Cliques and Clans: G. K. Chesterton's Thoughts on Them"
A clan is defined as Celtic groups comprising a number of households whose heads claim descent from a common ancestor. A clan is God ordained as its members are not chosen by man but by God, as no man can choose his relatives. Therefore, God makes the clan and in doing so its members are diverse. As Chesterton describes them, they are people with "fierce varieties and uncompromising divergencies" who "seek to promote their own principles." In today's society we no longer live in clans but we do live in God-chosen groups of people in the form of families, both immediate and extended, in the form of neighborhoods, and in the form of local communities. A clan is the people near us we have not chosen.
A clique is defined as a narrow or exclusive group of persons - one held together by a presumed identity of interests, views, or purposes. Therefore, a clique is the opposite of a clan as it is chosen by man and not by God. The members of a clique are chosen for their sameness and are, by definition, narrow. In today's societies cliques exists both in person, often in the form of brick-and-mortar clubs, and virtually, online. As a whole cliques form around a great variety of identities and interests but individually they are comprised of sameness. A clique is the people near us we have chosen.
Therefore, clans and cliques are opposites. Clans begin small and grow larger while cliques are smaller groups extracted from larger ones. Chesterton writes, "A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness." He states this because "In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community your companions are chosen for us." Cliques are popular because families (clans) are messy. Neighbors and communities can be messy. They are not always peaceful, pleasant, or coherent. Quite the opposite, they can be full of "discomforts, dangers, and renunciations" which Chesterton says are the necessary components for sociability and all things good, strength building, and adventurous. It is only through "weak nerves" that we seek to "shut out the real world" in order to escape "decisive intellectual competition" because we are "terrified by its largeness and variety".
Chesterton, however, is not without his understanding that we all have moments when we "cannot endure the innumerable faces, the incessant voices, and the overpowering omnipresence which belongs to the mob." That we will have weak moments when we "hate mankind when we (he) are (was) less than a man." These feelings are "perfectly reasonable and excusable . . . as long as it does not pretend to any point of superiority." In other words, as long as we do not retreat from the clan to join the clique under the pretense that we are somehow wiser, better, more adventurous, and stronger than the clan because it is the clan that truly provides adventure, romance, and requires strength.
Cliques, therefore, have their place as long as we do not negate our primary responsibility to the clan. Our commitment to stay engaged with the people God has chosen for us. Chesterton writes that "old scriptural language showed a sharp wisdom when it (they) spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbor." For even a duty towards humanity can be cherry picked. In today's language we dismiss the clan, our families and neighbors, under the guises that "life is too short" for such difficulties and instead opt to draw "healthy boundaries." But such self preservation is not in our best interest. (Outside of actual abuse, of course.) Chesterton writes, "But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission." So whether we wish to call someone a villain, a hero, or a clown, they are still part of our story until God writes it otherwise. For a story entirely of our own making can only be narcissistic and dull. Full of "so much hero that there would be no novel." In conclusion Chesterton writes, "We make our friends, we make our enemies, but God makes our next-door neighbor."
K. A. Shows
quotes from "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family" Heretics 1905