New Year and New You and All That Happy Horseshit

I was trading emails with Pastor Joe Fox of Viking Preparedness recently, and he suggested I repost some of my old Auxiliary articles for folks. Since I always LISTEN to officers, even if I don’t always agree with them, I listened. I decided, in this case, he was correct, so, for my last post of 2018, I’m going to post a couple of old Auxiliary articles, going back as far as 5 or 6 years, on Auxiliary considerations, especially as they pertain to the tribal functions needed for surviving the current slide.

At the end of this, there is some important news for the upcoming year’s goals for us here at Mountain Guerrilla and on the Mosby farm.

______________________________________

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
(originally posted 28JUL16)

The title of this article is an old proverb that I’ve heard my entire life. Having spent all of my life except the decade I spent in uniform, living in rural locations, I’ve understood the truth of it, at least on the surface, for most of the last four decades. It wasn’t until I really started thinking about the lessons of tribalism that I was raised with, while writing Forging The Hero, that I really started understanding the deeper meanings though, despite it unconsciously being a core tenet of the philosophy I’ve lived my life by.

Good fences make good neighbors is directly related to the cultural concepts of innangarth and utangarth that I discussed in Forging The Hero. It is critically relevant to building tribal, resilient communities, both for intra-tribal relationships, and for inter-tribal relations. It’s really a large part of the core of “building rapport” and “winning hearts and minds.”

Boundaries are Boundaries

My innangarth is my tribe. It is composed of the people that I know and trust, and have frith with, because of our shared experiences of shared values, customs, and traditions. Within my innangarth though, there are layers of trust and closeness as well. My household, composed of myself, HH6, and our children are my absolute innermost circle. Outside of them are my kith and kin, then there is another layer of frith, indirectly, with their kith and kin, before looking over the outer walls of the community/tribe, at the rest of the world, whom I don’t know and trust, and are—by definition—utangarth, or “outside.”

It is safe to say, while I DO share cultural values, customs, and traditions, with my kith and kin, I don’t agree with them on everything. There may even be things that are important to me that they disagree with me on, and vice versa (it’s true, I can assure you). That’s okay though, as long as those disagreements are not detrimental to the CORE values, customs, and traditions of the tribe, and as long as practicing those do not violate the orlog, or “laws” of the tribe.

As an example, within the tribe, what my friend or my cousin does, with his family, inside of his family and home, is none of my business…as long as it doesn’t violate the CORE values, customs, and traditions of the tribe. This is an important distinction, that is too often overlooked by too many folks. If my cousin or friend is molesting his child, that is definitely a violation of the CORE values, custom, and traditions of our tribe. That is not acceptable, and it’s not something that we’re going to ignore, because of the belief that “good fence make good neighbors.” Some of OUR core values include, a) children are sacred gifts, and the future of the tribe, and so, must be protected, and b) we believe in protecting those that are incapable of protecting themselves from harm. As such, if this were to occur, there would only be a couple of viable options that would restore the frith of the tribe as a whole…1) would be burying the rotten piece of shit in a deep hole in the woods. 2) would be—possible–turning him over to the “justice” system, for prosecution (assuming he was actually adequately punished, by which I mean, at least the majority of the rest of his natural life in prison. Otherwise, we’d have to resort to #1).

The same would apply—in my tribe—with someone that beat their wife, except that in this case, there is the third option of outlawry, casting them out of the protection of the tribe. In today’s society, that doesn’t mean much, since he could, at least in theory, move to another town or state, and start over, with no one knowing his past, but, it protects OUR people. Ideally of course, such a scumbag would never make it through the initiatory process of inclusion into the clan.

On the other side of the coin however, if my cousin drinks more than I approve of, or decides he wants to smoke pot? It’s none of my fucking business, as long as he is upholding the core values of tribe. If he shows up sloshed for Thanksgiving Dinner at Grandma’s, and pisses on her kitchen floor? Now, he’s violated cultural mores and values, and recompense is due. If he’s losing job after job, and not able to pay rent, and keep a roof over his wife and kid’s heads? Now, there’s an issue we’ve got to deal with. Just drinking more than I think is “okay?” None of my fucking business. Making it my business is going to damage the frith of the tribe (obviously, if your religion believes that consuming ardent spirits is a sin, this particular example doesn’t apply. If you can’t extrapolate from there however, a) you’re an idiot, and b) your understanding of your religion must not be very good.)

So, how does that apply to intentional tribes, such as those discussed in Forging The Hero? It’s pretty simple really (notice that I did not say it was “easy”). You MUST define your core values. These need to be those values that you absolutely, positively, are non-negotiable on. I can’t tell you what those are, because it’s almost certain that yours are not the same as mine, and I won’t tell you what mine are, because they’re none of your fucking business.

When you start looking at a prospective kinsman; someone that has been hanging around, because of shared interests, it becomes critical that you look at them through the lens of those non-negotiable core values. Do they share those values? How do you know? Do they express those values through the same customs and traditions that you do?

Those core values are what matter. The other things? The things dude does in his own home? As long as they don’t violate your core values, they’re none of your business. If there is something he does that you can’t abide, then obviously, you didn’t do a very good job of defining what your core values actually are, did you?

Building Rapport and Winning Hearts and Minds
“Winning hearts and minds,” a phrase first codified by French General Lyautey, in the 19^th century, is one that has gotten a really, really bad reputation, because of misapplication in the popular imagination, and by fuckwit politicians, who really don’t understand what the phrase actually refers to.

Winning hearts and minds is NOT about winning over your enemy. Once they’ve decided they need to kill you, for whatever reason, the only way to change their mind is to kill enough of them that their desire to live outweighs whatever urge led them to violence in the first place.

However…

There is still a place for “winning hearts and minds,” and that place is where “good fences make good neighbors” comes into play for the prepared tribe, during the Decline of Empire. The goal of “winning hearts and minds” is not to convert the enemy; it is to convert those of the population not on the enemy’s side, or your side, to either come to your side, or—worst case—stay neutral to the hostilities.

So, how does that apply in this context?

Minding your own damned business!

Not everyone in your community is going to be part of your tribe. At the same time however, that doesn’t necessarily make them the “enemy,” unless you force them to choose the other team to support. If you start looking for reasons to be a dick, or just end up being a dick because of negligence on your part, you WILL drive people to the opposition, and that is a negative outcome for you.

This does not, however, mean that you need to—or should—ignore the behavior of outsiders, when that behavior is antithetical to your core values. Unless you know what your core cultural values are, however, defining what is antithetical to them is impossible. That means someone else—in our world, this generally means either a) one of the political parties, or b) the media, and I’m including bloggers like myself, and social media in category B—will be defining what is antithetical to what they think your core values should be.

If another tribe or group exists within your community, they may be potential allies, even though they don’t share all of your values. They may not share your core values—if they did, they’d probably be members of your tribe—but as long as their core values and your core values are not antithetical, there is no reason that you cannot develop a mutually rewarding inter-tribal relationship with them, if you define your own core cultural values, instead of letting someone from the GOP or DNC define what your core values “should be.”

(And yes, I know for a fact that this blog has readers that vote R and D. I also know that there are readers of this blog who have allowed their respective political party define what their core cultural values “should be.” If you’re surprised at that idea, you’re probably one of them…)

There may be groups in your community who seem to be ideal allies, but once you look deeper, you begin realizing that their core values and your core values are antithetical, meaning there is no way you can have a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship. We’ve seen this in international relations, when the USG supports a force somewhere, following the adage, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That is unmitigated stupidity. “The friend of my friend is my friend,” is true, if you choose your friends well, but “the enemy of my enemy” may very well be a complete scumbag, who is just as much your enemy as your enemy.

Conclusion
So, what are your core cultural values that are non-negotiable? (That was a rhetorical question. Don’t fill my comment section with lists of what your cultural value are. I don’t give a shit). How many people in your current “prepper group” share those core values? How do you KNOW they share those values? Did they tell you so? Or, have you spent enough time with them to KNOW, through experience?

Are there other groups in your community that could be potential allies, even though they may have a different emphasis than you? (The correct answer is “yes,” 95% of the time—and yes, I made that percentage up, but I would wager it’s close) Are there other groups in your community that might seem like perfect potential allies, but if you really looked, they are natural opposition to you? Are you practicing—like a retard—the belief that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

What are your core cultural values? What customs and traditions do you use to exercise those values? Who do you know—who may not be a “prepper” as such—that shares those values, customs and traditions? That person—those people—should be the people you are looking to as “tribe” and “community,” for surviving and thriving, during the Decline of Empire.

(Finally, one hint about that last paragraph: All you tough guys who talk shit about your families? Where, exactly, do you fucking think your values and customs and traditions came from?)

—————————————————————————————-
I’ve been really remiss about posting any sort of quality content on this blog in the last year or two. The wife and I have been discussing this over the last couple of weeks, as we discussed our plans and goals for the new year (we don’t do “resolutions.” We state goals, and make plans to execute and achieve those goals). One of the things we decided is that one evening a week, I am going to dedicate a block of time to producing an article for the blog, and responding to emails, etc, instead of letting it slide for a couple of weeks, until I “get around to it.” Some of the limited number of  blogs I read online make it a practice of posting one article a week, and I have come to believe that this is because this is actually sustainable, especially when you have outside commitments that mercifully keep you from being glued to a computer every day.

So, the goal is: post a content article every week.

The plan to execute, in order to achieve that is, Mondays, instead of going straight home after the day job, I will go somewhere with Internet (we don’t have Internet at home. We have it on our phones obviously, but we’re far enough out that even cell service is very, very spotty), and do blog “work.”
——————————————————————————

Second, although they are aware of it by now, hopefully, for training drill subscribers, I have been particularly remiss about getting the drills out on schedule. I’ve gotten all of the drills out, but they’ve been resoundingly late a couple of times. Dedicating an evening a week to blog work means that I can remedy that as well, so drills will–from now on–go out on the Monday preceding their due date.

For those that have been considering subscribing to them, I believe the subscribers will acknowledge that, while delivery has been spotty as fuck, the content of the drills has been solid, and well worth the $5/drill that it pencils out at.

Additionally, I have informed subscribers that I am extending all current subscriptions until the end of 2020 (we have a decent number of subscribers to the drills, but it’s not so high that I’m killing myself financially to do so). I will go a step further, and put it out that, any subscriptions received by Monday 7JAN19, will receive the same expiration date, so you’re getting two years of solid training drills for the price of one year.

You can subscribe here.

———————————————————————————
I don’t currently have any open-enrollment classes scheduled for 2019 (and honestly, I’m busy enough with the day job, the farm, my own training group locally, and a new kid this past year, that I’m not terribly upset to be staying home most of the time, so I’ve not been putting much effort into trying to schedule any).

We do have a couple of smaller book projects coming pretty soon though. Neither is the carbine book, but both are ideas that have been suggested and requested by a number of people, a number of times over the last several years, that we’re going to bring to fruition, since I’m dedicating time to blog work anyway.

———————————————————————————

Finally, I hope you had a wonderful holiday season with kith-and-kin, and are ready to jump into the new year with renewed vigor for training and preparedness. I don’t foresee things getting better in the new year, except as we make them better, at the local level, so, focus on what you can do, locally, to improve life for yourself and the people you care about.

John