Traditional man and country

[jgk3]

Re: Traditional man and country

jgk3, I'm a simple person and these theories kinda wear me down, but I try to keep up.
In this vision of an ideal land/society, is there an infinite number to the population? I ask simply because my thoughts are that when numbers increase the fabric of the society would surely unravel??
Would criminals and malcontents be neutered ,by the rules, or would we face a situation often portrayed in post-apocalyptic movies?

When I become a better writer, I will be able to trim my messages down more neatly. But for the time being, I am still trying to get all my ideas out in words:

The fabric of society could unravel only if the masses overstep their traditional boundaries of peasantry or serfdom. Population size isn't going to ruin the social order if the majority of the population is involved in production that is both (at least somewhat) self sufficient and done for their superiors (i.e. feudal fiefdoms). It only gets ruined when the masses have the "freedom" of living as mass consumers, where a too large portion of the population earns its living through service oriented work that does not create or produce, but just redistributes resources. This turns societies that used to be highly involved in production for their own civilization, upside down. It forces industries to seek ever cheaper and less artisanal means of production just to satisfy demand.

This is called mass production and allows for technocrats and businessmen to set the pace for the rest of society and what it should work towards. They have the slightest regard for traditional means of production and exchange. They characteristically care about how they and their nation fares against others along these lines (For example, Russia under Peter the Great trying to "catch up" with the west by industrializing and modernizing his nation, which wasn't necessarily a bad intention in and of itself, but the drive for this modernization and abandonment of the old order was driven by the fact that new values concerning the state of the peasant or the serf had taken root in Western Europe, modern ideals of social progress and change associated with combating the "evils" of industrial development).

These strides do not enhance a civilization as a whole, and if a civilization chooses to "industrialize" itself, it must take care to protect itself from liberal ideals that seek to destroy the natural order of things in this new manner of production, it must seek to keep the same contract between labourers and their superiors that always existed traditionally. This did not occur in Europe. Because the standard of living amongst the peasants and serfs who made their way into the cities to work in factories did not improve, the masses were easily swayed by socialistic movements of egalitarianism, hoping that this would improve their standard of living. All this did was to ruin the natural order of the classes, yet raise the manipulative bourgeois class that orchestrated the entire charade to supremacy. The result? Now, we are human capital. We are material inputs for the economy and our "rights" are only dedicated towards our ability to partake in a system where the highlight of your existence is in the arena of consumption, in the market that you exist for. A cold, leaderless society devoid of spirituality, but pretends it still has the traditional values it destroyed by teaching its people to believe that social progress is "traditional" and "good".

We don't remember what a traditional society is, but strikingly, when we learn about feudalistic structures, its cult of leadership where everyone serves the king... where association is based on fidelity, merit and honour, its logic is so much more straightforward than all the strings attached to our modern state of existence, our modern ideals of "social progress" where everyone is more or less in a free for all trying to capture resources for themselves and seek to undermine the other social classes in "class wars/struggles", even though they are supposed to be "one people".

It's ridiculous.

Finally, to address what would be done to criminals... Again, it's up to the civilization and the values of its people. I do not advocate one treatment of criminals as the archetype for all traditional societies.

[jgk3]

Re: Traditional man and country

how can u ever agree with anarchy?with anarchy u got no state no freedom no slavery,there is no life and its not a system that u can control,remember we choose leaders to help our human kind,its about as,to make our life better.
With anarchy we could have 500,000,000 Chinese in athens or much more turks.
Anarchy is for lazy and very crazy people that dont have sense in reality.
U people got things wrong for sure.

In my view, there is no such thing as anarchy, unless you're talking about power vacuums.

You can have deregulation, yes, but there will always be leaders in a society or country who serve to keep order.

[hrai]

Re: Traditional man and country

There is a distinction between anarchy and chaos. Don't fall into the trap of confusing one with the other. It's the same fallacy that people fall for in their inability to distinguish between those systems that are Socialist (capital "S") and those systems that are socialistic. One can argue that we are always in an anarchic state (free will) both among individuals (limited to a certain degree by the State). And if you argue there is no anarchy amongst us, then there is certainly anarchy among the States of the world for they are in a perpetual anarchic state relative to reach other.

I think that I agree with you here, a socialistic society as described in above posts sounds appealing.
My thoughts were concerning the "inherent evil" in some, who might attempt to overthrow the society for their own ends.
If said society works on a level of self-production/sale/barter without diversifying into the non-productive service industries which have been strangling us for decades now, then surely many industries, and therefore consumer goods which we take for granted, would have to disappear, simply because by necessity they need mass labour.
Once we've got mass labour we're back on the treadmill of the Industrial Revolution.

Anarcho-Syndicalism has got to be one of the biggest contradictions in terms.

[hrai]

Re: Traditional man and country

Socialistic is not any better than socialism, if we are talking about a principle based on not coercing people into being your guinea pigs. But in terms of damage, it's less damaging to society, whatever that may be.

The "inherent evil" argument is a tautology. Every "system" has an "inherent evil" so it's pointless to argue it. The reason that is so is because every "system" is, in the end, a reflection of man himself, who is himself imperfect and himself is both good and evil.

Precisely Anon, by "inherent evil" I was meaning the evil in the individual.
But in the utopic society, this evil needs to be policed/controlled. Once we need functionaries for these tasks, we take people out of productive roles into "administration" and that's basically the thin end of the wedge to a DC full of corrupt politicos, tenured civil servants and lobbying parasites.

[Muhaha]

Re: Traditional man and country

They are set in stone... but for those who consistently prove themselves worthy within their own ranks and show a spirit that can take on the responsibility associated with a higher rank, there is the possibility of promoting oneself, by decree of their tribe, to this higher rank. This exists in many military traditions. A most worthy example is Tacitus' description of the Germanic armies that invaded Rome, called Wuotanes Hari (which has the Germanic meaning of Frenzied Army/Army of Odin): Men, or sons of men who have shown their merit in the past, are eligible to participate in higher orders or responsibility, function, and also honour within their society. In this manner, one can (overtime or after a few generations), eventually assume the level of being a princeps (or allowing this possibility for his descendants), who has his own army. The currency is valour and virtue, proven before the eyes of your own people. That is the entire point.

However, this kind of ascension cannot be possible if you democratize the criterion to participate in a highly specific social function. A priest cannot function as a king, a serf cannot function as a monk. It is a choice for the civilization in question to define what degree of heredity is involved for each of the classes. Most often, you tend to find a more rigid basis for this in dividing the peasantry, clergy and nobility, yet you find in the case of several usurpers of higher classes a lowly birth, who have proven themselves worthy, before the eyes of their entire civilization, that they had the wit and the ability to lay claim to a higher rank victoriously. This again, is the entire point. It weeds out the cancerous individuals who are not worthy of the class they are sitting on.

Yet still, the general condition is as follows: your rank and function is well defined, escaping it is a heresy and rightly so, because it reverses the entire social order you live in. Those who know this, know who they are and what their purpose is towards their civilization. They can participate in honour by doing their task as it is specified by their sacred traditions, or likewise... succumb to dishonour or alienation by failing to do so. This kind of system has maximized a peoples' vigour towards attaining honour in mastering the responsibilities associated with their personal rank/function, all clearly laid out by their timeless traditional doctrines, doctrines which if tampered with for purposes of "modernization", especially when it comes to loyalty towards sacred royal rituals (including sacrifices to the main divinities), signal the end of tradition itself, and thus, a peoples' ability to rely on a spiritual means for ascension towards the divine as a coherent tribe/race.

1. Does everyone start at the same rank when they are born? Does a Son/Daughter get preferential treatment because of what their Father/Mother did before they were born?

2. Lets say a Boy/Girl who has a natural talent at understanding Maths/Sciences is born into a rank that has nothing to do with Maths/Sciences. Would He/She be placed into a Tribe/Rank that would be more suited for his talents or would He/She have to prove himself doing other things first? How about a child that can play amazing sounds on a Guitar by age ten, is that child moved to a Musician's "Tribe"?

3. You talk about tradition...How do we decide which societies traditions are the correct one's to follow?

This is up for the particular civilization to decide.

Well, how would you like Armenia to be? With or without Some/Any of those laws?

I do not advocate, much like modern (democratic) movements do, that there is some kind of ideal social organization for all of mankind. That is total bs and all it does is destroy the plurality of civilization on the earth, reducing all of man to the same mediocrity, whereby the psyche is one of mundane, fatalistic and de-spiritualized sense of existence and purpose.

Well, I would say that having a rigid system of classes, ranks, and traditions is what reduces man to mediocrity.He is born into a system and is forced to do things and live under a system simply because generations before him deemed it all to be ''Right''. What happens often in Societies based off of tradition is that it's members are discouraged of providing alternate viewpoints on any number of issues/elements because the majority of said society would shun, embarrass, and in some cases kill them for questioning the "Sanctity" of it all. If Humanity had always lived in such a system, would it have produced the same number of Philosophers?..Artists?..Musicians?..Novelists and Storytellers?..Etc.

Modern science is used as an attempt to fill this gap, because it's supposed to apply to all of us and the universe... it is like cough drops, or a piece of candy for the every day worker to hear about some scientific "breakthrough" that really, does not tend to help them know more about themselves and what kind of mess of an existence they live in. This is why science is only interesting and worthy of pursuit if you have made it your "class", that is, if you are a scientist. But neither popular media, nor the ideologies propounded by "science" (including the atheist phenomenon we witness today), is using it this way. Their agenda, whether consciously known by its adherents or not, also obscures man from his traditionalism by trying to prove that the latter's cosmology, mysticism and esoteric doctrines are rubbish, obsolete ways of thinking.

Science does not need to become such an antagonistic, modernistic movement once it has been accepted that its scope is most productive when it is dedicated for observing and proving insight towards individualized phenomenon occurring in the universe. In order to answer bigger questions about the workings of the macrocosm, of ultimate reality, you may use your knowledge of individualized phenomenon, but combine them with the same approach man has used since he began observing the stars in the sky... creativity, imagination, sensation of the workings of the universe. Essentially, it is of the same spirit that man has used in receiving the traditional divine doctrines he has held to be sacred in the past and felt compelled towards when setting up an order to be followed by his tribe. For a scientist to deny their own creativity, imagination, etc... in a "holier than thou" kind of way, in an attempt to perhaps adhere to the scientific method in a more "absolute" way, is comparable to a devout priest castrating himself in an attempt to appease God by trying to "better avoid sin".

To return to the consequences of all this modern ideology on the masses, when your average unintelligent, unzealous slob gets home from a 9 hour shift, he's not going to buckle down and read (even) a 20 page scientific article about a topic that interests him, and he knows as much about the scientific method as he does about the methods used by any highly specialized social class/function, nada. Science is just not going to enlarge the state of consciousness for the modern masses or direct them to any less of a meaningless, distracted, impotent existence.

Modern Science isn't used or proposed to fill this gap at all, I don't know where you're getting this, I've never heard anybody "push" Science as the gap-filler. Whatever fills the gap is completely and utterly up to the individual to decide. Some take Modern Science, some take Organized Religion, some take their own path of Personal Spirituality and Faith, Some take on Philanthropy, Some go back to College and try to master a new craft, some decide to take on a completely different lifestyle and move to a Farm/Ranch where they live off the land, some decide to write down and maybe publish all the ideas and philosophies they've come up with throughout life, Etc, Etc, Etc.

Haha, they would likely answer "why are you so hung up about war... why can't we all live in peace!" And that is precisely why they are not fit for this kind of role... They'd rather believe in fantasies than about the nature of ultimate reality: "Death is always near, but fear it not for you are divine and can participate in ordeals which involve the possibility of death" and this is precisely what defines the traditional man in battle, or in service characteristic of men.

Well, Nature can evolve can't it? Isn't it possible Humanity will one day compete in ways that don't result in war and death? Isn't it possible to eventually become a truly superior species? Albeit, thousands and thousands of years from now.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Traditional man and country

Well, Nature can evolve can't it? Isn't it possible Humanity will one day compete in ways that don't result in war and death? Isn't it possible to eventually become a truly superior species? Albeit, thousands and thousands of years from now.

Perhaps after the next couple dark ages....

[Muhaha]

Re: Traditional man and country

Perhaps after the next couple dark ages....

Yes...I already pointed that out by saying "Albeit, thousands and thousands of years from now"

[Muhaha]

Re: Traditional man and country

This presumes that a concept called evolution is actually real and has in fact occurred, occurs and will continue to occur.

Yes it does.

[hipeter924]

Re: Traditional man and country

You're really way of first of all Rome wasn't the first republic, even before Rome was republic you had Carthage and even before that you had other Punic city states in the ME who were a republic. And they didn't get there idea from the Greeks.

The idea of a republic is as old or even older than the idea of democracy. And they have nothing to do with each other. And saying that the Romans went to Greece to get there ideas from is so wrong. Do you know that when Rome became a republic it was just a city state with no power and they were thinking they were original and copying things from Athens.

Rome was the first republic I knew of, and the most recognized. Carthage died out fairly quickly, and its republic was very basic...and there was a royal ruler so it was a false republic. Republic has no King, Queen or divine ruler...Carthage did.

Find a republic back then like Rome...you won't find any. Rome had no Kings, it had consuls that were elected, and very rarely ruled as dictator (a position they had again to be elected to). So it is the closest republic to what we term a republic meaning no Monarch in power.

Rome had power...it had to fight off its neighbours and defeat its neighbours, and conquer Italy. Over Athens I admit I can't prove it. But regardless this whole thing was over your claim "republic has no democracy in it".

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/157129/democracy/233830/The-Roman-Republic

Democratic institutions » The Roman Republic

At about the same time that popular government was introduced in Greece, it also appeared on the Italian Peninsula in the city of Rome. The Romans called their system a rēspūblica, or republic, from the Latin rēs, meaning thing or affair, and pūblicus or pūblica, meaning public—thus, a republic was the thing that belonged to the Roman people, the populus romanus.

Like Athens, Rome was originally a city-state. Although it expanded rapidly by conquest and annexation far beyond its original borders to encompass all the Mediterranean world and much of western Europe, its government remained, in its basic features, that of a moderately large city-state. Indeed, throughout the republican era (until roughly the end of the first century bc), Roman assemblies were held in the very small Forum at the centre of the city.

Who constituted the Roman dēmos? Although Roman citizenship was conferred by birth, it was also granted by naturalization and by manumission of slaves. As the Roman Republic expanded, it conferred citizenship in varying degrees to many of those within its enlarged boundaries. Because Roman assemblies continued to meet in the Forum, however, most citizens who did not live in or near the city itself were unable to participate and were thus effectively excluded from the dēmos. Despite their reputation for practicality and creativity, and notwithstanding many changes in the structure of Roman government over the course of centuries, the Romans never solved this problem. Two millennia later, the solution—electing representatives to a Roman legislature—would seem obvious (see below A democratic dilemma).

^Above Republic is called a democratic institution

[VartanK]

Re: Traditional man and country

I've cleaned up the thread because it started drifting off-topic. Make a separate thread, keep the focus of this one intact. Thanks.

That is confusing. If the concept of evolution is "off-topic" then why did you bring it up? I asked a simple question about what you have personally brought in.