Endogroup – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

A social structure for creating power through the transfer of energy. A group of affiliated people who use inclusion and shunning to define their society and are bound by an endosocial membrane. An endogroup may be temporally unlimited to allow ownership and appropriation of property, culture, achievements and victimhood from generations past.

Expanded explanation

An endogroup is defined by its function, which is to create power by moving energy, and the rest of the definition describes the apparatus that makes the moving possible. Inclusion and shunning are the two operations, and having both is what allows the group to define itself, since a boundary needs a way in and a way out. The endosocial membrane is the physical claim underneath, a membrane blocking empathic and euphoric conduits, which is why an endogroup is not merely a group of people who agree. Marsh puts the summary bluntly: hate is the creation of endosocial membranes and love is the creation of connections. Inside an endogroup people are either in or out, whereas in exosocial relationships they are accepted or rejected through each interaction separately. The temporal clause is the most consequential part and the easiest to skim. An endogroup may be unlimited in time, which lets it own and appropriate property, culture, achievements and victimhood from generations long dead, and that is how credit and grievance are inherited by people who took no part in either. Holding the structure together costs energy continuously, since exosocial expansion pushes outward and something must redirect it, which is why cognitive dissonance, unease and deanimation are the reliable signs of an endogroup being maintained. Two laws govern collapse and conduct. The law of endoreality assigns virtue and victimhood inward and guilt outward. The law of the last circle says that when an endogroup collapses with no larger endogroup absorbing it, the committed members revert to their last real or imagined loyalties.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh makes the group a structure for moving energy, which is why its boundary has to be physical rather than notional.

“Hate is the creation of endosocial membranes and love is the creation of connections”
Abstracting Divinity

Examples

In or out: Membership is categorical inside an endogroup and interaction by interaction outside one, which is the practical difference between the two forms.
Inherited credit and grievance: Being unlimited in time lets a group claim achievements and victimhood from generations past, which is how both are passed to people who took no part.
The law of the last circle: A collapsing endogroup with nothing above it to absorb it sends its members back to earlier loyalties, real or imagined.

How others use it

Ingroup and outgroup entered social science with William Graham Sumner in 1906, and social identity theory after Tajfel and Turner demonstrated that favouritism arises on arbitrary group divisions with nothing at stake. Durkheim's mechanical solidarity, Tonnies on community and Mary Douglas on purity and boundary maintenance all address how groups define an inside. Marsh's spelling is deliberate, since an endogroup is not simply an ingroup seen from within but a structure with a specified function. The energy claim is what the social science literature has no counterpart for. Where Tajfel puts group favouritism down to by the need for positive distinctiveness, Marsh puts it down to what the boundary is doing to the flow of anima, which makes the group an apparatus rather than an identity.