Uniting two tribes

I had a dream last night. Not an MLKJ kind of dream, but a literal dream, one so powerful it woke me up at the end. In the dream, I and a small group of people were stranded on an uninhabited island. We worked together to find food and to protect ourselves from the elements. There was no voting off and no politics. We worked as a team.

Across a thin bay was another island, on which a somewhat smaller group of people was also stranded. Though fewer in number, this group turned out to be stronger, more powerful, younger, angrier. We discovered the extent of their animosity one day when one of our own wandered too close to their territory and came back with a fractured and dislocated leg. (In the dream, in the absence of any medical resources, I helped reset the leg - a bit disgusting.)

No side made any attempt to contact or befriend the other. As the days grew, so did our animosity and fear. Each side became the threatening "other" about which nothing was known and all was imagined.

One night, the men in my tribe gathered together to prepare for a raid on the other island. In the middle of the night, we would sneak over and attack. Even though they were stronger, we would catch them by surprise with superior numbers. We would lose several workers to injury or even death. But we wouldn't have to fear them anymore.

At first caught up in the momentum, I did nothing. But as I prepared, facing the mirror in my dream, a distant memory resurfaced. A lesson learned from some unknown source. I realized that instead of attacking the other tribe, we could try something that could yield benefits to everyone, alleviate the fear, make each tribe stronger, and perhaps even bring us together into one community...establish trade.

I don't know where this idea came from or how valid it was. I don't recall hearing or reading anything on the subject in real life and I have no college education to speak of populating my subconscious with random and forgotten material. But it made perfect sense to me.

I would simply float over a meager offering of the resources we had available, perhaps precious food, asking for some sort of trade in return. Their answer would tell us everything we needed to know.

Remembering an imagined lesson, I knew that the establishment of trade between two unknowns would set the earliest foundation for trust. Assuming both sides wanted peace and were blocked only by fear and distrust, trade would give them the option to create that foundation of trust, bit by bit, over time, on their own terms. Eventually, it would open the door to communication. They would share stories, cultures, lives. With familiarity comes more trust, as well as an end to fear.

With familiarity, the "other" becomes "us" and the door swings open to a lasting peace.

I'm not a historian, but it seems to me that trade routes have served as the primary cultural bridges throughout history. On the downside, uneven trade has often given way to open hostility and even war (though more often than not, religion has been the chief cause of war).

Here's the catch: both sides must have integrity and a genuine desire for peace. Or else how can a stable relationship ever be established? At the least, both sides must gain great value from what the other side has to offer, or else no natural equilibrium will evolve.

Unfortunately, here's where I run into the wall of a missing higher education. It's an idea I can explore no further, except in theory.