What comes first?

Lua de Proverbia

Without exception, all communities that abide have a unique and specific ideology, or faith, or set of principles, which they accept unquestioningly, and which they attempt to practice to the greatest extent possible. I decided to use the term “ideology” because it is the most neutral term and gets us away from discussing the intricacies of religion versus other types of ideology. It may be argued that all ideologies possess an element of faith. Even faith in science is still just faith: the scientist believes that the truth is discoverable through experiment rather than, say, revelation, and, as is usually the case with ideology, it is pointless to argue either way. One either accepts it, and passes, or does not, and flunks out. If you join a community, you either accept its ideology, or you don't join.

This makes it quite unsurprising that all communities that persist over historical periods of time possess an ideology, and they all share certain traits with regard to it: they do not debate it or question it and they spend very little time articulating it, sometimes encapsulating it in a small number of dictums, sometimes leaving much unsaid (but understood by all) by acting in accordance with an unquestioned set of taboos or prescriptions. But it is never optional, and if acting in accordance with the ideology becomes impossible, then the community faces an existential crisis that can bring it to the brink of dissolution.

It is sometimes left entirely up to the observer to try to articulate the details of the ideology of a group based on its observed behaviors, which can often seem to be a meaningless set of superstitions. For instance, if you happen to be a Russian, then you must never let money pass hand to hand but set it down on some surface; you must never carry on a conversation or hand objects over a threshold; you must never leave an empty liquor or wine bottle standing on the table; you must look at yourself in the mirror if you leave the house and return because you forgot something; and so on and so forth. If you fail to abide by any of these, then that is seen as inviting bad luck on you and those around you. Is there an underlying ideology? Probably not.

Russian taboos and superstitions are run-of-the-mill, but the Roma have elevated the use of taboo to a totalistic system, an alternative cosmology that has safeguarded their separatism and ethnic purity for something like a thousand years even as their numbers have climbed to over ten million, making them one of the largest stateless ethnic groups on the planet. Their concept of marimé, which is translated as contamination or state defilement, and the myriad taboos that are designed to avoid it, extends to everything: relations with non-Roma, to other Roma, to one's own children, and even to one's own body. Marimé is a rather more serious matter than bad luck, and those seen as contaminating or contaminated are quite likely to be shunned, which is almost a death sentence for a member of a tight-knit community that relies on mutual self-help for survival.

The Hutterites have a uniquely well-articulated ideology based on one's conscious acceptance of Christ as one's personal savior. In seeking salvation, the task of the individual is to overcome his will and to dedicate himself to serving the church, which is one and the same as the community. The specific term used is Gelassenheit, or submission: one must give oneself up totally to God through humility, obedience and sincerity; one must also give up material possessions and to suffer, even unto martyrdom. The physical realm is to be used to provide a modest living, but beyond that any surplus or excess of wealth can be put to just one purpose: to glorify God and to spread the word of God to the fallen world beyond the church/community. But in general the world is to be shunned, for it is contaminating and full of vice. Once of the vices to be avoided is the vice of intellectualism: the Hutterites do not interpret the word of God or elaborate a doctrine because the word of God is there for all to see. Thus, there are no Hutterite theologians and no Hutterite priesthood. The spiritual authority of the church/community is direct and personal, and its goal is nothing less than to restore Christianity to the way Christ practiced it.

It is notable that adherence to the ideology is never absolute, and that there is always room for compromise. The Roma are sometimes forced to spend time in prison, where they have to use the same eating utensils as non-Roma inmates, breaking a taboo. The Hutterites violate their ban on newspapers and magazines to stay abreast of the latest developments in agriculture and to participate in local politics. The Amish allow themselves to be bussed to jobs where they earn money to pay taxes. The Orthodox Jews, who cannot operate equipment on Sabbath, program elevators in high-rise buildings to continuously cycle, stopping at every floor, so that they can get, albeit slowly, where they need to go. But such deviations from the true path must remain circumscribed, and motivated by necessity rather than urge or whim, or they can easily develop into an existential crisis. One of the worst examples of such an egregious violation of stated principles that I've heard of occurred at a permaculture class, where a meal was included with the course. The meal consisted of pasta and sauce... purchased at Walmart. In the context of an ideology of drawing sustenance directly from nature, is this equivalent to redefining Walmart as an edible forest garden? What's next? Fishing with dynamite? One begins to suspect that the permaculturalists teaching the course didn't believe what they were teaching and were simply there to collect the rather hefty tuition. This is the danger of ignoring ideology: the loss of esteem can be quite sudden, and painful.

How an ideology emerges to start with is usually something of a mystery. It may arrive fully formed from the mists of time, or be based on some foundational myths, or be introduced as a revelation, or some combination of these. As a counterexample, the Hutterites, as well as other Anabaptists (believers in adult baptism) got started by reading the Bible for themselves, and finding out that Christ never once mentioned a lot of the stuff the Roman priests were demanding of them, such as, specifically, infant baptism. While the priests of other denominations made excuses for introducing pedobaptism by throwing around big words like “theology” and “covenant,” the Anabaptists, seeing such intellectualism as a vice, simply stopped allowing it. This exposed them to persecution by Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican and Catholic authorities, only strengthening their resolve.

However it is arrived at, it would appear that there are three requirements with respect to community ideology: 1. it must exist; 2. it must not be questioned; and 3. it must have practical application. It is the last point—how it is applied in daily life—that results in much deliberation and discussion, because, although exceptions are inevitable, they must be motivated by something more than whim, taste, personal predilection, or comfort and pleasure.

One commonality that all community ideologies seem to share is that they put the community's interests first: they all seek to block out elements from surrounding society that they find to be undesirable, be they violence or vice or other harmful practices, and they all seek to promote practices that will nurture and safeguard the inner realm. Perhaps this is all the ideology, in its purest sense, that is really needed. But then what is considered undesirable and blocked out often comes down to a question of culture, individual taste and circumstance, and this gets complicated rather quickly.

The Amish are quite notorious for their rejection of numerous elements of the “English” culture that surrounds them. They exclude cars, preferring buggies. They do not allow electricity in the house, but they allow pay-phones to be installed outside. They do not allow motor vehicles of any sort, but allow stationary internal combustion engines for pumping water, threshing grain and so on. They do not allow pictures (since the Second Commandment says “Thou shalt not create graven images”) but do allow them in their schools, for teaching children. They do not purchase clothing, sewing it themselves from cloth purchased in bulk, but they do purchase their shoes. All of these practices make them, in the eyes of the surrounding population, quaint, or strange, or old-fashioned, or downright bizarre.

But what's really bizarre is that if you start with the simplest possible community ideology you can, which is “My family comes first,” and then get to work systematically blocking out all that obviously harms it, you will in due course find yourself some distance down the road toward becoming rather quite like the Amish yourself. I speak from experience. Here are some examples:

1. Most people drive, but cars are quite harmful, with traffic accidents a leading cause of death. They are harmful even if you manage to stay alive. Case in point: it is required that a carbon monoxide detector be installed on boats; if CO level goes above a certain threshold, it flashes “Evacuate!” and blares an alarm. But the CO detectors are not found in cars, for a very good reason: they'd be flashing “Evacuate!” in just about every highway tunnel and traffic jam. CO is harmful, even in relatively small doses, especially to little children. Therefore, we do not have a car. We do rent one, once in a while, if necessary.

2. Most people watch television, although it is probably the worst possible waste of time imaginable. (The US leads the world in time spent watching television per capita, with UK in second place.) Television “programming” is an apt term: it programs the mind with harmful cultural clichés and consumer behaviors, and is detrimental to maintaining a healthy culture. Therefore, we do not watch television (but we do watch Netflix). An exception is sometimes made for cultural and educational shows on channels that do not carry advertising.

3. Internet addiction is rampant. For many people, the pixels flashing on their screens replace more and more of the world, turning them into technology-dependent zombies. But Internet access is something of a necessity, and thus we have a rule: Internet cannot be used for entertainment. Exception: children can watch cartoons on Youtube (but only Russian ones, because American ones are violent). This is a hard rule to enforce, because the Internet has evolved to blur the line, and even when reading something useful, one is always just a click away from some ripe stinking nonsense.

4. Once you start reading the contents listings on packaged foods and learn what all the chemicals are and what they do to human metabolism (over 50% of Americans will have diabetes by 2020, that's what!) the obvious outcome is that both packaged foods from stores and fast food from restaurants is banned. All food must be prepared from scratch and from fresh ingredients. (By the way, this one step suddenly brings us into culinary alignment with the Roma, the Amish, the Hutterites and a fair number of other successful groups as well.)

5. Eliminating television and the Internet for entertainment puts the family largely out of reach of professional team sports, but, to make it explicit, these are banned as well. Professional team sports are a source of fake tribalism (while what's needed is the real thing). There is no such thing as Red Sox nation—just a bunch of people drinking beer while watching television. Plus, many team sports (American football and Hockey especially) glorify violence, undermining the message that violence is a symptom of a mental disorder. So, professional team sports are banned as well.

6. One of the most corrupting influences comes from marketing and advertising (with corporate underwriting in third place). I became aware of just how socially corrosive it is after working for an ad agency for a year. Most people would not buy what the ad agencies produce: nobody (but a cretin) goes to the Apple store and tries to pay for an iPod poster to frame and hang on the wall of their bedroom. And yet that is what we do when we buy advertised products: we buy the advertising. The solution is to block it out: we have a ban on publications that contain advertising, the ban on television takes care of TV ads, and AdBlocker Plus takes care of banner ads on the Internet. Some advertising does seep through, via billboards, product sponsorships and so on. The solution is to avoid any product or company that promotes itself in this “in your face” manner, and to find products and companies through careful research and word of mouth.

7. The military is another institution that promotes fake tribalism (instead of the real thing), perpetuates a culture of violence, plus (if you are even the tiniest bit religious) it's a bit of a concern that it routinely violates the First Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”). The Bible provides no special dispensation for collateral damage. Serving in the military is a good way to get maimed, poisoned or killed. The military tends to find it politically expedient to deny that it caused a wide variety of mysterious injuries from which veterans suffer. The US military loses more people to suicide than to any other cause. It is therefore very important to not serve in the military. Refusing to serve in the military puts you in perfect agreement with the Roma, the Amish, the Hutterites, Orthodox Jews (even in Israel, although they seem to be in the process of losing their exemption) and many other communities that abide. Pacifism is definitely a best practice when it comes to communities that abide.

8. There are many Americans who are, on the one hand, exceptionally litigious, constantly running to the lawyers and the courts to resolve their conflicts, and, on the other, live in constant fear of lawsuits and of being held liable, demanding that people sign disclaimers and waivers and so on, and being forced to buy ridiculous amounts of liability insurance. It is best to avoid such people, and also to avoid lawyers and the courts. Doing so would align you with the Amish, who never sue and generally avoid the legal system, as well as the Roma, who only resort to official justice to bring false accusations against someone who has disobeyed an order from their internal tribal court, called kris, which is only summoned in dire situations. This is usually enough to bring the person into compliance, and the false accusation is then withdrawn.

I could go on and on, but just these few items should give you a flavor of the choices one is practically forced to make simply by taking just these two steps: accepting the “My family/tribe comes first” pledge, and translating it into action by eliminating all that can be shown, quite obviously and directly, to cause it harm. Once you manage to do this for your family, you will find yourself in a position to join forces with other families that have done the same, at which point you will be well on the way to forming a viable tribe.

Will such practices save the world? Of course not! But then is that world—a world of obese diabetics who have been turned into zombified consumers by countless hours of television-watching and Internet addiction—worth saving? And is this question even worth asking, seeing as there is a much more important question that is as yet unanswered, which is: What comes first?