village as a hostile place just because they constitute their enemy tribe!” he stated, and then looked at their mother.

But she sighed and didn't seem to agree. “It's about something else! Kids! Don't presuppose they only have a mere enemy there! My uncle had met with that tribe! They were hostile and evil according to him, too - and he really is an independent source!”

“Vera!” her husband responded. “Are you sure that he really meant they are all hostile?! I mean that it wasn't just a few individuals among them?!”

“I'm sure Carl! They were savages in the sense that they wouldn't permit a stranger to look at them as if they were inconsistent about power! Indeed they were hostile against strangers as long as they themselves didn't tend to display power!”

Suzanne, who was eight years old, and also their eldest child, looked at her. “It's funny how they seem to be hostile towards everyone who can't seem to be enemies of their neighbor tribes! I mean why wouldn't they want to be friendly with their neighbors to begin with, instead?”

Her parents looked at her and her mother said: “It's not funny that they see it that way! I mean it's the friendly tribe we just visited, among others, that they want to victimize, as it seems!”

“I know!” Suzanne said. “I didn't mean funny so that you could laugh about it! I meant it's weird, kinda, peculiar, in the sense that they can't seemingly, thereby, figure out a way to actually dominate any one of them!”

Her parents looked at one another. Carl said: “It's kinda of funny, in that sense! I for one find it peculiar that they can think they can think at all of themselves as people who can dominate the region, when they're a much smaller tribe than for example the one we visited - and that they at the same time can't get any allies, just because they're too unfriendly towards even those with much a larger population that their own!”

Four-year-old Adam (also their youngest child) opened his mouth: “Wow! Maybe they can't seem to be friendly just because they're the worst enemy of simply anyone on earth!”

“That's kinda what we're already saying!” his mother answered. “They're that bad! Simply no one can like them! No one but they, themselves!”

Adam looked content. His seven-year-old sister Alicia asked: “Are they still very hostile even against authorities, such as the police and hospitals and such?!”

“Yeah! I think they are,” Vera answered thoughtfully.

“Then how can they be even part of the society they live in?” Alicia asked.

“They're officially part of it! But hardly anyone enters their territory!”

“Oh! Like that!” their forth child, five-year-old Patrick responded.

Carl looked thoughtful. “Are you sure they aren't nowadays at least part of society in the sense that they want doctors or nurses around when they get injured or ill?!”

“I'm fairly sure!” his wife answered. “But they are part of society in the sense that they feel part of it and tend pride themselves as if much better citizens of it than their neighbors!”

“Oh in that case,”Alicia asked, “why aren't their neighbors stating that they aren't, so that they can't feel right about thinking so?!”

“It's because they won't listen to anyone but themselves about it!” Vera said. “Except to the extent there's some real big power behind what is said! Something like the law enforcement officers that had them feel that they had to respect the society they live in! But then, it seems, those law enforcement people had it in them to tempt them into thinking about how being part of the country could benefit them; they wouldn't have given up otherwise!”

“It seems,” Carl stated, “ that those people of the tribe that seems so hostile, aren't cool enough to pretend as if nothing about their pride! They seem to be the ones that all the neighbors despise, though they might on the surface show them some respect! It seems also that they don't know what they're doing, because they have all those other tribes against them, and what would happen if there really was a war on? Well wouldn't it be that exactly they, who are so proud part of the country would be the ones to be fighting it more than the others!?”

Vera thought about it. “I think they would want to be the fighters who could be at war with anyone who threatened their community, but that it wouldn't be exactly easy for the authorities to convince them that exactly they were threatened! Because otherwise they would surely prefer to have it the war should have to be everybody else's problem!”

“Oh! That's it!” and “I see!” the rest of the family said.