Honor, Genocide, Pride

Histories always seem to overlap. I'm going to assess a few and relate collective cultural sins to the fates which eventually befell those who perpetrated, let me starts with the Greeks, which is almost too damn easy. I mean lots of Greek men could get almost nothing short of getting sot drunk off huge urns of heavy fortified wine, and conceptualizing, because they couldn't pick their head up out of their closest male friends crotch from blowing his genitals long enough to do much else. Then they would murder their father so they could have sex with their mother for fuck sakes. Their real sin was pride. The Persians were excellent administrators and were incredibly progressive and tolerated tremendous diversity in the vast empire that Darius and Xerxes came to rule and their knowledge of how to run things so that they worked effectively could have combined with the Greeks vast skill in numerous craft and academic pursuits and this partnership could have led to vast expanses of infinite potential but the intellectual might of the Greeks was applied militarily to rebuff the Persians which left them drained and they were diminished. The Romans, one of the basest ever to walk the Earth (they even had specific places called vomitoriums to purge during festivals so they could drink, eat, and orgy non-stop) walked into Greece and took everything Greek and modified it, effectively ending Greek culture as an independent Mediterranean identity. Then they got the second dose of humility via the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks whom ravaged Greece and the Balkans from roughly the 1300's until the Balkan Wars of the early 1900's. Pride and insistence on individuality can often lead to intense victimization as the Greeks found out. The Turks were running for their lives because another Turkic people the Tangut had shown their dishonorable side to a man named Temudjin, the world would recognize him by the title he later held, Genghis Khan, the Great Khan of the Mongol of the Sea of Grass. Tangut royalty bought him for sale as a slave because of his defiant character and put him in a cage with a sign which read "mongol who wanted to destroy the Tangut empire". A buddhist monk visit him at the square while he sat in his cage. He told Temudjin he could see he was a man of great destiny and he would make those whom had made him a side show attraction for mockery pay dearly for their great disrespect. He asked Temudjin to spare his monastery because they had great works of literature, rare plants in the garden, and other treasures of his order. Temudjin replied matter of fact that he was a nomad and did not read or cultivate. He told him that if he got word to his wife (who was loyal to them as a unit of heart, and would go to any length for them) that he gave his word that his monastery would not be harmed. The monk went to Mongolia and died along the way but delivered the message and she came and freed Temudjin. The monastery of the monk still stands to this day and Tangut are no more. Temudjin had but 3 laws, 1. never hurt women and children, 2. never forget debts whether good or bad, 3. never betray your Khan. As violent a reputation as the horde developed if the city walls were open and he was allowed to walk in unchallenged then no harm would come to anyone, if he was made to breach the walls then every man would be butchered and every woman and child would be slaved out. It was a promise which he was known for and which he never failed to honor. The most extreme case I have saved to address last, it is the case of the Hebrew. When the slaves came out of Egypt and into Canaan they had a chance to live in peace and be friends to new neighbors, but the strategy devised by Moses himself was to butcher every Canaanite including pregnant women, new born babies, goats and chicken even because they, exclusively, are god's people and are culling the promised land of all the unclean and unrighteous, damn that sounds bigoted. They wanted to give the clear message that they would share with no one and the only option for those who wished to live was to leave Canaan, their home, entirely. Who gives that message to people whom they just meet save for selfish psychotic zealot bastards. Depending upon what individuals believe, a case could probably be made that the Jewish god itself may have selected the Germans as the most efficient people to give the Jews back the same treatment they had transgressed against the Canaanites through having been so unwise as to misinterpret the purpose of their duty and the potential of the opportunity they had as one of the peoples of a land. For the Jews it is an incredibly short turnaround how quickly the oppressed become the oppressor. They did it again as soon as they got back to the land of Palestine. They just haven't learned a damn thing from the journey they have taken or, worse in my opinion, they don't think it is them who has anything to learn, but that everyone else needs to accept the reality of deferring to them as the most narcissistic bastards to ever have disgraced the face of the mother with their diamond cutting, money lending, interest charging, exclusive people of god, presence. For their sake, they better be what they say and not just interest charging to working families of modest means with a great sob story about how they have been mistreated by everyone outside of their tradition because the people of god will always be misunderstood. The finance game which European business interests wanted and Jewish merchants could provide has helped to create economies which don't know sustainability, community wide work sharing or responsibility, and are designed not to aspire to being local in all aspects from raw materials to finished product

Primer

I've had lots of thoughts recently in the realm of community and its removal from the cannon or pantheon of humanity. My problem/gripe with what people think of as their community/neighborhood is that it possesses no sense of collective or fellowship in any substantial way. We have become more like solitary wondering nomads who, mostly, randomly intersect at various venues where people who have no heart set up to profit off of individuals and families to give a false sense, even in the most vague and shallow way, that there is some community or fellowship, which is false. I think there is a wisdom to be found in scaling the immediate network that we deal with on a daily basis down to a human level but intensifying the relations within the network. This is possible through the "quarter" method, which I'm not proposing here because I don't like the idea of having walled sections of urban space zoned as the physical boundary of another's reality. The second option for the scaling down to a human level our society as the agrarian commune in line with the back to the land movement, and before that the Jewish communities in Palestine of the first half of the twentieth century, and previously the ashram, etc. Something I know about what these endeavors would have to include is a mission greater than individual, group, and most certainly money, that it served. I cannot understand it as an extension of one wisdom tradition's culmination as in the Ashram for Hinduism. To me it would have to be more philosophically vague to make it more humanly inclusive. Serving the collective should then be assessed based upon what is needed, what skills one has, what essentials have been established and can be improved upon, et cetera. Example, you don't start out with grain silos before you have root cellars. Kind of basic but for humans you have to make sure and just go ahead and say it. The old English social medicine system is kind of a model I can use as an example. Biomes can be divided into local cells and all levels of the community can and should take part in them sustainably from raw materials harvest to ever creatively diversifying forms of finished products and distribution of them. In a real way this should be the educational system of the children in each cell thus eliminating theoretical educational systems and the scum companies such as logging companies which get in the way of our stewardship of community resources as our National Forests are. Closer relation that is direct is a saving grace. Look at what has happened to the food system by our acquiescence to not have to involve ourselves in that aspect of this world of which we are a part. If you don't know, here it is: business has turned us into ignorant slobs who dig on a plethora of poison and don't know it and prefer not to be told because, "It tastes good.", which is pathetic. I can see all levels of what humans do being on community cell levels from raw materials harvest to advanced scientific pursuits to rival any ivy league institution if the community cell has heart and believes in it's self.