CLANS, TRIBES, AND CULTURE

Clans, Tribes, & Culture

I don’t think that a tribe or clan is a social structure built upon hippy idealism. Maybe some people in the West only have hippy communes to relate to when on the subject of tribes, so they will associate goofy ideas with tribes and clans.

From my own experience – from being born and raised in an actual clan – it is fundamentally a selfish affair. To me a tribe and a clan are two different things. One is small and the other is big. In my family we are mix blooded. Ethnically we are basically Thai of maternal lineage, and Teochew Chinese of paternal lineage. But we refer to ourselves [as a group/family] by using two different terms. My grandmothers says that we are “Joohn-Jiat” Khmer firstly. Joohn-Jiat means “Nationality” or associated with some nation because of birth. Then my grandmothers refers to “us” as “Sass” Thai. “Sass” meaning an “Ethnicity.” Although my family has residual Teochew tradition and cultural observances.

The Teochew are an ethnic tribe that hails from the western coast of China. They speak a dialect of Chinese that is archaic and considered one of the oldest dialects of Chinese. It sounds really harsh unlike Mandarin. During the Imperial eras the Teochew were one of the wealthiest and powerful ethnic groups. This changed during world war two and the Mao’s Cultural revolution. There was this mass exodus of wealthy Teochew clans out of China and into Southeast Asia during that time. In their new places the Teochew married pretty natives, and so, after a few generation most Teochew living in Southeast Asia were more native blood than Teochew blood. Even though we are Thai by blood, we cook and eat mostly Chinese food. Even though we are Thai, we use Chinese Teochew familial words and not Thai or Khmer words. For example we call our grandfathers “Cong” whereas the ethnic Khmers call their grandfathers “Ta.” I call my big sisters [older cousins] “Jai” which is short for the Teochew “jai-jai” meaning big sister, whereas the ethnic Khmer call theirs “bong srey.” My mom and her siblings calls their mother the upper class Thai/Khmer way as “Nikh,” instead of “Mey.” Nikh means “Madam,” or “Mistress,” or “Ma’am” in this context.

Even though most of us are Theravada Buddhists or just secular, we all observe – have to – our traditional indigenous Chinese “ancestor worship” as the West calls it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in spirits or ghost. You have to pay homage and honour the dead relatives. In our houses we have these home Altars which has a Buddha on it, and a picture of our dead relatives. There are certain days out of the year, including the dead relative’s birthdays were we cook their favorite foods they once liked, burn incense, and also burn things call Hell Money.

In our clan – according to Chinese culture – your big sister is your second mother. If you have two mothers like me [my aunt raised me from birth], then she is your third mother. You have to respect your Jai and do what she says just like a mother or she’ll yell at you and slap you silly. In our clan/family your mom or dad isn’t your boss or authority, your grandmother is. Your mom in our culture just gave birth to you and raised you, she’s only your “second in command.” Your dad is below in the pecking order to your mom, because all he did was provide your mom sperm. His job is to provide for your mom and her children, and he certainly isn’t the boss.

Dads are “fourth in command.” In my culture you can tell on your dad by going to one of your grandmothers or uncles and get him in trouble. In my clan your mom’s brothers are your fathers and have more authority over you then your blood father. We call our mother’s brothers “Awbook-Mieh” which means “Father-uncle.” Our uncles are third in command. If you’re a man and not related to us by blood, and you marry one of our girls, have children with her and mistreat her children you help make, or don’t do your job as a father to provide for your children, the uncles are kicking your ass in your own house or they’ll take your kids away and raise them. The children you fathered in my family don’t belong to you as a father. They belong to the clan. As a father you are still technically an outsider. If your have a big brother or an older boy cousin, he is fifth in command of you.

A “clan” as we understand it is your grandmother, all of her sisters and brothers, all of their children, their children’s spouses, and all of their children’s children. Some cases the grandfathers will have multiple wives and scores of children. So when we say “family” as we mean a family of hundreds of blood relatives, all bound together. Just counting all of my cousins – which means anybody my age born from the grandparents – there are over 100 alone. There is no familial word for a “cousin” in our “family.” Everyone is your brother and sister. Sister clans are the clans of relatives of your grandparents, like their cousins. All together every clan related to us in some way by blood and ancestry is called a “Pug[gala],” or a “People/Tribe.” There is no such thing as a family structure/concept smaller than a clan. This Occidental “nuclear family” unit is an alien concept. But in English we refer to our clan as a “Family,” like Americans. We have different unofficial terms to refer to what a Westerner calls a nuclear family for the sake of reference, gossip, and convenience. Like a “Group,” or a “Nest,” or we reduce everything and call a nuclear family a “clan” and refer to all of us as “Pug-yung” which means Our Tribe.

There is no single ethnic race in our clan. Most are half Thai half Chinese. Some of us are Thai-Khmer, some like the in-laws who are full members are not even Asian. I have a couple White American uncles married to my aunts, and one White French uncle. All of my White uncles have “gone native” and actually live and care for my aunts’ parents [my grandmother's siblings] or my grandmother. There is no single religion in the clan. Most of the middle agers are Buddhists. Most of the elders are hybrid Brahmanist-Buddhist. Most of my cousins are secular non-religious. My White uncles are all Buddhists. But a section of us – a few of my mom’s cousins and their children – are Christian. There is no single language used in our clan. The elders speak Thai to themselves. The middle agers speak Khmer. The rest speak English. None of this defines a clan. In the clan, all of the above named conditions are insignificant and of no concern to anybody. For the two decades and some years I have been alive and inside my clan, no one has ever once asked me what my religion was, how I see the world, or what political ideas I have. What matters is what you Do: your Culture and Tradition.

You do not have to be born inside the clan or marry into the clan to be emotionally accepted as a “member.” It just takes getting to know everybody for a while and paying your respects properly to the right people. I have plenty of boy cousins who have girlfriends of different races. These girlfriends after 6 months or so of daily being around the grandparents, aunts and uncles are fully accepted as “members” of the family. My grandmothers even scold the boy cousins when they mistreat their girlfriends or dump them. It’s slightly different for a girl cousin with boyfriends. Usually if you are 21 nobody minds or talks about your private love life if you have a boyfriend. Bringing your boyfriends over to the house to meet the family is another thing. It all depends on the very first moments of meeting everyone. If you’re a boyfriend and you lack social skills and don’t greet the elders properly immediately and you touch and grope the girl cousin in front of everybody on your first day, you’re rejected.

Most times boyfriends are rejected because they just do not have the right social skills and culture of honour to maneuver in the clan. But on the other hand being gay is no problem. I have a couple of gay boy cousins who bring their boyfriends over and the whole clan loves their gay boyfriends who are accepted as one of Us. Then there are at least three or four of us girl cousins who are gay with girlfriends whom the whole clan accepts. Two of those girlfriends even live full time with us. I think what the issue is that American guys just don’t have the right social skills. Whereas the girlfriends have a natural way of immediately bonding with the elders and the aunts and uncles. Emotional bonding, I would say is what eventually gets you accepted into a clan. So, “membership” in our clan/family at least, has absolutely nothing to do actually with your race, religion, beliefs, worldviews, sexuality, or even blood relations. It’s entirely an emotional issue relating to bonding, paying respect, your culture, the way you carry yourself, and having or mirroring the same culture of honour we have.

Tribal Culture

The inherent connection between two people of a clan or tribe is one that may be termed a “Selfish Investment.” The idea of a Selfish Investment can only be born from years of living in closeness to others such that you as a person get to see the full breadth of human life from the moment a baby takes her first breath to the moment when your great grandmother finally lets go of her last breath.

In that moment – that intimate and immediacy of the moment – when you have seen with your own eyes your own future destiny: that of growing old and helpless; you will realize what a clan is for and you will begin to invest your time, money, and energy into your clan relations for selfish end reasons. Either you do this, or you die alone. Dying alone is the easy part. The hard part is the final decades leading to your aged death. When you are weak and so helpless you can’t even go to the bathroom on your own. To put it plainly: you either invest your shit in your family now, or you shit yourself later in life.

In a living clan and tribe, the relation and connection between people is not some hippy idealism. It is a cultivation of selfish investment. As a mother or father in our clan, you have no choice but to invest your honest time, money, love, affection in your children and spoil them because your own children later in your life are your health insurance policy and retirement plan. In our family the aunts and uncles have no choice but to be nice and caring for all their nieces and nephews because they know from direct experience that it takes an entire community of people to care for the elderly. It’s an investment. The older generation invests themselves into forging strong bonds with their children, grandchildren, etc so that they can rest at peace inside knowing that in their old age they will be taken care of.

All our elders in our family teach us the culture from our first year on up. It isn’t like going to a school or a church to be indoctrinated with dogma of taking care of your elders. It’s a living immersing of Culture. It starts off simple with your parents teaching you the proper customs of the culture. Such as the traditional things, history, stories, ways of doing things, etc.

You are raised knowing that your parents and the old people are nice to you for a reason. It’s almost like how when your daughter or younger cousin comes to you all sweet with a big smile and tells you they really love you. You just know they want something. But in our culture we are taught from early age what the parents and elder want. It’s called “Ghoon,” or “khoon,” which means a “Debt.” But not a financial debt. It’s a debt of honour. The best way to explain what kind of debt ghoon is, is that when the Mafia does you a favour, you know you either owe them a favour or they are looking for a favour in return. That’s a debt of honour. Your mother gives you birth, so you automatically owe her the greatest amount of ghoon for giving you life, which you will repay by taking care of her in her elder years. Although your father is insignificant and has only given up a drop of sperm to make you, you owe him the greatest amount of ghoon because he has spent his whole life caring for you and providing for your every need.

The reasoning behind all this tribal stuff and ghoon is ancient. When you are living in a forest in ancient times, living alone is a death sentence. Especially if you live in places like the northern regions of Eurasia where the winters actually brings snow and ice. In such places you cannot be a lone human where you are busy collecting enough food to keep you alive through the winter. Nature is a harsh mother. She has her own way of teaching you social skills. You either like other people or die. The weak and ego-centered individual dies in such conditions. The most co-operative is fit to survive.

Selfishness is still the prime reasoning in both above cases. It’s just that in one case the selfishness is momentary. By that I mean that a person will hoard food just to feed himself and not share. This is a selfish act which is fleeting and momentary because that food you hoard will feed you for a few days, but what will you eat next month, a year from now, and so on. In the co-operative case the selfishness is intelligently invested, long term-wise. Not for a fleeting or momentary reward, but for a future benefit.

The best way to explain the two kinds of selfishness is by using money. Short term selfishness is when you have two brothers. One day you make $10 dollars, and instead of sharing it with your two brothers you buy yourself a cookie and you eat it by yourself. Long term selfish investment is when you find $10 dollars, and you say to your two brothers: “How about we share all our money, put it together to make a lemonade stand, than split the profit later equally?” The end goal is still a selfish born goal: the desire for personal profit. But to manifest that profit cooperation will be needed. One method of selfish expression is stupid; whereas the other method requires intelligence and group effort. It’s easy to be selfish and stupid. It requires intelligence to use that natural selfishness intelligently.

Culture is a clan’s way of passing its methodology to the next generation. Culture is also the method used to make long term investments in people. Culture is simply the method of literally molding the blank slate of a child’s mind such that the child grows up living life or acting or behaving in a desired way: Thus causally manifesting desired end results. As human animals we come into our human existence blank minded and mindless to be shaped by whatever has custody of us. By “Custody” I mean if Chinese people raise you, you will grow up Chinese and do Chinese things in life. If a stray dog raises you, you will grow up a feral child and act like a dog and do things like a dog. If Christianity has custody of you, you will grow up a Christian, feel like a Christian, think like a Christian, act like a Christian, see the world as a Christian, and manifest results in life like a Christian. If the State and government has custody of your mind, you will grow up serving the State. The question is not about shaping or molding impressionable minds or where you’re getting your culture from. Your gunna be shaped by something and your offspring will be shaped by something or someone. The question is by what or whom, and to what end? From whom are you getting your culture, and what or whom do you serve and live for in the end? Your own family and folk or religion or some State?

Is there a difference between a religious life and a secular life? Are you more proud of serving and being molded to live for a State rather than for a religion? Some of these Western Mundanes think they are free because they can choose their own religions. They think they got the shit because the Pope isn’t their boss any more and they don’t have to spend their lives supporting and propping the power of some church. Big deal, look who’s raising you and your kids now. Look who has custody of your mind and life now: the Secular State. It doesn’t matter where you are getting culture from. You will get culture and ethos by nature one way or the other because it’s just how the human mind works naturally. To what End? I can understand investing your life for an army because maybe the military complex will take care of you when you are old. In can understand living for your family because maybe they will provide for your needs later in life. These may be productive long term life investment options. But to give that life up to a religion or a State? Does that religion give a shit about you? Will Uncle Sam come visit you in your nursing home? Will your parliament, government or political party change you diaper and feed you when you are 80?

I mean we can look at a self made millionaire and say to ourselves: “Yeah, this guy made some intelligent choices and investments in life,” because he ended up being wealthy. And when we see a bum on the street with nothing we can say to ourselves: “Yeah, this dude made some wrong turns somewhere in life.” But why can’t we see these wrong turns and bad investments made by the millions and millions of human lives who end up alone and thrown away by their family, friends, society, and the State, to rot by themselves in some nursing home? How do we see such “poor” people – devoid of Life’s wealth of loved ones and their providence – and not understand that there must be something wrong somewhere.

It sounds like I’m making a big deal about being old. I’m making a big deal out of our Life’s investments. Out of human relationships. Out of the end results of our life’s actions. How do you live 70 years and end up humanly destitute where even your own children don’t care for you any more? There is a saying in my family that goes: “Big takers die poor; big givers die rich.” It’s not a financial saying. People that spend their lives taking and taking from life grow old alone and die alone. People that give themselves to others – their family and friends – will always have a wealth of loved ones by their side till their last day. Is it altruism? Is it altruistic to want to be served like a god by a pack of people who admire you and honour you to the point where they will change your diaper and bathe you and still do what you order? Such life requires an intelligent and big investment.

My grandmother never worked a day in her life. She spent her first 50 years investing her time and life in caring for her elders who showered her with plenty of money and family jewels. She came to America in the very early 80’s after the revolution. She had invested her time and Cultured her 9 children right and proper [the 10th one died]. They went straight to work and took care of her since then. In our culture when you work each month you give a portion of your income to your mother to have. With 9 kids giving her $500 every month, she makes money doing nothing besides playing cards with her siblings and cousins and traveling. Does that sound like “altruism?” That’s a proper life’s investment. Fuck social security. You can keep that shit.

In contrast, my aunt-mom the other day was telling us at the dinner table about a sad thing she encountered. At the restaurant she owns with her siblings she said she started seeing an old 70 year old lady come by the restaurant every day to buy a cheap meal. When my aunt-mom began talking to her it was learned that the old lady was living in her car. The idea of a person of any age being homeless to my aunt and family is an alien concept in an emotional sense. So my aunt asked her: “Don’t you have children, where are they, why don’t they care for you?” And the old lady said that her children are all grown and have their own families and lives to worry about. She doesn’t want to bother them, and she says she is independent and fine. Independent shouldn’t even be a word that exists in human language. You’re human. You are by nature a creature that needs others. Independent from what? From people you need in life; but dependent on the State, banks, corporations, their pensions, social security and the paid nurses; if you’re lucky? Independence doesn’t exist as a single idea or word in Khmer.

Clan Ethos

Clan ethos or the habitual ways of living life in regard to a clan is the product of hundreds of years of living in Nature in ancient times. In those times when a group of people lives in jungled mountains as feral tribes, you lived close by each other in “Long Homes” together. Or you die. You think you’re the shit and you go off living by yourself like an independent badass in those days and you will either die of starvation or get eaten by a tiger.

In such conditions where you had to spend most of your life around your camp or long homes, you literally have no where to go. You can’t move out of your clan’s long home, unless everybody builds you a new long home. You can’t kick your 21 year old dead beat kids out of your long homes either. There is nowhere to send your old grandparents. So this is where the foundation of clan ethos originally comes from: from having no choice but to not only live together as a group, but to learn to get along and live together also.

From this condition of life you will have all generations of your clan living together. You humanly witness the full cycle of human life. The births and the deaths. The ethos born from those ancient times becomes a clan’s ethos in any environmental setting. Even in modern times in modern cities.

In my own family [clan] we own a handful of houses, but they are like tribal long homes. Nobody moves out. You just drift from house to house if you’re my age. Nobody kicks you out. In fact you can’t leave. If you are a girl, you will still be living with your mom and grandmother when you are married. If your husband-to-be does not have this tribal ethos and has a problem with you living with your family and caring for your elders, then the whole clan rejects him. This doesn’t happen often. Usually regardless of your gender, when you get married you will be living with your parents and grandparents or with your spouses parents and grandparents.

In my own family, when you buy a new house, you are buying it for everybody. One of my uncles bought a new house a couple years ago. Besides his wife and 4 kids [the oldest in college], his wife’s sister who is [30 years old], his wife’s parents; his cousins and her 4 year old son moved in too! Nobody is charged rent either which is ridiculous. Everyone just pitches in to pay the house bills and loans. My grandmother’s house is like a boarding home for deadbeat teens. My cousins there will build their own extensions of the house in the back yard and even convert the garage into deadbeat teenage squatting unit where they play their computer games all day, sleep there, eat there, and never seem to leave. But my aunt who bought that house make them either go to school or work at a family business. Down the street from my grandmother’s house is a house of another aunt. She lives there with her husband and her two kids [my cousins] plus 3 other cousins who live there full time. That aunt and uncle is never home. They are either at work or on long vacations by themselves. This one time my 5 cousins living there called me up and said they needed me to bring them food because the aunt and uncle left on an extended vacation and didn’t give them enough money. I went there had to crawl over a heap of pillows, sleeping bags, blankets, computers, pizza boxes, soda cans. My cousins and I actually rent our own apartments, but our upbringings and clan culture follows us so those apartments become cousin shelters where we just piled inside together during the weekend with our friends.

All that culture of living together – actually sharing houses and not kicking anybody out – develops clan/blood association that is trans-generational. There is also no clear emotional distinction between parents and aunts/uncles with children and nieces and nephews. You are born and bred to literally care for and feed whoever is in front of you, regardless of how they are related to you.

In our modern age, this clannish way of life also brings the full spectrum of human existences into full view. By spectrum I mean every facet and aspect of human life. There is the drama aspect of intimately knowing all the fights that goes on between your aunts and uncles and their spouse. There is the complaining and bitching about the stress of having to take care of young kids and old people. There is the witnessing of a lot of new births. And sadly – humanly – there is the witnessing of human lives dying literally in front of you. There are all those times – those years and years – of feeding, bathing, and nursing a bed ridden great grandmother, or great grandfather. Watching them slowly shrivel and wilt before your eyes. And the sorrow and yet relief of seeing and knowing, and feeling, someone you once knew and loved pass away into that deep dark mystery.

I’ve nursed a lot of great aunts and great grand uncles. I slept near them at night when it was my turn to watch over them. I’ve seen and heard old people close to death talk. I’ve heard them reminisce, of them telling me their unfulfilled dreams. Of their darkest secrets they kept. Of how they know they will die. Of the visions and voices they see and hear. And I’ve heard them tell me their last mortal words and take their last mortal breaths, unafraid and at peace, surrounded by us all.

This way of life – this intimate living together – has gone on for thousands of years. Where each new generation nurses the old to death in their homes and arms. And in all of these cultures the world over which have directly witnessed the full spectrum of human existence, from birth to death, all share one single universal belief: that death is not the end.

I find it both strange, but yet not surprising that so many people in the West who have never seen a person die; who have never nursed an elder to death; who have never experienced the full breadth of human life; who shut their old folks away somewhere in a nursing home; believes that death is the end of it all. These people where death is a clinical transaction of brief information. Where death is put out of sight and mind. Where death is just the act of a doctor solemnly saying: “She’s gone, I’m sorry.”  These are people that have an absolute conviction about something they have never been intimately exposed to or have never known. They philosophize about death. They debate about it. They intellectualize it. Like they do about everything else they have no intimate and direct connexion to.

The Role of Sasana

In the East things like Buddhism and Hinduism are either called Dharma or Sasana. Neither technically means religion as it is understood in the Occident. Dharma simply means Way as Tao does, or it loosely means Law, as in how it is used in “Law of Gravity.” Sasana technically means “Governing Order,” or “Instructions.” The best way to explain the difference between a Sasana and what a Westerner knows to be a “Religion” is the by using the US Constitution.

The Constitution is a Governing Order or a Set of Instructions. It is a Sasana. But it is not a religion. The articles of the Constitution are not articles or principles of faith. They are Order/Instructions to be followed and executed which maintains a System [Social Order] and generates a certain desired End Result: Liberty. You don’t believe in the Constitution, you put it into practice for end results. Its articles aren’t infallible dogma and absolute truths. This is basically what a Sasana like Buddhism [Prabudhsasana] is in the East.

In the East, or to a people who have been “Buddhist” for a thousand years, Prabudhsasana is not an independent prescriptive religion. It is a balancing factor that is used in conjunction with how a people already lives their lives. This is one reason why “Buddhism” morphs into different “schools” so easily. It’s not a prescription or substitute for life, it only serves to present Guidelines for a culture of people. Buddhism will change its language and outer form to reflect its host culture. For example to a culture of Japanese “Shintoists,” Buddhism will take on the flavour of that native way of life and weltanschauung. To Chinese Taoists Buddhism will morph into a Taoist flavoured hybrid called Chan to reflect its host people and their already established way of life. To the growing Western Buddhist people, Buddhism will morph to reflect their rational and scientific weltanschauung, not as a substitute or replacement “thing” but only as an add-on to what culture such Westerners already have. In the same sense that the Constitution is a Guideline used to balance how you already live your life naturally. You naturally will seek out whatever religion suits your taste. But the Guideline instructs you to give others the same right and freedom for causal reasons. The causal reason is Liberty. Causal here suggesting the function of causality: Cause and Effect.

All of Prabudhsasana is based on the same causal reasoning. The End Goal of Buddhism is an enjoyable life and Liberation. To experience an enjoyable life, one must try to curb Dukkha [stress/disturbance]. To manifest Liberation, one must let go of mental illusions and emotional attachments to reified notions and bring the Mind back down to earth. In a way Prabudhsasana basically says to you: “How you and your people live your lives is no concern of mine. What is my concern is the quality of your life and mind. Do you want to experience an enjoyable and pleasurable mortal existence? If so, I present a few guiding principles.”

And so every aspect of Buddhism is based on this guiding factor to help one manifest an enjoyable life. Everything in Buddhism is also based on the concept of causality, or in other words “Observe This-To get That.” So you have in Buddhism something like the Panchasila [5 Precepts], don’t kill, don’t steal, etc. When taken out of its causal context, the panchasila looks like a prescriptive moral law like the Christian 10 commandments. But in Buddhism proper the panchasila is only an initial portion of a three phased causal sequence: Panchasila-Samadhi-Panya. You observe Panchasila IF you desire to manifest Panya [pan~n~a meaning Wisdom]. The observance is needed to manifest the condition of Samadhi. Samadhi basically means “concentration.” In this context Samadhi doesn’t mean a form of meditation. It means a collection or concentration or focusing of your mind, body, and emotions towards a single goal: Panya. So it can be understood that if you are busy diverting your mind, body, and emotions with killing people, stealing, sleeping around, getting drunk, etc, that Samadhi is not manifested and without focus of will and effort, the End Goal of Wisdom cannot be actualized.

An example of how Buddhism works to balance the way of life a culture already has is can be discerned by also using the panchasila. In 500BC India people back then naturally lived in clans and tribes. The first sila is “not to kill.” This is not ethically prescriptive and does not mean to become tribal law or a moral code. This sila is Causally Descriptive, as in it tries to describe to such tribes the causal mechanic of a certain nature. What that sila is saying in context to tribal life is: “If you genuinely love and care for your own relations, don’t go around killing people from other tribes. Why? Because you will start a clan feud or tribal war and they will retaliate and kill your family. Therefore, if you want to avoid the heartache, don’t kill other people. Mind your own business. Focus your efforts [Samadhi] instead on Panya [the Wisdom of knowing how things work] to get the best results out of life.” So such silas gives practical causal instructions to a culture so that they can learn to manifest the benefits for themselves and their people.

The silas are not essentially “ethical” or moral. It is not saying that killing is evil and bad, and it’s not seeking to supersede what ways of life and traditions a culture or people already observe. In the same sense that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights do not seek to supersede or replace the way of life, culture, and traditions you/we as an American of whatever ethnicity and cultural background already observe. If you are Thai, be Thai, but let others be what they are, to help actualize Liberty. If you are Mexican-American and are Catholic, fine, but let others practice whatever religion they want, to help actualize Liberty. If you’re White and you like to vote, great, but let citizens of other colors vote too, to help actualize Liberty. Whereas a Religion in the West, cuts out your ancestral roots, your ancestral traditions, and your ancestral beliefs, and seeks to be an absolute prescription. Christianity seeks to assert its Christian-ness onto its people; without regard for their indigenous culture and traditions. Irish, Norse, German, Italian, whatever, you’re all becoming Christians, and if you continue to observe your indigenous traditions and practice your ancient indigenous cultural rites you are a heathen.

This is “religion” to a majority of the Western mind. Most of the religions they invent are absolute prescriptions. Based on delusions of the existence of absolute truths and moral absolutes. Even with something as liberal and “counter-culture” as Satanism, the Western mind is conditioned to use such religion – any religion – as an abstract blanket to cover their entire life and the world with to smother what is not acceptable to their absolutes. If you are a LaVeyan Satanist you have to be atheist and materialist and do what an atheist-materialist does like other LaVeyans or you are a heathen. There various species of Satanism may come with rites and rituals which also are asserted as absolute prescriptions superseding a person’s cultural traditions. You can’t be a “Buddhist” or do Buddhist things and be a Satanist at the same time to these mental cripples. But yet as a Satanist they can chant mantras, meditate on Hindu Chakras, pathwork around some Jewish Tree of Life, and believe in restated – “Satanicized” -  Jewish, Hindu, Shamanic, and Buddhist mysticism?

This is called “Vulture Culture.” Homo Hubris invented Vulture Culture first as Christian patriarchs. You kill Egyptians, destroy their culture, destroy the mysteries and rites of Horus, then steal the shit and make it your own, renaming Horus: Jesus. You kill Mithrites, destroy the rites and mysteries of Mithras, then steal it all and rename it Christianity. You vilify and dehumanize other people’s cultures and traditions, then steal their shit and act like you invented it. Like your God gave that shit to you on Mount Sinai. Where did Homo Hubris get the meme of “Aryan” from? From dark skinned “Asiatic Negros” you dehumanized as inferior in India. Don’t know what I’m talking about? What the fuck did you Homo Hubris do to Jews for 2000 years? You dehumanized them, killed them, stepped on their culture and traditions wherever you saw it, but you take their Torah and Tanakh and God and you act like you mutherfucker invested the shit.

Mundane Satanists are no different from their Hubris Vulture ancestors. It’s the same Vulture Culture. These Satanists will talk the shit out of other religions and dehumanize other people’s cultures and traditions like Hinduism like Satanists got the Golden Shit, yet they practice the Left hand Path. Where the fuck did that Left Hand Path come from you ignorant fool? And you make the shit you stole into some abstract absolute truth and you force that shit, that ripped off paradigm, that ripped of shit you don’t even understand, down peoples throats. And you use that shit to deface and destroy other people’s ways of life, culture, and traditions. Because your way is always the only way; even though nothing about your way is originally yours.

There is a quote from the Buddha that is often taken completely out of context and abused where the Buddha says that one should question one’s traditions and believe nothing. Out of its native context this makes it sound as if the Buddha is teaching people or Buddhists to throw their cultural traditions away and question them. When this was not or is not the case. In context a group of villagers in India had come to the Buddha in confusion. They told the Buddha that their tribe and clans a hundred years or so prior had one set of traditions and cultural practices, but that many people came and changed things around so much that there were all these traditions and rites. The villagers were confused because they weren’t sure which set of traditions to observe. Thus they asked the Buddha for advice on the matter. The Buddha suggested to the villagers that they – the villagers he was speaking to – should question the newly introduced beliefs and traditions. He suggested to the villagers that they should not be so easily persuaded by the words of others to CHANGE their ancestral ways; and that since they can no longer tell which set of traditions was ancestral that they should pick out which traditional rites and observances will bare the best fruit for their people.

Most people in the West when they think of Buddhism, they think perhaps of a religion or set of philosophical principles of a Buddha. Sometimes they also think of beliefs specific to Buddhism and to texts such beliefs are found in. So that in the West “Buddhism” can have different denominations based on the differences of beliefs and doctrines. This isn’t what “Buddhism” is in the East. The doctrines and teachings of some Buddha and some sacred text is a minor and insignificant aspect of Buddhism in the East. Buddhism in the East – or rather, in Southeast Asia – has had about 1000 years to give rise to traditional customs and cultural ways of living. This is where our cultural traditions arises from. In the East, you can be a Buddhist and have no idea about what a Buddha may have taught, because everything you do, and how you live your life is a living expression of Buddhism whether you realize it or not.

After 1000 years, Buddhism in Southeast Asia has had time via its governing instructions to engineer cultural practices. And these cultural practices are the side of living Buddhism most Westerners of Hubris nature disregard or do not see. To put thing in a more Occidental way to be understood, we can say that after 300 years the US Constitution has engineered a living Culture and way of life in America that exist not as a part of the written text, but is a living manifestation of what was once written. For example after 300 years of observing the First Amendment, the average American practices in their life the freedom of choosing their own religions, and the culture of allowing others that same freedom is present. Another cultural phenomenon born from the written text is that as a culture, the cultural tradition of having kings is no longer observed. Americans now culturally elect their leaders who serve for a set amount of time. This culture is second nature to any American, so much so that if some random royal person were to come and claim himself the rightful king of America, he would be laughed at. Thus we can say that a “Culture” is the Cultivation of a common practice – praxis, way of doing things – by/in a given social ordering of humans.

Buddhism and Buddhist cultures and traditions are not the same thing; but they are two sides of the same human coin. The written instructions and the living way of life are not the same thing and may look very different. But they are the same human thing. The written instruction are seeds Cultivated in the Human mind to materialize a Culture born from shared Human action. One is the seed that is Cultivated, the other is the Fruition of what was once planted. Many times you will not find elements of a culture in its text of origin, if such cultures had texts of origin. For example nowhere in Buddhism’s Tipitaka does it instruct that the Buddhist should burn incense to statues of the Buddha.

Because of this dummy outsiders will assert the claim that burning incense to Buddha statues is not true Buddhism, as if they knew better [hence: Hubris]. They fail to understand that such acts are physical/cultural manifestations of Sati meaning Mindfulness and Remembrance. Be Mindful [Sati] of your roots, of your ancestors, of your elders who past on who gave you the gift of Wisdom and Tradition; don’t forget where you came from, because a tree without roots is easily toppled by the slighted push into any direction. Sati develops fortitude of Mind and strength of Culture such that you are not easily persuaded mentally to believe or accept other peoples opinions, ideas, convictions, etc. We can say the same dummy assumption with the cultural practices of America: Where in the Constitution does it instruct that at voting season there shall be booths with curtains and that the voter shall punch holes into tickets? Where does it say that there shall be only two major parties and that other parties shall be marginalized? Where in the Constitution does it say that American Cultural cuisine shall be hot dogs, pizzas, and hamburgers? Or even sports. Have you ever tried to read the original instructions for a game like baseball or football and then watched these games played in our modern times? Are we to be stupid literalists all anal about inert written words and say that what is not written is fake? You can be stupid and anal if you want. Why is the Constitution open to being Amended?

The ideation “Sasana” technically means an “Order!” or a “Command!” In olden days when the general of the imperial army has assessed the enemy and he has drawn out the best strategic option to be executed by his underlings, and he Orders them to act accordingly, that was a Sasana. But shit happened in real life and on the battlefield. If the general is to win, he must have the quality of adaptability to changes in events and situation or to environment. So in the battlefield the general’s sasana may change, and must change from what may have originally been drafted on an inert and static piece of parchment.

In ancient tribal times commonly observed practices – as opposed to shared beliefs and opinion – gives rise to the Culture of a tribe. Shared practices of a tribe can be as simple as agreeing not to urinate upstream, because then people bathing downstream will be bathing in your piss. It could be the common practice of designating a specific section of the forest as the bathroom, because if everybody in the tribe is pissing and pooing all over the place, you’ll eventually be stepping in it. Usually in the old tribal days it took a respected elder to initiate a common practice.

Not just anybody can just say: “Don’t be shitting all over the place man!” It has to be the oldest and wisest that everyone respects. Because with respect comes influence. So such agreed or shared practices are passed down to everyone’s children. Then they pass it down to their children, and so on. Until hundreds of years later a large group of people all seem to share the same common practices, but nobody seems to remember how such traditions started or for what original reason. That’s Culture: what a shared practice has been cultivated. The idea is causal originally. Cultural Traditions and customs simply manifested a desired End Result. It may be an end result which is desired to be actualized or the end desire may be the simple coherency of bond of the tribe.

Why do Europeans have a culture of celebrating harvest season in the autumn in some way, and many Asian societies don’t seem to have that Cultural Tradition? Because in Europe after every autumn comes a harsh winter, so the harvest back then was a matter of life and death. A bountiful harvest was real reason to celebrate. But in tropical Asia, winter is hardly noticeably different from spring, summer, and fall. Why do the Khmer, the Thai, and Laotians do their traditional dances in rings and circles to music? Because in ancient tribal times after the boys came back from a week long hunt with game, it was reason to celebrate. A fire was usually made to cook the hunted meat in, and during the cooking of the meet music would be played and the girls and boys would dance around the fire. Where does the old practice of the Khmer, the Thai, and the Indonesians getting tattoos come from? One source comes from the belief that tattoos magically protect you from evil spirits, from being harmed in tribal wars. The second more ancient source was as a marker of honour in a tribe for head hunting and killing a human in battle.

There are cultural traditions shared by almost all tribes that are observed to strengthen tribal bonds. These cultural practices are manifestations of basic aspects of human nature. The most near universal among most tribes and clans is the sharing of food. In Papua new Guinea, tribal diplomacy between neighboring tribes was important for the sake of peace. No person want to live paranoid that your neighboring tribe will come over and head hunt your people for no reason. Thus to forge a relationship of bond with the neighboring tribe the chief or elder leader of one tribe will invite the neighboring tribe over to his territory for a “party” where fermented drinks and food is shared. In Papua, when this happens the chief himself who did the inviting must supply the party’s drink and meat. In a Human way, what the chief is trying to say with his diplomatic gesture is: “Don’t kill me and my family. I want to be friends. I have a lot of food and meat which I will share with your people. Maybe later you can share also or help us in time of need.”

In my family and culture in context to the modern world, this same tribal culture of diplomacy is still practiced with a difference in variation. We don’t grow our food and livestock in this day and age, but we do make money with which we buy food and meat. So when we want to strengthen the bond between our clan and a sister clan, what we do is we put together a party or banquet and the inviting clan pays for everything. In our modern age, what we pay for with our money is “ours.” So in essence what the inviting clan is gesturing is that we want to share our wealth in the form of food and meat and things with the other clan. But it’s not all true altruism and generosity. Beneath the bond and diplomacy there is the selfish human side. First it’s the Human nature of displaying that we are better than your clan, that we have more money to spend on you, that what drinks, and food we give to you is nothing to our clan. Second when the inviting clan is actually spending all that money and sharing their wealth, drinks, and food with you, they are manipulating your Human emotions to cultivate “Ghoon” or Debt of Honour. In essence what is being silently communicated is: “I paid for your shit, I shared my shit with you. You’re paying me back one way or another in future. You owe me.” And in a culture based on Honour like ours, when we don’t pay back our Debt of Honour when needed, we lose face, lose our reputation [“emotional credit”], and are shunned by other clans for being dishonourable.

So I was raised in this culture of cultivating and reciprocating Debts of Honour. This tribal diplomacy also happens on a one on one basis between two people in our culture. For example when a cousin of mine invites me to dinner, the traditional thing observed is the person doing the inviting pays for the dinner. When you pay for the dinner that food becomes “your food” which you share with the other person. If the person who invited me offers to pay for the dinner and I accept, I automatically put myself into a Debt of Honour to the person and am emotionally bound to return the favour when called on. As I was raised, and as I saw it done in my culture, we take turn paying for each others meals and dinners. So that way Ghoon is raised or generated all around where we all know emotionally that we are bound to repay that debt to one another when called on. Which we don’t mind as we are all family and close friends.

I thought everybody did things this way, as in White people too. But I learned that this wasn’t the case in college. I had made a friend who casually invited me to lunch during break. So we went to go eat at a restaurant and talked. I naturally assumed she wanted to establish diplomacy and a stronger bond and friendship because of this. Then when she asked for the check, she says to me: “We’re going dutch right?” I never heard that word used like that before so I asked: “What’s ducth mean?” And she says: “That’s when I pay for my meal and you pay for yours.” I felt like driving the steak knife into her eye sockets when she said that. Like she spat on my face. It’s a sign great disrespect and dishonour when you pay for your own food. You either pay for everything or the other person pays for everything. There’s no splitting shit up. That’s like a tribal leader saying to the other tribe: “Lets be friends, come over, well party. But bring your own food cuz you ain’t eating my people’s shit.” Go dutch, what’s that mean? Like you wanna be friends but not go all the way? You just lonely and need somebody to watch you eat your shit. The fuck is that shit? I stopped being that girls friend the next day.  I absolutely hate guys who take us out to dinner then go dutch and only pay for his meal. It’s still a disrespect if I invite you and other friends to a lunch or dinner and afterwards you throw in $20 and say: “Here’s my share.” I invited you, I pay for everything. Putting in your share is like saying in my face: “Fuck you, I don’t want to be friends and I don’t want to owe you any favours, don’t rely on me for anything.”

There are also internal sasana or cultural traditions practiced by a clan to insure group solidarity and cohesion. Like the Traditional custom of respecting your elder and not talking back. It’s a custom to do what your elders tell you to do without complaining or arguing. This goes for anybody older in age than you. The older they are than you the more severe the disrespect and scolding. It’s okay of I bitch at an older cousin and complain when they asked me to do something if they are only 3 years older then me. But if an aunt or uncle or even a girl cousin 5 years older than me tells me to do something and I say no, it causes a freak out where everybody yells at you for being disrespectful. They’ll yell things at you like: “Gon Ot Pbooch!” Which means a Child [Gon] Without [Ot] Culture/Proper Breeding [Pbooch]. Or worse they will yell: “On your mother’s head!” It means that your cultural delinquency reflect on your mother’s face and reputation and honour. When you act culturally delinquent like that it means to outside people that your mother and whole clan have no culture or honour or ability to even raise you proper, so its like letting people step on your mom’s head.

When I was younger I really hated the strict environment of having to listen to everything anybody older than me tell me. I swore I’d run away forever so I won’t have to do what everybody says. When you’re a runt of the litter in our big family, or at the bottom of the age order, it means everybody older than you can boss you around. If your grandma says you can’t watch TV, you can’t. If your aunt says you can’t go outside you can’t. If your uncle says you can’t go to a friends house you can’t. If your big sister [cousin] tells you to do your homework, you have to. My biological mom was the runt of the litter. Which was why in her teenage years she tried to rebel and got pregnant with me. When that happened that put the whole clan into “red alert” mode. Except the red alert wasn’t focused on losing my biological mom. The concern was me. My mom was deemed lost, or having severed herself from the culture/clan/family of her own choosing, which was fine. What wasn’t fine was corrupting me. In our culture, what children you bare, belongs to the grandmother and family also. So my grandmother asked one of my aunts to take me by asking my mom nicely if she can have me to raise properly since my mom was too young.

Later, as my mom grow older she realized everything and merged herself willingly back into the family and got traditionally married to a husband the old ladies picked for her. During my early teen years I hated my family and culture. But as I got older I grew to realize the causal mechanics of it all and the reasoning why such a system/culture exists. This realization only came – like it did for my own mom – when I witnessed a great aunt whom I was nursing for some time die in our house. You think you’re invincible and you know it all until you see someone you love and have shared your life with die. Standing there looking at the dead body is not the realizing part. The part that causes the realization are the many years of nursing and caring for her in your very old years when she was bed ridden. That’s when you realize deep inside that one day what you are seeing will be your unavoidable human fate. I realized that the only reason why I gave my time up to care for my great aunt, as all of the rest of the family did was because of our culture. Our way of life. The years and years of being conditioned one generation after another to do what your elders say, trains you to work for your own. And you realize that as you get older, the younger generations will be trained likewise to follow orders and take care of you.

I had often spent many moments pondering how I want to raise my own future kids. Do I want them raised incoherently and “free” like the average middle class American kids are raised by their working class parents? Where they are free to make their own decisions in life, pick their own way of life. Or where they are born into a heavily structured almost military-like social order, where they spend all their lives being conditioned and trained to follow sasana. Where they have no choice but to be molded and to follow orders and traditions. And I thought about myself and my parents, both sets. I asked myself how I have become. How will I be to my two moms and my two dads in the future? Will I abandon them after so many years of them caring for me and providing for my every need? Am I dishonourable enough to just leave them? I can’t. It’s too late for me. The bonds have already been made. The Nature has already been Nurtured. I have no choice but to remain a part of my four parent’s lives and take care of them until they die. Which was when I realized that I want the same assurance for myself. To know that when I grow old that my owe children and family will burse me in my dying years. The only way to manifest that desired end goal, is by understanding that I must raise my own future children traditionally inside our culture, to follow sasana, like I did, like the generation above me did, as the generation above them did, as it has been followed for 1000 years.

Tribal Economics

Before Marx and Adams or Communism and Capitalism or social class and money there were Humans and family relations. There was folk and land. If there was an “economy” in ancient tribal times, it was one based on the simple Supplier: Land and the Demander: Folk. In basic Khmer, the word for “capitalism,” or “business,” or “earning a living,” is “Roah-See.” Roah means “To Look For,” and “See” is the generic, informal register word for “To Eat,” or “Consume.” Together the conjoined words literally means to “Forage.” When you want to express this in the verbally as in to describe your actual act of making a living you say “Dah Roah-See.” Dah means to “Walk,” or “Walk Around.”

My grandpa says that in very ancient times the people once were hunting in the mountains and they came upon an ant hill and saw the ants walking around foraging for food in the jungle like they were. So they asked themselves what words they can use to describe what they and the ants were doing, and they said “Dah Roah-See,” to walk around finding things to eat. So we can say that when left to their own devices ants will naturally “Roah-See.” Then we can also say that when left to their own devices, Humans will naturally also “Roah-See.” We can understand from this that different kinds of animals will have their own way of “Roah-Seeing.”

When we talk of ants roah-seeing, we mean to describe hordes of ants wondering around the jungle “working” to collect things to bring back to their colony. When we talk of tigers roah-seeing we mean something completely different. Tigers don’t wonder around the jungle foraging like ants. They prowl when they are hungry and they roah-see for an easy prey to kill. So in regard to tigers “roah-see” means to kill. With Humans in such ancient times roah-see can have several meanings. It can mean the girls foraging for plants, yams, and vegetation, while the men wander the forest for days hunting. A vulture roah-sees in a completely different way. They don’t forage, or hunt, or gather, or kill. They wait circling the sky or perches somewhere until something falls over dead, or they follow their nose to left over kills. For them roah-see means to scavenge. Lice roah-sees in a complete different way. They find a host and just suck blood living on their host. So to them roah-see means what a parasite does to stay alive. So here even though we can say that “Roah-See” is natural, in the sense that when left to their own devices, animals and plants will naturally Roah-See, we understand that this natural phenomenon is not the same thing as in a blanket terminology which describes a simple single act.

In the modern world of Nations and cities, Roah-See is used in different ways also depending on what strata and rank of society you come from. What a peasant Roah-Sees in Indochina, what they are doing is taking what crops and fish or animal meat they have left over from what they cultivated to sell at a farmers market for extra income. So in this context and social class we can begin to see that Roah-See takes on a familiar “capitalistic” “free-market enterprise” thing. A merchant of the middle class Roah-Sees in a different way. The lower strata of the middle class roah-sees by making pastries, little hand crafted items and such and walks around selling them for a profit. The higher end of the middle class roah-sees by establishing actual businesses in the towns and cities to generate a profit. So here we can say that in Human social order, when a human is left to its own devices, that it will naturally Roah-See according to its means. In a sense what we are roughly saying is that there is an aspect of what the West in modern times call “capitalism” and free market that is naturally expressed in human social behaviour. But Roah-See doesn’t mean capitalism or free market enterprise.

A king of a kingdom roah-sees in a completely different manner than the lower class humans in his kingdom. When a king “makes a living” or forages for things, what we mean is he has his sights on new territory occupied by a different kingdom, he mobilizes his army and declares war on this other kingdom to take the territory and people native to that land, so he can enforce taxation on these new people. Here the term roah-see has left the realm of capitalism and now describes monarchism.

An Oligarchic family roah-sees in a very different way also. When an Oligarchic family roah-sees, this usually describes the act of them getting their family members into every position of Statecraft and government and military and large corporations as possible, including surrounding the King [his harem] with their own daughters and granddaughters. The reasoning behind this methodology is to establish or maintain a self-serving system which benefits that oligarchic family and its descendents. This type of roah-see requires exclusion of lower class humans from encroaching on their roah-see territories. Meaning that if an Oligarchic family has taken over the upper ranks of the army that it is within this family’s best long term interest to do what it takes to keep normal people from taking those positions. This goes with other aspects of State such as government and corporation. To actually help create or maintain their grip or hold of their positions for their descendents Oligarchic families cannot compete, otherwise the effort and energy in taking over corporations, armies, and governments is diverted to competing aimlessly with other oligarchic families. It becomes the more productive option for experienced oligarchic families to not only establish diplomacy with one another, but to intermarry and Roah-See together. Which means that to such oligarchic families, roah-see means the subjugation and exploitation of common people.

In my own family roah-see here in America means to just actually do business, make businesses, earn money together somehow. Usually the aunts and uncles pool their money to buy family businesses, and employ/use the cousins to work those businesses [cheap labour].  We can say that it is a manifestation of Buddhist sasana that we culturally start businesses up rather than teach our family members to get a job at WalMart or go to colleges to work for a degree just to make some other family rich. Because the idea is free time. With more free time, you have more time to spend it with those you love, to travel, and to do things you actually want to do whenever you want. It is less stressful [dukkha] to own your own business knowing you have a steady source of income, than it is to work for a paycheck not ever certain when you will be laid off. When you are indebt to banks, are leasing a house, and have kids that depend on your biweekly paychecks, the mental, psychological, and emotional stress [dukkha] becomes apparent.

Of course the economy affects business. No business is a sure way of making constant money. To counter the negative effects of the economy a different ancient tribal ethos comes into modern play, one we simply call “Jeck Khnia” which means to Share [Jeck] with Ourselves [Khnia]. My grandpa says that this tribal ethos of sharing with ourselves also comes from watching ants. Because on the surface the ants look like they are foraging for food like “capitalists,” but underground the colony itself turns into a “communist” society in a way. All that food those proletarian foragers brought back to the colony is collectively shared. The queen doesn’t have to work but she gets a large share of the food. The soldier ants that guard the place don’t forage, but they get a free share of the food. There is no trading, no bartering, no selling, no buying. The food is just piled in little pockets and when you are hungry you take what you need to fill you up.

In olden tribal context, when the girls are foraging for plants and yams that aren’t working to just fee themselves. It is all shred by the clan. The week the men spend wandering in the hot humid forest hunting isn’t to just feed the meat to themselves. They bring it back and share it the whole clan. Everyone, the babies that can’t work and the old ladies too old to work included. You have no choice but to work for others and share because for one: they are all your family and close friends; and for two: if you don’t work together and share, you all die. There is no choice. No debating on the morals and ethics of sharing and the philosophical bull shit of altruism. You share or you die or suffer. In such context, if your clan or tribe were too weak the neighboring clan can attack and kill your men and rape your women, then take your land. You have no choice, and there is no goofy intellectualizing of shit involved. You do. It’s a culture not a belief system. “Jeck Khnia” sounds similar to communism in a way. But it is more like communitarianism.

My own clan still has that tribal culture and ethos of sharing with Ourselves, but with a modern twist to it. I don’t have to put myself into debt with a bank by leasing a car, because somebody in my family will give me one for free. I don’t have to worry about paying rent because nobody in my family is dishonourable enough to charge one of our own rent. Besides, I can’t move out if I wanted to. I don’t have to worry about a job because I have plenty of family owned ones to work at where my aunts and uncles will share their profit with me. Or I can go work for one of their friends. Some times shit happens in life though, and our tribal ethos has that aspect of life covered too. Me and my cousins unofficially call it “Tribal Insurance Plans.” There is a big worded technical term for it which I can’t remember, so we call it that.

One of the “tribal insurance plans” we cousins call the “Granny Plan.” Technically this is a joint savings account the aunts and uncles make. Every month the aunts and uncles go around collecting from their peers money. The cousins will collect money each month from their peers, and the elders will collect money from their peers. This all goes into one savings account or mutual account for later or if and when needed. Mostly it’s used to pay for medical stuff when the elders goes to the doctors for their meds and check ups, surgeries etc. There is a lesser plan like this we do, or are coerced into doing for our parents. Every month, if you are working you mom collects “mom taxes” from you which she saves to for her and your dad’s retirement. “Mom taxes” are collected forever until they die unfortunately; but you get used to it, or it becomes a honourable duty.

I don’t know if this sounds bad to a Westerner or not, but it’s something that has been done in some way or other since tribal times. My cousins and I just give them colorful modern names, since these traditional customs don’t have formal names. But it works, because that culture of financially taking care of your elders has been passed down from generation to generation in our social class since forever. My aunt-mom actually raised me knowing who my real mom is and she raised me to learn to take care of my birth mother when I get older. So I actually don’t have double mom taxes. I always thought it was funny because when we were kids we would get allowances and so every allowance day we’d just hold out our hand with a smile. Now it’s the other way around. When mom tax day comes my mom has her hand out with a smile, and she’ll complain and wiggle her fingers for more if it’s under $100.

When one of our businesses fails for some reason, our tribal ethos and clan culture has that situation covered too. This happened to my uncle not to long ago. His business had to be shut down because no more customers were coming. But he didn’t tell anybody in the family his personal financial problems out of pride or shame or whatever until it was too late. He got his house foreclosed eventually. He moved himself and his wife and kids into his wife’s parents house. Then to rebuild his wealth all of the old people in our family had a meeting and they went around collecting $500 dollars or so from every single individual person that had the means to offer that amount. All of that collected money was given to the eldest aunt who went out and bought a new business for the uncle to have. He should try to pay everybody back in time, but because it was an emergency, he is not obligated to, because they were gifts or token of the love and bond of the family. But when some one else in the family needs help, it becomes he duty to go out of his way to repay his debt of honour.

The internal “economy” of a tribe is neither naturally capitalist or communist. It is neither a natural system of usury, employment, exploitation, buying or selling for profit or enforced equality, classless social order, and forced sharing. All of this stuff in its various forms happens between unrelated clans and tribes instead. You don’t make items and sell it for profit to your own flesh and blood. You sell the shit to other clans and tribes not related. You don’t force your own flesh and blood to equally share their wealth and property with everyone no matter what they do so that everyone is on the same financial level. You force that on other unrelated clans and tribes. You don’t exploit your own flesh and blood for profit. You exploit others for profit. You don’t compete with your own clan for wealth and domination or some survival of the fittest worldview. You do that with other people not related to you, who are not your friends. When left to our own devices, humans will do what we as humans have always done: war, exploit, compete, plunder, kill, abuse, share, trade, give, care for, and live for. In all cases we each know who our own are and who is not “Ourselves.”

The Mundane of any religion have no meaning or understanding of terms like “our own,” or “Ourselves.” When they hear terms like “us against them” it sounds trite, or philosophically questionable to them. Those simple words only try to convey or intimate or approximate a natural expression of Human Nature. You know you’re understandings of Human Nature is distorted when “we,” and “us” do not have any meaning to you. It is only in this Westernized Urban environment that the Mundane since the industrial revolution has been dehumanized into single unit automatons. It is within the State’s best interest to have these Mundanes not understand the meaning of “Us.” We can look at Tunisia and Egypt as and example of why a System and State does not want its citizens inherently Us-Minded. There is no “Us” in Mundane, there is only Me [first and last letters]. It does not serves a multibillion dollar corporation with its lobbyists in government influencing secular laws to have the commoner walk around with an Us mentality. When you have no Us or Ourselves to depend on or care for you, you have no choice but to go to the corporation for jobs, and to the banks for money.

It doesn’t take much brains and intelligence to be a Me-Oriented selfish individual. If you have ever had a pet rat, you’ll know it doesn’t take much intelligence to be selfish and me-oriented. It takes skill, tolerance, empathy, honour, loyalty, duty, culture, tradition, respect, observance of strict rules to live with others and to manifest a solidly coherent clan. And it is not an easy mental and emotional ride either. You don’t get along with everybody at times because of differences and you fight sometimes, but you must learn to tolerate their uniqueness and differences because you or they aren’t going any where.

My Americanized friends who know how I live my life, will often ask me why I don’t do like they do and just move out and gain my freedom and independence because I’m old enough to be my own person like they are. And to me it’s a trade off with long term causal consequences. Do I want to stay connected to my family and follow strict rules of culture and traditions, or do I want to be free and on my own? Do I want 300 people always there in my life who I know owe me favours and will care for me until I die, or do I want those kinds of friends where they are only there for me when I pay for their beers? Do I want to struggle in life to make ends meet, or do I want to do things the smart way and meet ends?

Do I want to dedicate the best years of my life working for The System that cares little for me, or do I want to dedicate my life for a clan System which I know works and has works for thousands of years? Do I want to retire in old age on some pension and look forward to a nursing home, or do I want to retire when I’m 50 wealthy, and taken care of by my children and siblings to travel the world and enjoy the last years of my life, knowing that when I die I will be surrounded by those whom I have loved, whom I have lived for, who have nursed my till I take my last breath? What is the Wyrd I want to manifest in my life? The choices we make today, unfolds and becomes what we experience wyrdfully tomorrow.

What is your human destiny? What is your human life worth? Are you even worth anything to anybody at all in life? What are you working for? Whom are you living for? I’m not saying that one Way of Life is “better” than the other. They both have their pros and cons. I am saying that each way of life we live wyrdfully manifests their own End Results. The Life that I live is fundamentally based on what End Results I desire to wyrdfully manifest in time. It has nothing to do with belief or philosophy or worldview. It has everything to do with what and how we Do and Act and ultimately for whom. Are you intelligently investing your life into something that will give you good returns in the future? Are you an ant or a locust? Do you have Hive-Culture, or Locust-Nature?

There is a difference between a Hive and a herd of cattle. There is a difference between an army and a herd of humans in a city. These Mundanes tell themselves that they are not a part of any herd. But yet the fact that they are individualized, have no connection with others around them, have no Us-Mentality, and exist with others in an urban setting where everyone is just drifting by in life, makes them a part of a human urban herd. The opposite of a herd of livestock is an organized group of animals co-operating with each other for mutual benefit.

Think about, have you ever seen a pack of wolves or group of hyenas or lionesses hunt together and share their kill? Have you ever seen a herd of cows, llamas, emus, goats, or sheep do anything Together and share the aftermath? Have you ever seen bees or wasps work Together all day to collect nectar of food, then share it with everybody back that the nest? Have you ever seen cockroaches work together and share their end product of their cooperative work? Have you ever seen a pod of dolphins and killer whales work Together to maneuver fish or krill to hunt and share the spoils? Have you ever seen a fish do anything Together and share shit? Have you ever seen an army structurally militarize and mobilize like a single super organism to attack and then share the spoils of their collective effort? Have you ever seen a herd of humans in a city do anything Together and share the spoils of collective effort? Not only are these Mundanes a herd of humans, they are also cockroaches and they got fish brains.

Our Way

Tribal ethos is not something specific to some single race or culture. Like The Sinister or Primal Essence, these words like Tribal Ethos and Clan Culture are merely human terms to try to convey a Natural Human Phenomenon. To which the various and unique human cultures and traditions are outer or exoteric expressions of. We as a species have been Human longer than we have been Urbanized pawns of a State. The Nation-State is a new invention, a remodel of older kingdoms and empires. Even these are modeled after ancient city-states. The oldest city-state is Jericho which is about 11,000 years old or something. Our human species has been around for at least 200,000 years. Do the math. Which way is more natural? Urbanization or Tribalization? Clans or Individualized employees/citizens? Abstract ideologies or Natural Phenomena? Culture and Tradition or State Law and Order? This isn’t calculus. Are you truly a Human Beast as Mother Nature and Father Time made you or are you a Domesticated Ape like the Urban State made you?

We all in our Human past have have clans and tribes and Traditions and cultures born from ancient ties with folk and land. The Mundane breed of humans of any country have lost their ancient, “pagan” [earthy], tribal Traditions due to Magian Ethos. Some of us Noble breeds of Humans have also lost of ancient tribal ethos and Humanness due to the State. Can you reclaim what was taken from you? Can you remanifest what was stolen from you? Your Humanness.

There was a time in our Human past when our elders used emotion and imagination inspiring Gods to tell us stories and Mythos. And from such mythos we hear our elders tell, a culture and tradition gradually grew through our action and deeds. Those Gods in themselves may only be feeble representations of Natural Phenomena. For example Surya and Apollo are variables that represent the Sun in such a way which we can work with in our human brains. Venus and Freya both represent the same Natural Phenomena in the form of variables so that our minds can better work with them. In the same sense that we can say that the variables in E=Mc^2 are not “real” things in and of themselves, but represent in workable format real phenomena. E represents the Phenomenon of Energy. M represents the Natural Phenomenon of Mass. C^2 represents the Natural Phenomenon of the speed of light. When we are able to better understand natural phenomena we can learn to work with such phenomena and use them to inspire our human creativity to further progress ourselves. In this light can you really say that “Shiva” as a representation of the Natural Phenomenon of destruction and waste is fake? That “Buddha” which represents Knowing and Mind is imaginary? That “Satan” as the Natural Phenomenon of Thrift and Adversity is not real? That “Baphomet” as a representation of the Phenomenon of Primal Essence is fictional?

In the past these ancient Gods specifics gave birth to thousands of human cultures and traditions. Their mythos and the rites and ceremonies that coalesced around them become culture and tradition. Once the culture and tradition is set in motion and is self sustaining those Gods take on a secondary supportive role used as a source of esoteric exegesis for insights. In the same sense that the articles of the Constitution have over 300 years set into motion a living modality or way of life in America. Once that happens that culture an American lives and is a living part of is independent of the actual constitution that seeded it. Walk up to your average American and ask them to recite to you the 6^th Amendment and to tell you what it means. Walk up to any Buddhist and ask them to quote page 19,000 of the Tipitaka and explain that shit to you. I’m willing to bet that the average cultural American and cultural Buddhist won’t be able to do it at the top of their head. Because that document, mythos, was just a seed used to cultivate a culture and Tradition and Way of Life. After that culture is living, self perpetuating, and self sustaining, then we can go back to nitpick around for esoteric insight: “What’s ‘right to bare arms’ really mean?” “When Buddha talks about Brahma as if it were a real being what did he mean?”

The point is, if you have lost your culture or Tradition, or have a desire to materialize over time a new one: Go back in time and find your ancestral Gods and mythos and use them as seeds to cultivate a new culture and Tradition. Or look deep into Nature and make new Gods and mythos out of the Phenomena you see and are a living part of. Traditionalism and Culture literally begins inside each of us as a choice to Do a set of acts; meaning to Live in life and apply human action for its End Results. Cultivating clan and tribal ethos also simply begins with each of Us, by learning to reconnect with our lost Human Nature and understand that there is an “Us” and an “Everybody else.” The Us is you, your family, your close companions; and what children and grand children you and your Us will have Together.

The key is Generational Cohesion. The only way to actualize generational cohesion is by using mythos and cultivating shared rites, rituals, and ceremonies. Doing things together over and over again engineers group culture. Pay close attention to the military. Go join one. Go through boot camp. You’ll learn intimately that every little thing you repetitively do as a group over and over again forges a Master Mind and group culture. It only takes less than a year of boot camp to take random incoherent nobodies off the street to seed them with a fierce collective culture and customary way of doing things who will live work and die for each other. Go join a gang and you’ll get the same. Beliefs and philosophical shit has nothing to do with gang culture. It’s a way of doing things, a way of living and working for others for a common or mutual benefit. It only takes a year of street life to endue a person with fierce gang culture who would live, work, and die for his street brothers and sisters. Actually my analogy of armies and gangs may not be accurate, since perhaps a certain type of person naturally gravitate to armies and gangs in the first place. In this sense, perhaps what a new ONA Initiate told me regarding tribalism and Traditionalism is more accurate: either you got it or you don’t.

I once favoured the thousands of pages of ideas in the ONA over things like Naos and the BBS. But now having come to a better understanding of my own culture and what it means to even have a culture and tradition in the first place, I place ONA works like Naos and the BBS at the top of the Culture manifesting list, for the rites, rituals, ceremonies, and praxis they contain; but the ONA needs more new such things as “Audan” once wrote. We need more simple rites and commonly shared observances. Little ones that add up.

In my own culture we have only a handful of elaborate rites [which all involves Buddhist monks chanting for hours boringly] such as the 3 day marriage ceremony, the funeral rite, the house and temple consecration rite, and a few other for the major days of the year. Otherwise our culture and Thai Traditions is literally made up of thousands of very “small” customs or ways of just doing things in life. Some are stupid and meaningless. One traditional thing we all observe; and I know this goes clear across all of Cambodia, Thailand, and Loas; is that you don’t touch people’s head. It’s disrespectful, and if you touch the head of the wrong person they’ll kick your ass. Another very simple Traditional observance is that when you sit you never point the bottoms of your feet at old people; this is also considered disrespectful.

Or the Arts is a source of culture, which are themselves simple. For instance Thai people dance faster than Khmer traditional dance. The finger and hand gestures in Thai apsara dance is different. Thai drawings and paintings differ from other cultures slightly. So does the style of poetry, literature, and architecture. Then little cultural ways of behaviour and mannerism also adds up to a whole culture. Thai people in general – as far as I have experienced – speak more softly and their/our demeanor and way we carry ourselves is more softer and fluid, regardless of what language we speak. Traditional Thai music also has its own unique flavour and style. There are also simple commonly observed religious customs we Traditionally observe. For example on the Sila days – which is based on lunar phases – you observe the 5 Precepts that day and burn three sticks of incense to a statue of the Buddha. 5 precepts that day means all day you try not kill anybody, abstain from sex all day, don’t steal from people for the day, don’t drink alcohol do drugs or gamble for the whole day, and what’s the other one; don’t lie to anybody all day or use bad words during that day. It’s a simple traditional observance, but every Theravada Buddhist in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos shares this practice which is about 80-90 million people. My boy cousins observe sila days by drinking beer in Styrofoam cups far away in the corner of the garage so the old grannies don’t see them.

I’ve always like the idea of Fests around bon fires spoken about in the ONA’s Eira MS which is one of my favorite pieces. The ONA already has major rites in the BBS and Traditional practices unique to its sprouting Kulture such as the Star Game, Seven Fold Way, and the Tree of Wyrd. As time goes more simple observances should be accumulated without force. By that I mean that as we go about our business putting the ONA into practice in our various ways, certain Kultural ways of doing this will develop and such memes will just spread to other Dreccs on their own. One simple Kultural meme I see emerging is the style or flavour of art. There is also the simple Kultural practice of various Dreccs expressing The Sinister in sinister fiction. There is the simple Kultural meme of having no leaders of the ONA. There is the emerging Kultural observance of sharing insights and inspiring Ourselves as opposed to having one person expound authoritative doctrines. So I would say these little and sometimes easily over looked “observances” are what composes the bulk of a living and unique culture and Tradition.

For the moment, I personally feel that Reichsfolk and The Numinous Way on an esoteric level are vital to the ONA. It’s like farming. Before you can stick seeds in the ground, you have to first fix up the soil by tilling it and adding rich fertilizer and nutrients. Then you add the cultural seeds, and those seeds will grow. The clan and tribal focus of Reichsfolk and the Numinous Way aligns our minds to become more aware of the idea and concept of culture and traditions. To help balance things or remind us that there is more to the praxis of the ONA then weird occult and magickal things. There is the importance of Traditionalism and Culture. And so by becoming more mindful of Traditions and culture, we are each more able to become aware of our own actual cultures and to examine mindfully what exactly goes into making a culture and the importance of culture and clans in our human lives. I know I’m not the only one associated with the ONA to have a culture. I know there are a few Dreccs from England with their English Traditions and culture. There are those Dreccs from Scandinavia who have a kick ass ancient culture and fading ancient traditions. The Russian Dreccs. The American Dreccs also. Although its only 300 years old or so, America does have its own young culture. And I would say that such Dreccs from America and Canada and Australia serve as the best sources of insight because their cultures are new and can be reasonably traced back to their original “seeds.”

Why should We of the ONA bother to develop for Ourselves a living culture and tradition is the question. Because Time ultimately works against us. Each of us is only alive for 100 years at best. After that all of our work and life’s efforts melts away with our flesh in the grave. And if we don’t learn to imbue our future generations our works, goals, and basic dream of colonizing space will be lost in the nebulous unraveling of generations. Hitler truly speaks to us from the past and gives Us the greatest and most precise answer to our question: “He who owns the youth owns the future.” I hate to sound like a conservative nut job, but when we as parents and the guiding voice of the younger generations are liberal with the Drecclings, they drift away, like atoms aimlessly drifts.

You have to be conservative within context to your own Traditions and culture. You have to put those atoms into Order, to bring the “chaos” into Order. The very meaning of the Cosmos and the crystalline components of organic life suggests that there is a correlation with what is Life or the animation of Life Force with Order. Every atom in a crystal has an exact place to be. Every organ and cell in a body had an exact function to execute. Every soldier of a military is a living member of a solid and organized Whole system with their own duties and functions. There is no room in Order for liberalism. One can say that Order “qua Order” requires fascist methodologies and fascist structure. If we are trying to be a diamond, then as carbon atoms we have our set places to be in our Order and we have no choice but to follow Orders, for the End Result. Any one of us coming from a rigid culture knows the level of fascistic conservatism involved in being raised in such highly organized and structuralized families/cultures. You literally have no freedom to make your own life’s choices; especially during your first 21 years.

It’s not a question of molding Our Drecclings or shaping them. It will happen with or without you. You yourself will either do the molding and shaping; or television will; or public schools and their teachers will; or religion will; or the State will; or secular society will. Nature made us blank minded and moldable during our first 25 years of human life. There is a reason for that. In ancient times no lone monkey or ape can survive alone no matter how big, muscular and ugly they were. It’s not how Nature makes her investments. Mother Nature and Father Time work with time spans of Billions of years. Creating a loner human; like tigers are solitary; is unproductive and doesn’t insure genetic or species longevity. The most collective or most cooperative is fit to survive and go the distance. There is an insight full reason why ants are the most successful species on earth. If ants were our sized our species would be in deep shit along with the rest of the earth’s species.

Can you imagine what would be possible for a single ant colony if they were our size and were equally as intelligent as us? We humans can dream up of space ships and space colonies, our scientists can figure out precisely how to build such things, but as a species we are currently and dangerously limited. Or we place a limit on how far we allow ourselves to reach: Money. If our species can’t print out enough colorful paper than for some reason, it’s not possible, even if it is possible. Those human sized ants would not be limited by money. They’d just build the shit for the collective or mutual benefit of their own colony and leave our asses here to rot with our money. I know money has its needs and practical uses, but must it be an absolute power in our lives where it literally tells us what our Human destiny is? It’s like as a species we went to the Money God and said to it: “Excuse us sir, we have this idea of maybe leaving our miserable planet and perhaps colonizing space and making something of ourselves; your supreme thoughts?” And the Money God says to us: “Great idea guys. I hate to say this but it’s just not commercially profitable for me. Keep dreaming though.”

When anything monopolizes your need and dependence, it has gained absolute control of you. That’s one of the earliest things I ended up learning in junior high school history when I was 13. I learned that China was once an empire, and one day the British came and sold them opium. The emperor of China eventually got fed up with all the addicts and problems Opium was causing so he ordered his men to go to the harbor and throw out all the opium in the British ships there. The British used that as an excuse to move in and assert control. The emperor of China had no room to move because the British had a more powerful navy and army, and they also own the Emperors subjects via opium addiction. He had few option, either to cooperate with the British, get is ass kicked, or the British can cut off the supply of opium to the addicts and cause a revolt. When you monopolize something – anything – a person or group of people need or depend on, you effectively control them. That goes for money, jobs, religion, and the State.

It’s now easy for us to see this concept when we look back at religion in old world Europe. The Catholic Church successfully got everyone to believe that salvation was in the hands of the Church. Salvation wasn’t even a real concrete commodity to be monopolized, but the Church pulled it off any ways. Not only that but they turned every human desire into a sin. Then they went further and turned other human needs into “sacraments” that only the Church could give such as marriage. You had nowhere to go to Depend on for such things but to the Church for God, for salvation, for forgiveness of sins, and for husbands and wives. Because of that monopolization of Dependency and needed commodity – even if such commodities were not even real – they owned the lives of everybody from cradle to grave for hundreds of years.

Then you seriously think about the evolution of the current Nation-State. You see that its evolution coincides with the systematic break down and destruction of ancient indigenous European Traditions, tribes, and cultures down to these little barely functioning “families” of mom, pop, and kids. When you have absolutely no organic tribe of body of people you can go to help you survive in this condition, you have nobody to Depend on but the State, its money, its government, and its System. When they own your dependence, they own you. We have Egypt to thank for showing to us that when a people have developed an Us-Minded way of thinking, and when they realize and know they cannot depend on their government anymore that the State falls, if the people takes back the majority of Dependency monopolized by the State.

It’s the only natural reason why when human children are born into existence that they come out naturally under your total control. Why? Because they are utterly dependent on you for their needs and survival. They cannot live without your providence, or they believe whole-mindedly and emotionally such. It’s the same games once played by religion, just secularized. The State breaks up your organic and numinous connections and bonds with people around you. They raise you in their public school rejecting ideas of cooperation and teach you to compete and work on your own for good grades. You are conditioned to not trust anybody around you. You don’t even trust your own parents with your children and money. Oh but you can trust the banks, they’ll give you loans. Based on usury of course; or should we say: “Jewsury!” The good government people made laws to protect you from being ripped off by bankers didn’t they. And of course you can trust corporations to get wage paying jobs. Those big bad bosses can’t enslave you because the government made laws to protect you. And yes you can trust the State with your life the government has your best interest and welfare always in mind don’t they. Just like you can trust a Catholic priest to babysit your boys while you’re at work. You can depend on the government regime. You have no choice actually but to depend on them.

These Mundanes will never understand the need and use of a clan or tribe in this day and age. Who needs relatives and comrades when you have drinking buddies and debt! Mundanes don’t need organic blood relations or families. Those aren’t cool anymore to have. The Mundane craze these days is Independence and facebook friends! If you’re a Mundane Satanist and you have your own forum where mental cripples worshiping your incoherent words, then shit you just achieved the modern American Dream! But fuck these Mundanes. We don’t want to convince them to understand or see things our way. Its within our best future interest to have Mundanes continue to be mundane. We should thank the old world religion and modern State for genetically engineering these savants. They sure can work. Have you ever thought about it? All it takes for the System if to invest at least 18 years into your children. Then from the age of 18-70 those children will labour mindlessly for the State and its corporations. That’s about 50 years of daily labour for a mere 18 years of initial investment of time and conditioning. The astonishing thing is that these Mundanes will be fine with it as long as they get their beer, vodka, and television.

Clans and tribes serve a two fold purpose for the ONA. The first purpose is it benefits us. The synergy of many people loyal to each other living for each other to manifest group benefit makes life easier and more enjoyable to live. If not for you, than for your own children someday. The second purpose is that the more clans and tribes there are, the more the State monopoly on Dependency is fractured. It’s not a cure all and end all of our human woes on earth, but it’s a productive step “forward.” So I would say or reiterate what has already been said by Anton Long, that during the ONA’s third phase the focus of our long term strategy is to work now; however we can; to build up the ONA into a living Tradition and Culture in time so that from this Tradition and Culture their will crop up tribes and clans. And so the focus of our efforts and minds is brought from its distractions with things “out there” down to a more intimate level of things concerning us as individual people, our inner ethos, what seed culture we will sow, how we shall raise our children and grandchildren, and the self changing work of learning to use Honour, Loyalty, and Duty to forge intimate relations and bonds with others. It will be a work that requires practical effort in the real world and a lot of honest self understanding and self change or internal alchemy, so that we trust and live for Our own selves Together, benefitting from the Fruits of our collective synergy.

If we understand the long work ahead of us; of literally forging clans and tribes out of nothing from scratch; we will each come to realize sooner or later that the essence of Reichsfolk and the Numinous Way, with its simple yet inspiring and insightful focus on the folk – Our Folk – are vital Life Lines that will feed the gradual materialization and actualization of Our Folk, long from now. Culture, Tradition, and all things that have the power to inspire us and captivate our minds must be used. Like ants and bees, we will spend our whole lived working for the Unborn, only to die ourselves to never see the fruits of what works we wrought. So that those grubs, when they break free from their chrysalis to inherit a better Hive; a better life, and better world; which is the Gift we have collectively left behind for them. So that from that future Gift, they may use it to take to the Stars and fulfill their Human destiny.

Chloe 352

Order of Nine Angles

122 yf