Traditional man and country

[jgk3]

Re: Traditional man and country

"The sword" is just one of innumerable natural manifestations associated with the destructive force employed in an exchange between opposing forces/intentions.

By the way, when you tread through the forest, enjoying a walk, you must at the same time crush the grass and perhaps break some branches to make your way through. You are establishing order with every advance into nature, and you are warring with the ecosystem constantly. This is not to be seen as negative, because nature is well adapted to (or should I say, made of) this process... You know, you could be killed by nature too. It is just a matter of establishing order for every new action, new movement.

Animals engage in battle to establish supremacy, so does man. It is not a question that man engages in war constantly. Ideologies that seek to interpret the nature of the world in a purely pacifistic way, or as an antagonism between war and peace, are fantasies, and yet, they dominate the psyche of the "civilized" western world. They are also a dominant theme in Christianity. Priests, time and time again, have opposed kings or warriors, opposed this same natural theme of battle or war, because apparently, God dictates against it. Yet man cannot escape from experiencing times where battles are necessary in order to keep order, and this is also why warriors characteristically have taken the initiative of mastering their means for fighting to be prepared for maintaining their order and will instead of losing it altogether to the enemy.

Btw, I also don't see the place for government in the system I am talking about. When your society is based on well defined (and well adhered to) service towards your superior, there is no need for some governmental body to pool in an entire society's resources and redistribute it. In fact, the leader of a feudal society did not control and distribute the capital of his kingdom. His actual political roles were rather restricted to choosing to declare war (using his knights, already associated with a highly specialized class that is made for this service), making alliances or maintaining bonds of loyalty with other royal houses, etc...

He could also set up domestic industries that would help power the needs of his kingdom or empire, but he never ran them himself. They were production oriented and the work was given to a specialized class, guilds-men associated with that particular kind of work, who had their own rituals and regulations, and they had their own chief who was basically their master. This organization had a strong sense of solidarity to it, and its members strongly identified themselves with their trade. You had to have a certain level of birth, or have connections with the right people in order to be eligible to take part in a guild, starting as an apprentice and gradually becoming a master in your art (in modern industries, this sense of mastering the art of your trade tends to be lacking, because the cult of the trade has vanished, a cult that inspires work based on perfection and of putting one's personal soul into the product they have been given the honour to produce).

All unspecialized and undesirable work was left for the lowest classes with the lowest privileges in their social function, as it continues to be done so today even though we like to pretend things are different now because we don't have slaves or serfs (when in reality, you have people who are materially as poor as they, if not lower, and in their nervous need to be able to afford their modern, "free" existence, can be shown to be no more a signal of an independent existence than that of a slave).

[jgk3]

Re: Traditional man and country

Interesting Anon. I think it was relevant to post that, it puts the matter of traditional order in perspective by contrasting it with governmental regulation.

[hipeter924]

Re: Traditional man and country

Democracies naturally evolve into tyrannical or tyrannical-like states.

"Republic" is not a "democracy." The Framers never callled the Republic as such. Idiots like de Tocqueville did.

So many people say that. Republic is not democracy, but contains elements of democracy in order to function. All the people who made the first republic aka roman republic were aware of how the democracy of athens functioned and elements of that was put into the republic. This why I said 'contains' and not is a democracy.

Aka Greek Democracy -> Roman Republic

There was a transition. I hate trying to explain this...

For example there is a transition between modern republic and the older republics, they take elements from the earlier government this does not mean to imply that the modern republics aka USA or Russia are the same as the older ones aka roman or venice republics.

When people were developing the Roman republic they visited places like Greece for ideas, they visited there and adopted Greek religion, some of the political system they adopted (and adapted for the republic) as well.

I view all governments as transitional and related..taking earlier ideas and adapting them while adding on new ones.

[hipeter924]

Re: Traditional man and country

Here is a piece I found interesting incidentally referencing my idea of a natural order. I hope it doesn't deviate from the thread:

I agree with anarchy...but anarcho-capitalism (a rule of economics as opposed to rule of state).

[jgk3]

Re: Traditional man and country

When business becomes the most important aspect of social order, I think you start to lose the point of traditionalism. Selling your own product or surplus (who's production is associated with your rank/class) in the market is one thing, acting as merchant/middle man who are able to incur vast wealth and influence without participating in any production to begin with is quite another. There have historically been civilizations where there is a class of merchants, but by no means could a civilization's ethos and its laws be based on extending this function of distributing resources for monetary gain as the element of highest significance. To be so would negate traditionalism, negate an atmosphere where you instead tend to find distribution of resources and wealth that did not translate into a gain in wealth by anyone, but rather, the sophistication of a system based on honour, loyalty and accountability. Those who shared their wealth out of their own volition gain in status and prominence by doing so, whilst everyone else got to benefit from this distribution of resources. A classic example would be a traditional banquet, where the most prominent members of the group try to outdo each other by providing for the best food and drink, whilst everyone else gets to benefit from this competition by the well to do. The result is an orderly, win-win situation, a truly organic engagement of people in a group.

However, when the example of the merchant/bourgeois class is held in the highest esteem, the atmosphere start to change... For one, the bourgeoisie would now reign and have a free hand in the use of capital and markets, at the expense of traditional social institutions. Some of you may argue that these humanistic movements associated with the rise of the bourgeois and the emancipation of serfs was the greatest leap ever for western man. I question however... What was the purpose of this in the grander scheme of things? In my opinion, it was a movement used to disenfranchise the noble classes (who had, by the end of the Renaissance period, long since lost their virility and right to their own traditional, sacred reason for having their privileges) of their land and nothing else. It was a power grab disguised as a humanistic movement that only nominally was caring about "the people" and the rights "they ought to have". The next thing you know, the government taking its socialistic nature seriously with its ever increasing regulations, consolidated its powers to control the lands of entire nations. In my opinion, it would've just been better to weed out the cancerous dynasties of nobility, who more and more had become tyrants, absolutists just trying to control all the resources of their nation the way a businessman would. Thus, you would revamp the traditional system with people who were able to assume their noble roles, rather than let the bourgeois class usurp all the power.

Once the royalty and all other aspects of the hierarchical social structure based on personal values was removed from supremacy, it is not shocking at all to see how they've neglected the traditional boundaries that would forbid the economy from taking on the supreme form it has today. Some of it's most ruthless of members also run the government accordingly to their own self-interested whims, and this completes the decadence associated with the rise of the bourgeois class. They have thus achieved the same function towards civilization as the tyrannic elements amongst the noble classes which they disenfranchised.

It is because of these two points that I differ from those who praise the economy (free or not) as the highest ideal for a population, because their model society is one where they've killed the function of the king and the nobility, killed the organic nature of a hierarchical social structure where every class serves sustains its superior and allows its superior to partake in its own, highly specialized function. Thus, it is a model where the currency of personality has lost to the currency of money, earned through pure competition in "the economy". This ability to secure the kind of lifestyle you seek, based on material means for attaining material desires, emphasizes individuality, whereby each man partakes in a common system of competition over resources which translate into wealth to be enjoyed by them should they be victorious. This, in the absence of traditional laws of conduct, fosters greed and ruthlessness towards one's own people, and is destructive to civilization because civilizations aren't supposed to compete inside of themselves for wealth, but rather enjoy the fruits of their own dedication towards their particular trade or work, in serving their country and its traditions as a most realized form of loyalty. Without traditional boundaries, you will no longer see your fellow countryman as a brother. There is supposed to be an order from above that keeps the bourgeois class in its place, reminding everyone that it is through one's actions (service that is deemed as good for their personal class/rank/nature/function) that spiritual ascension can be achieved, not by concerning oneself with material gain.

There is a reason why the cells in our bodies don't each have their own brain. They all have their own functions specific to their own natures. Creating a society where the economy is the most important aspect of the civilization is not a civilization. A civilization is like a human body. The master moves his right hand, and it moves. The right hand doesn't think about it, nor is it forced by decree to move, they are part of the same consciousness and work organically.

Again, I expect great disagreement from others along these lines, but nonetheless, this is the traditionalist point of view, where death is taken seriously and where one triumphs through competition done out of loyalty to spiritual ideals, not materialistic ones. When individuals violate this principle, regardless of the level of their birth or what their function is, they sin against both their own and their civilization's spirit, spirits which in a deep sense, are one and the same, interconnected.

[jgk3]

Re: Traditional man and country

a comment: It is nice that every day, this thread is seeing activity and is constantly being updated, talking about different aspects of the same general topic. I encourage you all to continue in this discussion.

[KarotheGreat]

Re: Traditional man and country

So many people say that. Republic is not democracy, but contains elements of democracy in order to function. All the people who made the first republic aka roman republic were aware of how the democracy of athens functioned and elements of that was put into the republic. This why I said 'contains' and not is a democracy.

Aka Greek Democracy -> Roman Republic

There was a transition. I hate trying to explain this...

For example there is a transition between modern republic and the older republics, they take elements from the earlier government this does not mean to imply that the modern republics aka USA or Russia are the same as the older ones aka roman or venice republics.

When people were developing the Roman republic they visited places like Greece for ideas, they visited there and adopted Greek religion, some of the political system they adopted (and adapted for the republic) as well.

I view all governments as transitional and related..taking earlier ideas and adapting them while adding on new ones.

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.

[jgk3]

Re: Traditional man and country

By the way, the reason I've liked the writings of Rothbard or Mises, who are free market advocates, is not because they place the market on the highest pedestal, but because they place the spontaneous order of the individual within the ambit of a more natural order of things - and the best way toward that is the freest possible interactions between people where the inequalities of minds, characters and capacities will categorize themselves in accordance.

Yes, I kind of noticed that aspect of the free market. I realize it is a positive system so long as the economy or commerce does not end up dominating the minds of the people as it seems to do today, and as it seems to be taught in business schools, signaling that this ethos has been established for a long time in our society.

You're right to say that it is up to a civilization, or a people, to decide what kind of order they would like to have between them. A civilization reaching for the above through royal inspiration is definitely not the only possibility, we have civilizations that have become obsessed with religion, others with trade/commerce and modeled their institutions based on their orientation. When all royal structures, worldwide, fail and become an endangered species however, it hints that something really has gone awry in the minds of the world's population. It is at this point where I like to blame the economy as a force, a psyche which has assumed absolute importance in the world, a force which was never seen as necessary to engage in, specifically in its commercial aspect, by the ancients. I would also like to blame religion, but that is another topic.

To finish, I would like to note (without really addressing Anon's post but moreso the general theme of the thread) that the historical shift from a cult of rituals and spiritual doctrines to "religion" (in its modern, democratized sense) has, especially in the West, served as a bridge that lead man astray from his spirituality and more oriented towards materialistic measures of his life standard, whereby the common practice of prayers teach man to be hopeful for material or social conditions to improve, not for any underlyingly spiritual quest, but for the sake of the day to day "peace" for a worker to go on and earn his keep. Religion (of this modernistic variety) has been the catalyst which eventually led man to be obsessed with the economic, materialistic aspect of his society. The final step would be to kick God out of the equation, who was seen as useless anyway for this kind of de-spiritualized mindset. This is where we are in the West today.

[UrMistake]

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.

[hrai]

Re: Traditional man and country

a comment: It is nice that every day, this thread is seeing activity and is constantly being updated, talking about different aspects of the same general topic. I encourage you all to continue in this discussion.

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?