Retribalizing and the Remnant

There's a counter-wisdom running against the Summer of Hell/Inevitable Riots/Martial Law meme being pushed on us like Ecstasy manufactured in Israel. It's gaining traction. To wit:

The solution is to re-scale and make your world small but still extensible. The technologies are already there. Grow vegetables and swap them with your neighbors. Get your ass on facebook your face on assbook on Twitter and introduce the transgender girl you met in Thailand to Louie up the street and share pics of kohlrabi. Invest in good things near you like a brewery or a share in a farm's crop. A cow's milk. You've heard how it was the Vandals and Visigoths who took down Rome but that's not the big history. It was Christ took Rome because he took down their puppets. Thing was the Romans built great roads and couldn't close the Appian Way to Christians. Close the roads and close the commerce so the Christians used their roads and brought in a stronger network. Like the internetz are now. Emperor Constantine in the East converted and his empire lasted another century. Only thing matters in the end is what your family your friends and neighbors think of you. They are your credit score.

And look, here's another one, a week later, different smart guy:

Because the best protection isn't owning 30 guns; it's having 30 people who care about you. Since those 30 have other people who care about them, you actually have 300 people who are looking out for each other, including you. The second best protection isn't a big stash of stuff others want to steal; it's sharing what you have and owning little of value. That's being flexible, and common, the very opposite of creating a big fat highly visible, high-value target and trying to defend it yourself in a remote setting.

That is retribalizing. Charles Hugh Smith goes on in the next post to talk about the Remnant, the tiny slice of people who with their individually miniscule but mysteriously coordinated behavior will swing the door on the hinges of history and get this retribalizing going. Well worth reading. I'll cut to the chase.

Note that the Remnant is not engaged in any one pursuit; smart people are just doing what they think is right and good, which includes being skeptical of the received "wisdom" of the media and government pronouncements/propaganda, trying to avoid the financial vortex which is pulling down the non-elites (and maybe a few elites, too), living lighter, cheaper, better lifestyles away from the stomping masses of the Consumption Is Our True God mainstream, working to improve the soil of a patch of earth, and a thousand other projects and interests.

If anything characterizes the Remnant, it is skepticism, a disdain for pomp and aggrandizement, and an awareness that doing with less is actually a happier, more fulfilling life than Always Chasing Bigger and More in the Public Eye.

It's the same thing you can read about daily at Urban Survival, Cryptogon when he gets personal, and a few other places. This is the way forward. Find your people, hook up with them, and take care of each other. The mystery ingredient that coordinates the Remnant's behavior is also known as love in the agape sense.

Agape has been expounded on by many Christian writers in a specifically Christian context. Thomas Jay Oord has defined agape as "an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being."

We are here now, in exactly that predicament. The correct response is to make the social connections rich and complex and the material requirements simple, and that will maximize the survival of people who are not sociopathic.