Great post. One area where I think much of the modern right is misguided is its high esteem for the nuclear family. I don’t think nuclear families are optimal at all; large, extended kinship networks seem far closer to what humans evolved for.
In my view, this is part of why modern marriage struggles so much. Sustaining a nuclear family places an enormous burden on two isolated adults, and that load is often simply too heavy. The idealisation of the 1950s, arguably the high point of the nuclear family model ends up being quite detrimental when treated as a timeless norm rather than a historical anomaly.
I also think prioritising the nuclear family has contributed to the broader atomisation of society, which shows up today in widespread loneliness and social fragmentation. I’m planning to write more on this, including how the dominance of the nuclear family may have unintentionally contributed to the rise of modern feminism.
Yeah grandparents are very important , there is a clear evolutionary reason for why women become infertile early in life compared to other species . This is for group cohesion reasons. I also think that people are geographically isolated from kin as well , which is a big thing ..
I mean, do you reject grandparents? Do you want grandparents to be uninvolved in their grandchildren's lives, or should they help the parents? Perhaps the reason why it is difficult to raise children nowadays is because the older generations are not allowed to help.
The nuclear family model is more economical in that labor can move to production and capital can treat workers as mobile Human Resources. Even the nuclear family is now being atomized to further boost capital efficiency, leading to a collapse of birthrates, depression, and ultimately society as a whole.
I’m not familiar with the acronym WEIRD. I looked it up and found: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Is this what you mean?
Very interesting essay with some very novel ideas, something rare and fascinating unlike most of the dreck and sloppy nonsense that floods my daily feed on this platform. This article along with a few other writers might just keep me from abandoning this platform. You got your points across very well and if you felt this was disorganized, then please do it again!
I could never figure out exactly why I found the tradcath and ‘aristocratic vitalist’ perspectives so uninspiring, and while I grasped the need to rediscover a more tribal identity, I hadn’t really considered the church, the aristocracy and the nuclear family itself as obstacles to that goal.
The way you lay it all out here really resonates. To echo other commenters, it doesn’t at all feel disorganised, and I certainly think the idea deserves to be developed further in future.
Trendy influencers claim longhouse culture was female dominated and hence “bad” but I don’t buy it unless it happened so far back in prehistory as to be pure conjecture.
I got longhoused literally yesterday but go off. My family structure is actually quite clannish but instead of providing opportunities it actually severely restricts them. Not enough to go around, parents more interested in their sibling factions than in their children's career development.
This is a good essay but it struggles with the basic fact that a lot of us still believe in civilization. And as convoluted as "aristocratic fascism" is as a concept in a covert that has never had either aristocracy nor the unity of the fasces, it's purpose is that it provides a direction forward for civilization.
Rebarbarizing will not help whites, except in the beverage sense of making them more cunning and brutal. Because the overall political tendency is not anti-civilizational (look at china and japan) but anti-white. They'll punish whites for any reason, not for being "too barbaric" or "not barbaric enough."
Well for example if you read Robert Graves The Greek Myths, he argues that in prehistory (roughly before 2000 BC) the greek world and Europe and the near east in general was run by female priestesses that regularly sacrificed men to the mother earth goddess. Then the Indo-Europeans / Mycenaeans / early greeks arrived, put Zeus et al over the Great Goddess (she was split into three lesser goddesses), stopped the human sacrifices, and more or less started civilization. In effect, ending the longhouse. This is still somewhat speculative.
Lots of people on the right seem to adopt a version of this narrative. Nevertheless the longhouse remains, and must be guarded against returning.
It's interesting that you picked what looks like a Viking longhouse as your emblem of independence and self sufficiency. There is a lot that can be learned by studying the Viking age - the spiritual mind-set, the community structure, and the relationships to the outside world.
Most conspiracy minded thinkers agree our elites are working towards a depopulation agenda. Many archeologists agree that the Viking age was preceded by the Volcanic winter of 536 - a natural depopulation event.
Perhaps the perspective of an outside, looking in at WEIRD from the outside, is what is warranted for our coming age.
If anyone want's to know what these awesome pre evil feudal paradises looked like you can go to Papua and get speared by a pre feudal native who oddly lives in a semi feudal system, watch them murder each other in clan wars and all the other awesomeness of child mortality female supremacy and long house wonder as in men don't farm because it's too important so it's women's work.
You can go to outback Australia and watch abo's spear each other, murder and eat infants rape and murder their daughters because that's just so much fun.
There was nothing awesome about these times they were just different, if you did something your chief didn't like and yes they have them, you could be punished just like in the evil feudal system and if your slave, I know slavery who knew, transgressed you could kill them while raping your female slaves, yes everyone had slavery.
Also exogamy is what everyone sane does between clans because banging your sister/brother or cousin tends to end badly see islam.
Interesting but misses some salient details of life in these societies and sure, how Europeans did this may have been vastly different to how browns do tribalism but it wasn't paradise any more than our modern neo feudal slave economies are paradise, there are just different tradeoffs.
Todd article but I will quibble with the feudalism analysis. Namely that feudalism is one of the most aggressively clannish forms of government imaginable where authority travels directly through personal bonds free of any institution. Furthermore feudal societies tend to be on the upper end of the most heavily armed societies ever just under barbarians that live near civilization. Through most of Europe it was normal that anyone above literal dirt farmers were required by law to own and train with weapons.
The early development of WEIRD is somewhat more complicated. Anthropologist Peter Frost has been studying this for decades and took a part in the debate on how it developed based on the genetic and historical research. My belief is that Western Hunter-Gatherer genes have a lot to do with it. It can be amplified by the elite, but it’s already there for them to exploit.
Another thing that complicates the picture is the Northumbrians who settled the Backcountry of America. Midtermed “Scot-Irish”, they were the most warlike of all English regional cultures during to 700 years of uncertain borders between England and Scotland. The thing is that they were both highly individualistic (they preferred a hermitage-type settlement and were self-starters) and also highly clannish (they lived within 5 hours’ march from each other). Which fits what we know about the early European warrior cultures on the marches.
The elite-common struggle is the ancient one, going back to the very first tribal kings, and it involves a lot of trade-offs. They need a king to lead the clans in war once population density reaches a certain point. But the clans’ independence can be a problem as Richard III found out when the powerful Percy family defected to Henry Tudor in the middle of battle. This can make for political instability that can undercut a great power like the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth where the aristocracy’s Golden Liberty undercuts any serious attempt to fight a war. Machiavelli discussed this conflict between the elite and the people in great detail. Both authority and a decentralized system are the goods we wanted to cultivate. We need an elite and we need intermediary institutions such as the clan, temple, fraternity, guild, and militia to check the elite. Individualistic attitude is needed to create men of strong will to challenge both bad kings and bad ideas to create an advanced society. We also need a tribal attitude to create the civil goods such as law and bridge, and eventually to escape Earth altogether to ensure the survival of our civilization against the Poo World and the aristocracy who love them.
This was a great read. It kind of blew my mind. I had never seen our social development described in this way. Could you please provide some suggestions for further reading on this topic?
Where are you getting the 2 percent of Romans were mobilised? That seems outrageously small as an estimate. Smallholders had to assemble, not just aristocracy, and they expanded the franchise multiple times to embiggen the army.
I got it from Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization, in the appendix. I was reading another book ('Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul' by Ralph Mathisen) largely a compilation of Roman primary sources with some commentary during the (gradual) invasion of Gaul and as far as I remember there was no expectation of the commoners to fight as the barbarians trickled in and made themselves home. They just moved or put up with it. It was a sobering read. Do you think that the Roman state from 100AD to 200AD ever mobilized more than 400,000 men at a single time?
I'm pretty sure the expectation of all citizens with the property requirements met always had to stand when called. Non citizen joined auxiliaries. The number overall surely matters less than how they were used. Outsiders just moving in sounds more like collapse of the state in that area rather than "domestication"
"Throughout all Gaul there are two orders of those men who are of any rank and dignity: for the commonality is held almost in the condition of slaves, and dares to undertake nothing of itself, and is admitted to no deliberation. The greater part, when they are pressed either by debt, or the large amount of their tributes, or the oppression of the more powerful, give themselves up in vassalage to the nobles, who possess over them the same rights without exception as masters over their slaves. But of these two orders, one is that of the Druids, the other that of the knights. The former are engaged in things sacred, conduct the public and the private sacrifices, and interpret all matters of religion." - Julius Caesar, The Gallic War.
What's the relevance of this to what I said? You're giving me Caesar's quotes on the organisation of the Gauls as he saw it, can't see how it bears on Rome's own actions, especially as the writer seems to be talking about times after his death?
I was writing in reference to the article, not responding to you, plus, I wrote this before you, so I think you are confused. Regardless, Caesar wrote about Gaul as he saw it, and he had plenty of time and contact to get to know the land and the people. If I remember correctly, the only book, or chapter, of "The Gallic War" written after his death by an associate was the last one, and it mostly deals with with the ramping up of the civil war with Pompey.
Great post. One area where I think much of the modern right is misguided is its high esteem for the nuclear family. I don’t think nuclear families are optimal at all; large, extended kinship networks seem far closer to what humans evolved for.
In my view, this is part of why modern marriage struggles so much. Sustaining a nuclear family places an enormous burden on two isolated adults, and that load is often simply too heavy. The idealisation of the 1950s, arguably the high point of the nuclear family model ends up being quite detrimental when treated as a timeless norm rather than a historical anomaly.
I also think prioritising the nuclear family has contributed to the broader atomisation of society, which shows up today in widespread loneliness and social fragmentation. I’m planning to write more on this, including how the dominance of the nuclear family may have unintentionally contributed to the rise of modern feminism.
Yeah grandparents are very important , there is a clear evolutionary reason for why women become infertile early in life compared to other species . This is for group cohesion reasons. I also think that people are geographically isolated from kin as well , which is a big thing ..
I mean, do you reject grandparents? Do you want grandparents to be uninvolved in their grandchildren's lives, or should they help the parents? Perhaps the reason why it is difficult to raise children nowadays is because the older generations are not allowed to help.
The nuclear family model is more economical in that labor can move to production and capital can treat workers as mobile Human Resources. Even the nuclear family is now being atomized to further boost capital efficiency, leading to a collapse of birthrates, depression, and ultimately society as a whole.
I’m not familiar with the acronym WEIRD. I looked it up and found: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Is this what you mean?
Very interesting essay with some very novel ideas, something rare and fascinating unlike most of the dreck and sloppy nonsense that floods my daily feed on this platform. This article along with a few other writers might just keep me from abandoning this platform. You got your points across very well and if you felt this was disorganized, then please do it again!
Yes that's the acronym. Thanks for the kind words, the slop infestation is a growing issue. Or maybe I've just started to notice it.
I could never figure out exactly why I found the tradcath and ‘aristocratic vitalist’ perspectives so uninspiring, and while I grasped the need to rediscover a more tribal identity, I hadn’t really considered the church, the aristocracy and the nuclear family itself as obstacles to that goal.
The way you lay it all out here really resonates. To echo other commenters, it doesn’t at all feel disorganised, and I certainly think the idea deserves to be developed further in future.
Trendy influencers claim longhouse culture was female dominated and hence “bad” but I don’t buy it unless it happened so far back in prehistory as to be pure conjecture.
I got longhoused literally yesterday but go off. My family structure is actually quite clannish but instead of providing opportunities it actually severely restricts them. Not enough to go around, parents more interested in their sibling factions than in their children's career development.
This is a good essay but it struggles with the basic fact that a lot of us still believe in civilization. And as convoluted as "aristocratic fascism" is as a concept in a covert that has never had either aristocracy nor the unity of the fasces, it's purpose is that it provides a direction forward for civilization.
Rebarbarizing will not help whites, except in the beverage sense of making them more cunning and brutal. Because the overall political tendency is not anti-civilizational (look at china and japan) but anti-white. They'll punish whites for any reason, not for being "too barbaric" or "not barbaric enough."
Well for example if you read Robert Graves The Greek Myths, he argues that in prehistory (roughly before 2000 BC) the greek world and Europe and the near east in general was run by female priestesses that regularly sacrificed men to the mother earth goddess. Then the Indo-Europeans / Mycenaeans / early greeks arrived, put Zeus et al over the Great Goddess (she was split into three lesser goddesses), stopped the human sacrifices, and more or less started civilization. In effect, ending the longhouse. This is still somewhat speculative.
Lots of people on the right seem to adopt a version of this narrative. Nevertheless the longhouse remains, and must be guarded against returning.
It's interesting that you picked what looks like a Viking longhouse as your emblem of independence and self sufficiency. There is a lot that can be learned by studying the Viking age - the spiritual mind-set, the community structure, and the relationships to the outside world.
Most conspiracy minded thinkers agree our elites are working towards a depopulation agenda. Many archeologists agree that the Viking age was preceded by the Volcanic winter of 536 - a natural depopulation event.
Perhaps the perspective of an outside, looking in at WEIRD from the outside, is what is warranted for our coming age.
Loved this. Thanks.
smashing read. I came here from Imperium Press...
Subscription earned!
If anyone want's to know what these awesome pre evil feudal paradises looked like you can go to Papua and get speared by a pre feudal native who oddly lives in a semi feudal system, watch them murder each other in clan wars and all the other awesomeness of child mortality female supremacy and long house wonder as in men don't farm because it's too important so it's women's work.
You can go to outback Australia and watch abo's spear each other, murder and eat infants rape and murder their daughters because that's just so much fun.
There was nothing awesome about these times they were just different, if you did something your chief didn't like and yes they have them, you could be punished just like in the evil feudal system and if your slave, I know slavery who knew, transgressed you could kill them while raping your female slaves, yes everyone had slavery.
Also exogamy is what everyone sane does between clans because banging your sister/brother or cousin tends to end badly see islam.
Interesting but misses some salient details of life in these societies and sure, how Europeans did this may have been vastly different to how browns do tribalism but it wasn't paradise any more than our modern neo feudal slave economies are paradise, there are just different tradeoffs.
Todd article but I will quibble with the feudalism analysis. Namely that feudalism is one of the most aggressively clannish forms of government imaginable where authority travels directly through personal bonds free of any institution. Furthermore feudal societies tend to be on the upper end of the most heavily armed societies ever just under barbarians that live near civilization. Through most of Europe it was normal that anyone above literal dirt farmers were required by law to own and train with weapons.
The early development of WEIRD is somewhat more complicated. Anthropologist Peter Frost has been studying this for decades and took a part in the debate on how it developed based on the genetic and historical research. My belief is that Western Hunter-Gatherer genes have a lot to do with it. It can be amplified by the elite, but it’s already there for them to exploit.
https://www.anthro1.net/p/reply-to-joseph-henrich
Another thing that complicates the picture is the Northumbrians who settled the Backcountry of America. Midtermed “Scot-Irish”, they were the most warlike of all English regional cultures during to 700 years of uncertain borders between England and Scotland. The thing is that they were both highly individualistic (they preferred a hermitage-type settlement and were self-starters) and also highly clannish (they lived within 5 hours’ march from each other). Which fits what we know about the early European warrior cultures on the marches.
The elite-common struggle is the ancient one, going back to the very first tribal kings, and it involves a lot of trade-offs. They need a king to lead the clans in war once population density reaches a certain point. But the clans’ independence can be a problem as Richard III found out when the powerful Percy family defected to Henry Tudor in the middle of battle. This can make for political instability that can undercut a great power like the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth where the aristocracy’s Golden Liberty undercuts any serious attempt to fight a war. Machiavelli discussed this conflict between the elite and the people in great detail. Both authority and a decentralized system are the goods we wanted to cultivate. We need an elite and we need intermediary institutions such as the clan, temple, fraternity, guild, and militia to check the elite. Individualistic attitude is needed to create men of strong will to challenge both bad kings and bad ideas to create an advanced society. We also need a tribal attitude to create the civil goods such as law and bridge, and eventually to escape Earth altogether to ensure the survival of our civilization against the Poo World and the aristocracy who love them.
Very well written. I'm of similar mind to many of your ideas.
Laurent Guyenot has a good essay on the same topic of WEIRD Europeans.
https://www.unz.com/article/watered-down-blood/
This was a great read. It kind of blew my mind. I had never seen our social development described in this way. Could you please provide some suggestions for further reading on this topic?
I didn't base this article off of any one book, but a wide reading of papers, snippets of books and my own reflection. It's hard to give a list
Where are you getting the 2 percent of Romans were mobilised? That seems outrageously small as an estimate. Smallholders had to assemble, not just aristocracy, and they expanded the franchise multiple times to embiggen the army.
I got it from Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization, in the appendix. I was reading another book ('Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul' by Ralph Mathisen) largely a compilation of Roman primary sources with some commentary during the (gradual) invasion of Gaul and as far as I remember there was no expectation of the commoners to fight as the barbarians trickled in and made themselves home. They just moved or put up with it. It was a sobering read. Do you think that the Roman state from 100AD to 200AD ever mobilized more than 400,000 men at a single time?
I'm pretty sure the expectation of all citizens with the property requirements met always had to stand when called. Non citizen joined auxiliaries. The number overall surely matters less than how they were used. Outsiders just moving in sounds more like collapse of the state in that area rather than "domestication"
"Throughout all Gaul there are two orders of those men who are of any rank and dignity: for the commonality is held almost in the condition of slaves, and dares to undertake nothing of itself, and is admitted to no deliberation. The greater part, when they are pressed either by debt, or the large amount of their tributes, or the oppression of the more powerful, give themselves up in vassalage to the nobles, who possess over them the same rights without exception as masters over their slaves. But of these two orders, one is that of the Druids, the other that of the knights. The former are engaged in things sacred, conduct the public and the private sacrifices, and interpret all matters of religion." - Julius Caesar, The Gallic War.
Educate yourself.
What's the relevance of this to what I said? You're giving me Caesar's quotes on the organisation of the Gauls as he saw it, can't see how it bears on Rome's own actions, especially as the writer seems to be talking about times after his death?
I was writing in reference to the article, not responding to you, plus, I wrote this before you, so I think you are confused. Regardless, Caesar wrote about Gaul as he saw it, and he had plenty of time and contact to get to know the land and the people. If I remember correctly, the only book, or chapter, of "The Gallic War" written after his death by an associate was the last one, and it mostly deals with with the ramping up of the civil war with Pompey.
It's under my comment as a reply, so you can see why I'd be confused ....