"Yes, my friend, there is something about Orders; one prefers living in their bosom rather than out on the periphery, let alone in exile [...]"
[Hermann Hesse]
The Glass Bead Game, p. 201
Decentralization is a prerequisite for the rekindling of community in Western society.
Mobility erodes community, but as we put down roots and feel attachment to a place, our human relationships deepen, become more secure, and - as they continue over time - more reliable.
The broader sense of self in traditional Ladakhi society contrasts with the individualism of Western culture. A Ladakhi's identity is to a great extent molded by close bonds with other people, and is reinforced by the Buddhist emphasis on interconnectedness.
People are supported in a network of relationships that spread in concentric circles around them - family, farm, neighbourhood, village. In the West we pride ourselves on our individualism, but sometimes individualism is a euphemism for isolation. We tend to believe that a person should be completely self-sufficient, that he or she should not need anybody else.
The closely knit relationships in Ladakh seem liberating rather than oppressive, and have forced me to reconsider the whole concept of freedom. This is not as surprising as it might appear. Psychological research is verifying the importance of intimate, reliable, and lasting relations with others in creating a positive self-image. We are beginning to recognize how this in turn is the foundation for healthy development.Ladakhis score very highly in terms of self-image. It is not something conscious; it is perhaps closer to a total absence of self-doubt, a profound sense of security. This inner security breeds tolerance and an acceptance of others with all their differences.
[Helena Norberg-Hodge]
Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh, p.186-7
The Ordnung clarifies what is to be considered worldly and sinful, for to be worldly is to be lost.
Some of the rules have direct biblical support; others do not. Regulations that cannot be directly supported by biblical references are justified by reasoning that to do other would be worldly.
The old way is the better way.
A father who tried living in a newly formed Amish settlement "without the rigid traditions, where everything was figured out according to the Bible (or the understanding of the Bible)," found that "it didn't work." Following this experience he said, "I have a healthy respect for the traditions in the larger communities."
"[...] In spite of an outsider's view that Ordnung is a law, a bondage of suppression, the person who has learned to live within a respectful church Ordnung appreciates its value. It gives freedom of heart, peace of mind, and a clear conscience.
Such a person has actually more freedom, more liberty, and more privilege than those who would be bound to the outside."
[John A. Hostetler]
Amish Society, p. 82-4
I was with about fifteen Ladakhis and two students from Calcutta on the back of a truck taking us along the bumpy and dusty road from Zanskar.As the journey went on, the students became restless and uncomfortable and began pushing at a middle-aged Ladakhi who had made a seat for himself out of a sack of vegetables.
Before long, the older man stood up so that the students - who were about twenty years younger than him - could sit down. When, after about two hours, we stopped for a rest, the students indicated to the Ladakhi that they wanted him to fetch water for them; he fetched the water. They then more or less ordered him to make a fire and boil tea for them.
He was effectively being treated as a servant - almost certainly for the first time in his life. Yet there was nothing remotely servile in his behaviour; he merely did what was asked of him as he might for a friend - without obsequiousness and with no loss of dignity. I was fuming, but he and the other Ladakhis, far from being angered or embarrassed by the way he was being treated, found it all amusing and nothing more.
The old man was so relaxed about who he was that he had no need to prove himself.
I have never met people who seem so healthy emotionally, so secure, as the Ladakhis. The reasons are, of course, complex and spring from a whole way of life and world view. But I am sure that the most important factor is the sense that you are part of something much larger than yourself, that you are inextricably connected to others and to your surroundings.
[Helena Norberg-Hodge]
Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh, p.84-5
It is clear that the rule of being oneself implies that one can speak of a “proper nature” for everyone, whatever it may be, as something well defined and recognisable. But this is problematic, especially at the present time.
It may have been less difficult in societies that did not know individualism, in traditional societies organised along groups and castes where the factors of heredity, birth, and environment favoured a high degree of internal unity and the differentiation of types, and where the natural articulations were reinforced and nurtured by customs, ethics, laws, and sometimes even by no less differentiated religious forms.
All this has long ceased to exist for modern Western man, and has long been “superseded” along the road of “liberty”; thus the average modern man is changeable, unstable, devoid of any real form. The Pauline and Faustian lament, “two souls, alas, live in my breast," is already an optimistic assumption; all too many have to admit, like a typical character in Hesse, that they have a multitude of souls!
One can see now how problematic is the very point that has hitherto seemed fixed: fidelity to oneself, the absolute, autonomous law based on one's own “being,” when it is formulated in general and abstract terms.
Everything is subject to debate—a situation accurately exemplified by characters in Dostoyevsky, like Raskolnikov or Stavrogin. At the moment when they are thrown back on their own naked will, trying to prove it to themselves with an absolute action, they collapse; they collapse precisely because they are divided beings, because they are deluded concerning their true nature and their real strength.
Their freedom is turned against them and destroys them; they fail at the very point at which they should have reaffirmed themselves in their depths they find nothing to sustain them and carry them forward.
[Julius Evola]
Ride the Tiger, p. 44-5
The important point is that against every form of ressentiment and social antagonism everyone should recognise and love his own station, one that fits his own nature, also recognising in this way the limits within which he can develop his own possibilities and achieve his own perfection, because an artisan that acquits himself perfectly in his function is without doubt superior to a king that rejects and does not live up to his dignity.
[Julius Evola]
‘Orientations’, VI
Critics of transactionalism argue that value lies in the expression of relations within the structure of a social totality. In this view, hierarchy is an integral part of value and may be by instigated not by struggle and competition for scarce resources but by different roles in the larger whole.
This interpretation of social value seems more relevant to the ethos of Pintupi hierarchy, which carries a tone of support rather than of coercion. Pintupi exhibit little interest in domination; the most prominent quality of their hierarchy is, rather, its contrast to the free, unrestrained, almost anarchic quality of daily life.
My analysis of Pintupi "politics," by which I mean the processes involved in the regulation and allocation of social value, starts with their conception of hierarchy as 'looking after” (kanyininpa). This cultural construct is basic to politics as locally understood. The view - and legitimation - of male hierarchy as nurturant depends on the capacity of older men to transmit valued ritual knowledge to younger men.
[Fred R. Myers]
Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, p.220
In a sense the use of English on the university level of education did not lead to its spread in Indian society but removed those who acquired it from that society, leaving them in a kind of barren ground which was neither Indian nor Western but hovered uncomfortably between the two.
The fact that knowledge of English and possession of a university degree could free one from the physical drudgery of Indian life by opening the door to public service or the professions created a veritable passion to obtain these keys (but only in a minority).
[Carroll Quigley]
Tragedy and Hope, ‘The Buffer Fringe,’ p.101
Related posts:-
Centre / Periphery
A Familiar Story | Carry Each Other
On the Importance of Community | Morals and Codes
Forget Your Self
Carry Each Other
Life Support
Devotion
Negative Space
Firm Foundations
Growing Down
Maturity
