Your company is not your tribe

In Sebastien Junger's excellent book, Tribe, he makes the case that modern life, at least in the developed world, lacks critical social and community bonding elements that contribute to our well being.

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

"Fritz’s theory was that modern society has gravely disrupted the social bonds that have always characterized the human experience, and that disasters thrust people back into a more ancient, organic way of relating. Disasters, he proposed, create a “community of sufferers” that allows individuals to experience an immensely reassuring connection to others. As people come together to face an existential threat, Fritz found, class differences are temporarily erased, income disparities become irrelevant, race is overlooked, and individuals are assessed simply by what they are willing to do for the group. It is a kind of fleeting social utopia that, Fritz felt, is enormously gratifying to the average person and downright therapeutic to people suffering from mental illness."

While we shouldn't invite disaster into our lives, we should acknowledge that there are tradeoffs to living in a prosperous society.

But I want to bring this back to the topic of this newsletter: going 1099.

Based on the quote above, you may be tempted to think going 1099 will actually be bad for you. If modern society already lacks social cohesion, wouldn't working for yourself exacerbate that? Wouldn't leaving a W2 gig at a larger company deprive you of what little community you already have?

The answer is...no.

Companies aren't families. While there may be common suffering, it's rarely suffered together.

There are a few exceptions to this in the modern world, but those exceptions most closely resemble traditional societies. I'm thinking of tight military units or firefighters and things like that.

Your corporate government contracting job? It's not like at all.

Going 1099 is actually more helpful in finding your tribe. You give up on trying to find it through employment, and instead, are forced to find it elsewhere. You have more money and flexibility to pursue relationships that matter to you, rather than trying to force it at work.

By leaving the fake tribe and striking out on your own, you may find a tribe that actually matters to you.

Want the full playbook? Check out Going 1099.