A very interesting article. Tribalism as safety net. It reminds me of what I read about China in a novel from the 1980s. People would only invest in their own family's business. (The same as in Vietnam, by the way - I heard from a Vietnamese woman about how all of the family invested their savings in one uncle's business, and this is common.) That was because "one thing the Chinese have learned is that you can only trust your family."
I read about how there was civilization, with laws and trade, in Celtic and Germanic lands during the time of the Roman Republic, but that our sources are mainly Roman, and they wouldn't write about that, which they didn't even know much about. Celts and Germanics were tribal, and they flourished in a tribal civilization.
Speaking of the Germanic culture that the Romans encountered, the story of Germanics and Rome is far larger than people know. (Funny how there's never been a Hollywood movie about it, right?) Caesar writes about a Germanic tribe crossing into Gaul when he was governor there, and they then came in conflict with some other Germanic tribe; there were constant interactions with the Germanics. Caesar had Germanics in his army - his bodyguards were Germanics. One of them saved his life in Greece. (In a rare event, Caesar's army ran at one point when facing Pompey's army. Caesar stood among them to try to stop the rout. A man carrying a standard turned it around and used it as a spear to try to kill Caesar. His Germanic bodyguard cut off the man's hand. Imagine how history would have changed otherwise.) Germanic slaves and Germanic free men were all over Rome. Remember that Arminius was taught warfare as a Roman officer.
In the later Roman civil wars, I recall reading about a battle where there were Germanic units on both sides, and apparently this wasn't unusual. In these late centuries two thirds of the army was made up of Germanic auxiliaries, as there weren't enough Romans to control all the vast land - and when they didn't get paid they took land instead. When the Huns came the Ostrogoths were one of the defeated peoples, but they turned out to be useful. Gothic became the lingua franca in the Hunnic empire. The empire ended when the Goths sided with a Hunnic prince against the ruler, his brother I believe it was, and the civil war split the realm.
Minor nitpick, that is the official™ story behind Zimbabwe. If you ask any ex-Rhodesians though, the stone forts were the work of Muslim traders, evidenced by Arab names present, if morphed, in the remaining populations. That isn't good history for the new government, given their violently anti-colonial core.
Indeed. It reminds me of what I read about why in Africa you often see Christians along the coast and Muslims inland. It's simply because the Europeans came to the coast while Muslims came over land.
The tribes along the coast were given rifles to help stabilize the realm, but naturally they would use these against the inland tribes for both good and bad reasons. They'd take slaves and land. When European missionairies then went inland, they would sometimes be welcomed or at least tolerated, but sometimes driven away or killed, and the tribes along the coast then helped in the punitive expedition that followed. With the different religions involved, this also created religious bitterness.
Another interesting fact: This is Africa, so Islam actually meant MORE rights for women. No longer pushing them out to separate huts when they were on their period, for being unclean. And actually getting a share of the inheritance. Shocking modern inventions.
I read a short-story about the Stone Age, where Ayn Rand, her husband and some other known names in her circle appear, and they are "the world's first Objectivists." But they fail in every step because Objectivism gets in the way of organizing of helping each other. Then some men from a tribe show up and quickly subjugate them.
Ayn Rand says something about, "This is not [objectivist terminology]!"
The tribal leader says, "I don't know what that means, woman, but cook me a meal."
Really enjoyed the article. Philip Jose Farmer had a novella where a quasi Captain Kirk figure came back to Earth a few hundred years later than planned, having traveled at the speed of light. Americans had fallen into tribes, yet retained an ability to bio engineering. The title is Flesh - it’s pretty far out.
My theory is that our sacrifice of fetuses is spawning a cult like behavior that rots other forms of cultural cohesion and we just dissolve into factions, in some areas tribes, while other metro areas rise, fall. On occasion I see it like a version of Things To Come by HG Wells, yet the collapse is triggered so that the elite can descend from the sky and “rescue” us. You might find watching the 1930s film Things To Come interesting, as Britain falls briefly into tribalism in the manner that you describe.
Abortion was widespread in Biblical times, in Rome and all around, and they were far more conservative than we are now. Which is something the various Bible writers don't even bother to mention. How does that fit into your U.S.-specific theorizing?
"Abortion kills our society!" Cruzbot theorizing. Does that also apply to, say, Japan? The U.S. had abortions more than a hundred years ago, but I guess that's inconvenient to mention. We've had abortion all over the world since way before Roman times and up until the present, I guess it "rots" us for thousands of years and prevents civilization.
The neocons and their allies in the media promoted Evangelicals as loyal supporters, with preachers who approve of mass immigration and wars and sanctions for Israel. They get to have one issue of their own, abortion, because it doesn't hurt the elite media Jews, but helps them by crippling the Republican party. Leading to more mass immigration and future permanent leftist election victories.
You get to have that one issue for moral grandstanding, and you love that it's easy: You just have to yell "kill babies!" to shout down opposition. You don't need to learn any complicated issues that take place in the world.
Who agrees with you? A handful of Third World countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, Egypt, Laos and the Philippines. And I happen to know they can still get abortions in the Philippines. Oh, and Malta and Andorra - stamp-sized countries where women can easily travel to the neighbors with the same language, so the tiny countries can grandstand about religion with no actual consequences.
You join the club of Third World countries with 5% of the world's population. Everyone else is "killing babies!" by allowing abortion according to you. Wow, those 95% must be vicious murderers and killers of civilization! Lucky that you and Nicaragua know the truth!
Turns out your fanaticism severely hurt the GOP in the last midterms, because whatever people say to pollsters, they do NOT want to be randomly saddled with pregnancy for women. ("Then they just don't have to have sex! And they just have to use birth control! But not pills, that's evil too says the celibate Pope!") People have sex - I know, it's terrible that we are like people have always been. Women don't want that to randomly lead to them having to be pregnant for nine months and then take care of kids before they want kids. Men don't want to involuntarily have kids and also possibly have to pay child support for eighteen years.
But you ignore that, push a poison pill that hands the Left permanent victories, allows them to fill the country with mass immigration and kill our future, which also means the Left's abortion laws will prevail indefinitely. Well done! The neocons laugh as you shoot yourself in the foot.
The vast majority of Americans will agree to a law that allows abortion until viability. Now, there are those on the Left who will say "all the way up until the end of pregnancy" just to be visible in the media, and these are the kind of crazies you have enabled. But look at Sweden - where abortion is limited to week 15, and after that you need a health board's approval. No radical conservative country, that. Lifting up this example and others would be the smart way for the GOP to push for a reasonable law most people can agree on and quiet the Dem radicals. But that would require the GOP to be dominated by intelligent people.
Thank you for this, very interesting. We have the blueprint for what works. The Constitution. After the storm passes, and we decide to return to civilization, my hope is that someone will have had the good sense to preserve this document and start there - with lessons learned.
Imagine all the other societies in the West and elsewhere, how stupid we are for not having the hallowed liberal U.S. Constitution. Not at all an arrogant attitude there. The Constitution means good civilization, just look how well it turned out.
"But if everyone FOLLOWED it, it would work!"
It's the same as in "if everyone was a pacifist, pacifism would work!"
Or "if everyone was a communist willing to share equally, communism would work!"
Typical head-in-the-clouds theories. The question isn't how great it is if people would just follow it. The question is if it can make people follow it. The Constitution obviously couldn't. It was easily set aside as early as when Lincoln did it and ruled as a dictator. And for that he got his head on Mount Rushmore.
The only method of government that is able to self-correct is the our Constitutional government. Not sure what you mean by ‘race law’. You’re right that it was created for a moral society. Setting up a good system isn’t enough. We must return to a moral standard, or the only way for us to be governed will be with an iron fist.
“influx of Muslim barbarians into Europe”? You left out mentioning climate change and political destabilization as the reasons for Muslim refugees from Northern Africa and the Middle East, seeking political stability and potable water, for this influx, didn’t you?
I have forwarded this to my tiny network with the words "This is very long, very well written (just a handful of typos) and highly informative, esp about vanished civilisations of which I knew nothing. It is about how civilisations end more than it is about tribes. I cannot recommend it too highly. But it is patient, so make a copy to re-read later, "
A very interesting article. Tribalism as safety net. It reminds me of what I read about China in a novel from the 1980s. People would only invest in their own family's business. (The same as in Vietnam, by the way - I heard from a Vietnamese woman about how all of the family invested their savings in one uncle's business, and this is common.) That was because "one thing the Chinese have learned is that you can only trust your family."
I read about how there was civilization, with laws and trade, in Celtic and Germanic lands during the time of the Roman Republic, but that our sources are mainly Roman, and they wouldn't write about that, which they didn't even know much about. Celts and Germanics were tribal, and they flourished in a tribal civilization.
Speaking of the Germanic culture that the Romans encountered, the story of Germanics and Rome is far larger than people know. (Funny how there's never been a Hollywood movie about it, right?) Caesar writes about a Germanic tribe crossing into Gaul when he was governor there, and they then came in conflict with some other Germanic tribe; there were constant interactions with the Germanics. Caesar had Germanics in his army - his bodyguards were Germanics. One of them saved his life in Greece. (In a rare event, Caesar's army ran at one point when facing Pompey's army. Caesar stood among them to try to stop the rout. A man carrying a standard turned it around and used it as a spear to try to kill Caesar. His Germanic bodyguard cut off the man's hand. Imagine how history would have changed otherwise.) Germanic slaves and Germanic free men were all over Rome. Remember that Arminius was taught warfare as a Roman officer.
In the later Roman civil wars, I recall reading about a battle where there were Germanic units on both sides, and apparently this wasn't unusual. In these late centuries two thirds of the army was made up of Germanic auxiliaries, as there weren't enough Romans to control all the vast land - and when they didn't get paid they took land instead. When the Huns came the Ostrogoths were one of the defeated peoples, but they turned out to be useful. Gothic became the lingua franca in the Hunnic empire. The empire ended when the Goths sided with a Hunnic prince against the ruler, his brother I believe it was, and the civil war split the realm.
Minor nitpick, that is the official™ story behind Zimbabwe. If you ask any ex-Rhodesians though, the stone forts were the work of Muslim traders, evidenced by Arab names present, if morphed, in the remaining populations. That isn't good history for the new government, given their violently anti-colonial core.
Indeed. It reminds me of what I read about why in Africa you often see Christians along the coast and Muslims inland. It's simply because the Europeans came to the coast while Muslims came over land.
The tribes along the coast were given rifles to help stabilize the realm, but naturally they would use these against the inland tribes for both good and bad reasons. They'd take slaves and land. When European missionairies then went inland, they would sometimes be welcomed or at least tolerated, but sometimes driven away or killed, and the tribes along the coast then helped in the punitive expedition that followed. With the different religions involved, this also created religious bitterness.
Another interesting fact: This is Africa, so Islam actually meant MORE rights for women. No longer pushing them out to separate huts when they were on their period, for being unclean. And actually getting a share of the inheritance. Shocking modern inventions.
I read a short-story about the Stone Age, where Ayn Rand, her husband and some other known names in her circle appear, and they are "the world's first Objectivists." But they fail in every step because Objectivism gets in the way of organizing of helping each other. Then some men from a tribe show up and quickly subjugate them.
Ayn Rand says something about, "This is not [objectivist terminology]!"
The tribal leader says, "I don't know what that means, woman, but cook me a meal."
Thus ended the world's experiment in Objectivism.
Really enjoyed the article. Philip Jose Farmer had a novella where a quasi Captain Kirk figure came back to Earth a few hundred years later than planned, having traveled at the speed of light. Americans had fallen into tribes, yet retained an ability to bio engineering. The title is Flesh - it’s pretty far out.
My theory is that our sacrifice of fetuses is spawning a cult like behavior that rots other forms of cultural cohesion and we just dissolve into factions, in some areas tribes, while other metro areas rise, fall. On occasion I see it like a version of Things To Come by HG Wells, yet the collapse is triggered so that the elite can descend from the sky and “rescue” us. You might find watching the 1930s film Things To Come interesting, as Britain falls briefly into tribalism in the manner that you describe.
Abortion was widespread in Biblical times, in Rome and all around, and they were far more conservative than we are now. Which is something the various Bible writers don't even bother to mention. How does that fit into your U.S.-specific theorizing?
"Abortion kills our society!" Cruzbot theorizing. Does that also apply to, say, Japan? The U.S. had abortions more than a hundred years ago, but I guess that's inconvenient to mention. We've had abortion all over the world since way before Roman times and up until the present, I guess it "rots" us for thousands of years and prevents civilization.
The neocons and their allies in the media promoted Evangelicals as loyal supporters, with preachers who approve of mass immigration and wars and sanctions for Israel. They get to have one issue of their own, abortion, because it doesn't hurt the elite media Jews, but helps them by crippling the Republican party. Leading to more mass immigration and future permanent leftist election victories.
You get to have that one issue for moral grandstanding, and you love that it's easy: You just have to yell "kill babies!" to shout down opposition. You don't need to learn any complicated issues that take place in the world.
Who agrees with you? A handful of Third World countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, Egypt, Laos and the Philippines. And I happen to know they can still get abortions in the Philippines. Oh, and Malta and Andorra - stamp-sized countries where women can easily travel to the neighbors with the same language, so the tiny countries can grandstand about religion with no actual consequences.
You join the club of Third World countries with 5% of the world's population. Everyone else is "killing babies!" by allowing abortion according to you. Wow, those 95% must be vicious murderers and killers of civilization! Lucky that you and Nicaragua know the truth!
Turns out your fanaticism severely hurt the GOP in the last midterms, because whatever people say to pollsters, they do NOT want to be randomly saddled with pregnancy for women. ("Then they just don't have to have sex! And they just have to use birth control! But not pills, that's evil too says the celibate Pope!") People have sex - I know, it's terrible that we are like people have always been. Women don't want that to randomly lead to them having to be pregnant for nine months and then take care of kids before they want kids. Men don't want to involuntarily have kids and also possibly have to pay child support for eighteen years.
But you ignore that, push a poison pill that hands the Left permanent victories, allows them to fill the country with mass immigration and kill our future, which also means the Left's abortion laws will prevail indefinitely. Well done! The neocons laugh as you shoot yourself in the foot.
The vast majority of Americans will agree to a law that allows abortion until viability. Now, there are those on the Left who will say "all the way up until the end of pregnancy" just to be visible in the media, and these are the kind of crazies you have enabled. But look at Sweden - where abortion is limited to week 15, and after that you need a health board's approval. No radical conservative country, that. Lifting up this example and others would be the smart way for the GOP to push for a reasonable law most people can agree on and quiet the Dem radicals. But that would require the GOP to be dominated by intelligent people.
Thank you for this, very interesting. We have the blueprint for what works. The Constitution. After the storm passes, and we decide to return to civilization, my hope is that someone will have had the good sense to preserve this document and start there - with lessons learned.
The document with no race law?
Imagine all the other societies in the West and elsewhere, how stupid we are for not having the hallowed liberal U.S. Constitution. Not at all an arrogant attitude there. The Constitution means good civilization, just look how well it turned out.
"But if everyone FOLLOWED it, it would work!"
It's the same as in "if everyone was a pacifist, pacifism would work!"
Or "if everyone was a communist willing to share equally, communism would work!"
Typical head-in-the-clouds theories. The question isn't how great it is if people would just follow it. The question is if it can make people follow it. The Constitution obviously couldn't. It was easily set aside as early as when Lincoln did it and ruled as a dictator. And for that he got his head on Mount Rushmore.
The only method of government that is able to self-correct is the our Constitutional government. Not sure what you mean by ‘race law’. You’re right that it was created for a moral society. Setting up a good system isn’t enough. We must return to a moral standard, or the only way for us to be governed will be with an iron fist.
“influx of Muslim barbarians into Europe”? You left out mentioning climate change and political destabilization as the reasons for Muslim refugees from Northern Africa and the Middle East, seeking political stability and potable water, for this influx, didn’t you?
I have forwarded this to my tiny network with the words "This is very long, very well written (just a handful of typos) and highly informative, esp about vanished civilisations of which I knew nothing. It is about how civilisations end more than it is about tribes. I cannot recommend it too highly. But it is patient, so make a copy to re-read later, "