21 March 2023
One of the inherent moral flaws of the West is the notion that society has a claim on your material productivity.
This began with the Germanic barbarian culture that invaded the dying Roman Empire. It was a basic assumption of the Germanic lords that they personally owned the land they conquered, and the people were part of the land. Thus, the land was supposed to be the source of wealth, and it had darned sure better pay off in some way, so the people on that land better get to work. The ownership of productivity had nothing to do with common welfare in their minds; it was the personal welfare of the lord. You owed him your productivity; it was his by natural right.
The Germanic invaders didn't actually have a tribal structure. Medieval feudalism does make some allowance for a national identity, but it wasn't based on the assumption that the nobles were one with the people they ruled. The lords typically despised their subjects; there was nothing of the shepherd role in their power. A genuine tribal social structure means self-adherence among the people because even the leadership is part of the same family. Covenant leaders are responsible for the welfare of everyone in their household. Under the Covenant, your family is your government. In western tradition, you will always be ruled by strangers. There were virtually no extended family households except among the aristocracy. Everyone else was intentionally kept poor to avoid them developing much of tribal identity. Their identity was appointed by their rulers.
The Jewish elite in the Middle Ages found the aristocracy a serious threat, so part of the effort was to raise up a merchant middle class that would envy aristocratic comfort, but were too materialistic to adopt any actual nobility of character. The result of anti-feudalism of the western sort was the Enlightenment.
While the rhetoric and mythology changed with the coming of the Enlightenment, there remained a de facto aristocracy that ruled the population from outside the common people. Part of the game was to substitute a sense of society that replaced a formal aristocracy, without actually admitting that it was simply a new aristocracy that ruled by manipulation. Democracy with an increasingly inclusive voting franchise was instituted precisely to break up any nascent tribal identity that naturally arises among oppressed people. Your ruling regime would simply use the language of democracy and a prohibition of formal aristocracy to foster the myth that society as a whole could rule itself. Of course, society at large was always forced to choose from a narrow range of approved candidates for election to government office, and policies were always in the hands of this cloaked ruling class.
Jay DiNitto points out something very important in a comment on the Radix Fidem blog: "A tribal social structure is too much for people [westerners] to handle because it means (at least to them) that material gain isn't the end goal. We'd lose a lot of fancy toys. Technological advancement would be slow and probably occur by casual happenstance, but they rightly perceive the goal of tribal societies as being a-technological."
It's all built into the assumptions behind your choices. In the mythology of the West, tribal feudalism is oppressive, but the atomizing power of "democracy" is somehow holy. In divine revelation, the only real power to resist oppression is a tribal identity; even gangs understand this. They cling together and act as one because it forces the ruling elite to recognize that they can't command the productivity of those in a gang. Gangs compete with the reigning aristocracy for plunder. It turns out that a genuine covenant community is just another kind of gang. Criminal gangs are interested in harvesting a bigger share of economic prosperity. A covenant "gang" is trying ditch materialism in the first place.
The ruling elite are convinced that they have so boxed in the population that there is no threat from any genuine biblical community arising. For the most part, they are correct. It is exceedingly difficult to get ordinary people to even consider the basic prerequisites of Covenant life. It's all too foreign and suspicious, too much of what they assume is evil. The typical response is that an otherworldly community threatens their livelihood by refusing to bear their part of the burden. Thus, we hear references to "hippie commune" when we talk about a covenant community.
What the ruling elite don't quite grasp is that God is not restricted by their efforts to define Him and His revelation out of existence. The breakdown they have engineered is the best opportunity we have to reassert God's revelation in the lives of the people. Yes, the other kind of gangs will become even more prevalent at the same time, but that's because the conditions that favor them also favor us. In God's Word, your covenant family is your only valid government.
Stay the Covenant course. In due time, we shall reap a harvest of souls.
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