These range from "Growing all your own food is the best way to live" to "Civilization must continue at ANY cost and must not be abandoned under ANY circumstance".

Quinn clarifies that he does not mean to say tribalism is perfect, but it is a more workable system than civilization and is in accord with natural selection.

He states that our culture uses three reasons to justify our resolve in not abandoning civilization: the just-world fallacy, the possibility for transcendence, and the capacity for revolution (which, he argues, merely shuffles the hierarchy around but does not eliminate it altogether).

The homeless perform many of these activities merely in order to continue surviving while remaining outside a system that is clearly failing them: creating makeshift shelters in parks, dumpster diving for food, etc.

He also provides a few quotations from homeless people who explain their pleasant sense of cohesion and of departure from restrictive social obligations in their current condition.

Quinn reminisces on his own tribe-like experience creating a local newspaper with three others, the East Mountain News.

Quinn refers to many events that show distress among the modern-day youth of our culture, including school shootings and rises in teenager suicides.

He believes this points to signs that young people feel they have no place in our deranging society and that our culture provides no strong sense of belonging or of hope toward improvement.

Essentially, Quinn argues, our culture must provide an alternate story to the self-destructive one it is currently playing out.

Daniel Quinn coined the term "new tribalism", which appears in Providence, My Ishmael, and, finally, in the most detail, in Beyond Civilization.

Ecoregional Democracy and peace movement advocates are also often new tribalists as well, as the groups share common ideals.