Have you read McLuhan's War and Peace in the Global Village?
He's pretty insistent in that and in several interviews that renewed tribalism brings more war, not less. He says the cost of electronic culture is civilization. It would be lovely if stretching our consciousnesses all over the world resulted in one village, but it doesn't. Stretching our nerves everywhere means anyone can fire our neurons. Our tribes are just not as geographically organized as they were before, that's all.
Two seconds scrolling through a Facebook feed shows that we aren't all in one tribe, and that the enmity between tribes is accelerating. Also, the way people reduce tribal conflict on Facebook is to defriend anyone who create conflict, which paradoxically reinforces tribalism, since one limits one's interactions to those with people of the same tribe.
It makes sense to address the issue of tribalism, as the 70's begin with the end of the 60's dream of one tribe, we get the age of cults, then we end with the digital age trying to absorb the power of The Lodestone.
I see Arthur as tribal, too. He's torn by the family tribe and the universal tribe of man, as well as a personal relationship with God.
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