Overcoming In A Time of Crises and Uncertainty
December 8, 2022
Self-Sufficiency Begins With Having A Circle of Trust and Collaboration: The Power of Restoring A Modernized Version of the Ancient Extended Kinship Community Self-sufficiency even in the face of economic other crises, such as we have been witnessing these past few years, is not necessarily measured primarily in terms of how many supplies and reserves you have as an individual. Being part of a close circle of trust and collaboration, with mutual benefit and respect, is actually a much stronger foundation. A lone individual with a lot of supplies can just as much be a self-contained island of self-sufficiency as they can be prey to thieves or bandits and merely needing food or supplies is not the some hazard. What can a lone individual do when their employer makes some sort of requirement they cannot meet with a clean conscience or when the cancel mobs come knocking over some innocent thing said years before? A band of 20 or so adults whose credo is loyalty and mutual assurance in time of need is far greater a problem for would-be thieves or even cancel mobs than the most well supplied lone individual. Connect this band to a larger community of 120 people and connect this to a global network of people whose ideals, principles, practices, and goals are similar and you have an almost invulnerable form of common unity that cannot be gotten through easily to deprive any of its participants of their rights, well-being, safety, or wealth.
This small band or circle of trust and collaboration we call a kinship group, because our concept of kinship isn't just connected to blood relations but is mostly connected to a shared set of beliefs, values, and convictions from which common standards and norms are established for mutual benefit and profit. If you could count on such a band of 20 or so other local people, you would have a degree of self-sufficiency and personal freedom not hitherto known to yourself. Absolute similarity of beliefs, values, and convictions about social, cultural, economic, and even civic life is a necessary precursor to forming close-knit circles of trust with others. We may live in and even support a pluralistic society with diversity of sociocultural traditions and the like, but when it comes to our innermost circles of trust a remarkably high degree of common unity is required because so much is potentially shared, and sometimes risked in times of struggle, and we must know that the other people will have the same priorities and goals without any central hierarchy commanding them: this unity of action and expected behavior flows organically from the heart, not from the edicts of some commanding authority. Our groups of such circles of trust, recalling we name these circles of trust "kinship groups" of around 20 people, are basically around 5-8 kinship groups forming a sort of community of around 120 or so adults plus their dependents. We use a modernized form of extended familial community that comes from a more ancient and sacred model of the Greco-Roman extended household, the Oikos in Greek with all its clients or the Domus in Latin with all its clients. What is different is that instead of some hierarchy with a powerful patron, clients, and slaves our model is egalitarian and collegial but generally just as large and also based on the idea of mutual support and responsibility. Women and men of every sociocultural and economic status and of every possible race and ethnicity who have this same shared set of beliefs and values stand together as one, without needing a hierarchical authority lording over them. Note that these ideas are not specific or limited to our approach, ant group with its own defined norms and ideas as its basis can use these ideas and form their own kinship bonds. A wonderful ancient Greek word "koinonia" captures this concept as practiced. Often translated as fellowship, it has a far deeper meaning than some sort of potluck communal meal or just showing up to a church service. Koinonia was at times a strong formal bond of mutual support that, in ancient Rome at least, could even be legally binding (though this is not how we practice the concept). If you had koinonia with someone this meant that when they were in distress or crisis, you and everyone else they had this with were obliged to come to their aid. We don't recommend a legalistic form of koinonia, but the concept of such mutual assurance of help and of mutual benefit in daily life is very useful, especially when the eternal world is so filled with uncertainty and beset by many crises. Basically, our idea is for smaller bands of 20 people, kinship groups where kinship is not forged in shared values and convictions, to form a sort of extended koinonia within a group of 5-8 similar groups who, together, behave as single extended household of people. We use this word "household" for two key reasons: it signifies the idea that the well-being of each and every participant and their dependents is of equal value to everyone else and it establishes a claim that whereas Western civilization today sees a household as a marital household or single household in a single dwelling, we see a household as a group of these bands of people who form a body of people numbering around 120 souls who behave as if they were all under one roof, even though each single adult or married couple has their own residence. This claim that our extended households have the same kind of standing as the tiniest households of just a person or a married couple, common in the West, is important in many ways. One chief way is that in some cases these extended household groups may cluster together in a single habitation and though it may contain multiple residences, it should be treated as a single habitation which its family group has every right to manage as they see fit for their exclusive mutual benefit. Regardless of whether such groups cluster together in a single habitation, something that may be economically impractical, we call such groups Shireholds. The more ancient meaning of a Shire is a relatively self-sufficient and self-governing subdivision of a Duchy or Kingdom often with direct access to the sea or a river. Thus a miniature version of the Shire at the level of a modernized version of the ancient household we call a Shirehold.
As always, the reader does not have to use our terms or affiliate with our larger vision in order to use these ideas in their own way and on their own terms. A kinship group connected to a Shirehold of around 120 adults, whether or not they have the means or desire to practice a clustered living within a single habitation, becomes a cocoon of mutual support and nurturing that will make each participant more individually autonomous relative to the greater society and its top-down structures than they could ever experience as an atomized (as in extremely isolated and minimized) individual. The modern reinvention of the ancient extended household on an egalitarian and collegial basis, with ideas voluntarily shared replacing mere blood or race, is the best and perhaps only response to an increasingly centralized and authoritarian culture dictated by the few for their sole benefit at our expense. The loss of personal freedom and the risk of financial and other material losses caused by foolish government and corporate policies cannot be prevented if you simply remain an atomized individual bereft of direct and deep immediate support. We further propose and argue that our concept of shared nationhood is one of if not the best ways both for individual Shireholds (or whatever you want to call them) as self-sufficient kinship communities to come together on an egalitarian and collegial basis without a centralized hierarchy controlling and dictating from above. While we certainly envision structures for larger scale mutual support and cooperation and for pooling and distributing resources at scale, the idea here is that if you achieve organic cohesiveness your group can function and thrive even in total isolation from similar groups if need be. When people of a similar form of nationhood, based on IDEAS freely embraced and not the more shallow and divisive connections of race and ancestry, connect with others, they automatically have a high degree of cohesiveness without anyone telling anyone else what to do. Racism and other xenophobic ideas are not nationhood, they are an ungodly animosity toward others. Nationhood is a warm connection and system of mutual care shared between vast numbers of people based solely on ideas freely embraced from the heart.
For us, we have our 17 Protocols which make our shared ideals, principles, and practices, as well as our shared goals, explicit and clear in a very transparent manner. One voluntarily, through freewill participation alone, connects and engages in our form of nationhood and thereby easily connects to others who have done the same, and no external or higher up authority is needed for a group of such people to gather and begin collaboration. This website and our planned platform will facilitate such groups as much as we can, but each is an autonomous and self-sustaining entity unto itself which can proceed on its own. Indeed, the emergence of such kinship groups which grow through cellular division into Shireholds and then larger networks we call Microshires on upward to Shires and Regencies, until a global community we call a Commonwealth arises, represents how we see both our Spiritual Nation™ and the new civilization emerging all over the world, here and there. But even a smaller local extended household group of 120 or so adults organized into bands of 20 or adults is proof against most of the hazards this present society presents as a certain kind of authoritarian decadence takes root and replaces a culture of life with an anticulture of backwardness and savagery masquerading as progress. It is, we note, not progressive to destroy the foundation of advanced culture, which is an ideal where most every child is raised by a loving mother and father, be they biological or adopted, who are wed for life and who are part of an extended kinship community based on a shared sociocultural and socioeconomic constructs that flow from sublime spiritual truths. This model does not require legal demands or to punish those who do not embrace it, but it is our inherent right to both practice and proclaim this model as OUR ideal in total freedom, without any government or corporate interference. Indeed, our entire community is a community made by and for the exclusive benefit of those who, at their innermost level of being, embrace this model as their ideal, both to live it and proclaim it in peace and freedom. We propose that, while you are free to choose or reject this model and be left in peace with God alone as your judge, such a model is the only real basis of both mutual support and absolute individual autonomy and fulfillment. As always, Upadaria™ and any UPO™ Community of people, down to autonomous local Kinship Groups and Shireholds based on this shared nationhood, is always rather FOR our way of life than being AGAINST any other way of life. Our concept of building circles of trust and collaboration for mutual profit and support in the face of a time of crisis and uncertainty is a positive movement that is for our ways and not desirous of imposing itself or being hostile to anyone else. It is something you can embrace and use with friends and family of the same mind on a strictly voluntary basis and autonomously of even the international structure represented by this website. Anyone can use these ideas, respecting our trademark and brand if they wish to call their group/community a Upadaria™n body or effort. These ideas apply to groups even if they are not Upadaria™n groups. But we would assert this: without resorting to a modernized restoration of ancient extended household groups and kinship communities you will find that your ability to remain free and prosperous, without being exceedingly rich, will decrease over time as this trend of authoritarian decadence runs its inevitable course.