david myatt: concerning the folk, race, and empathy

8/8/2019 David Myatt: Concerning The Folk, Race, and Empathy

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/david-myatt-concerning-the-folk-race-and-empathy 1/11

Some Questions Concerning The Folk, Race, and Empathy

According to several of your writings - for instance, the recent Empathy andThe Immoral Abstraction of Race - you regard both race and folk asabstractions. Does this means you are against existing cultures and folkcommunities, and see the foundation of new folk communities as unethical?

Race is most certainly, according to The Numinous Way, an unethicalabstraction - as are folk communities if (and I stress if) a certain ethnicexclusively is made the raison d'être for maintaining and/or founding suchcommunities. There is thus some distinction here, between race and between aliving folk which is part of a living tradition, which certainly requires furtherclarification, since such a living folk is itself not an unethical staticabstraction, but rather a type of living, changing, being.

In respect of the concept race, this one ideation is, by its very large andabstractive nature, tied to either, or to both, of the concepts of The State and

the modern Nation - that is, such a State or such a Nation is regarded or comesto be regarded, due to its size and nature, as the necessary condition for thesurvival, and betterment, of a particular race or of what is regarded as acategory within a particular race, what is sometimes regarded as asub-species. Such a proposed ethnic nation-State most often - in theory as inpractice - becomes centralized and so does away with, or strives to do awaywith, regional, local, authority, placing an idealized, supra-personal, duty and

David Myatt - Concerning The Folk, Race, and Empathy

of 11



loyalty to the nation-State (and to some idealized National people) beforeregional and personal duty and loyalty. Similarly, the resources of regions areharnessed to National goals, with some centralized authority given authority tocontrol such regions and make and implement plans based on some abstractgoal or goals.

This is, for example, what NS Germany saught to do, with race definedaccording to certain criteria, with some traits (of character, personality, or of genetics) regarded as desirable, and others as undesirable, with planning,programmes and policies, and laws, designed and implemented and enforced(if necessary by force) to nurture or produce the desirable, and remove orexclude the undesirable.

In addition, personal sacrifice and suffering - by the people of the nation-Stateand often of great magnitude - are to be expected and even endured, in theservice of that nation-State, and in order for some future goals, such as the

survival of the race and/or of the Nation that is said to be or which could berepresentative of that race, that people. Similarly, suffering inflicted on others- not of one's people - is also to be expected, and regarded as sometimesnecessary, for such goals to be achieved in some future. Similarly, war - theemployment of large armed forces, equipped with technological, impersonalweapons - is regarded as sometimes necessary, if not of itself desirable.

Now, given the personal nature of empathy, the desire to cease tocause suffering arising from such empathy, and the personal nature of honouritself, as defined by The Numinous Way, it should be clear as to how and why

such a nation-State is incompatible with The Numinous Way. For instance, forThe Numinous Way, loyalty and duty can only be to individuals that onepersonally knows and respects, and not to some abstract, remote authority orsome abstract entity such as a Nation, ethnic or otherwise. Also, no abstraction- strived for or believed in - justifies inflicting suffering on others, with theethics of empathy allowing only for personal, familial, self-defence (includingthe use of lethal force) in personal situations - that is, for inflicting suffering(and retribution) upon another human being only according to the guidelinesof personal honour.

According to honour, impersonal war - of large armies using impersonaldestructive weapons and the killing of people who, personally, have donenothing dishonourable to one's own person or to one's extended family - isdishonourable, as are laws, enforced by the use of force and imprisonment,which are or which may be applied to others based on some abstract criteria(such as perceived ethnicity or life-style) and not upon what those others haveactually dishonourably done. That is, for numinous law - based on the axiom of personal honour and applicable only to small communities - there are only


2 of 11



honourable and dishonourable deeds, with only actual dishonourable personaldeeds done, against another person or persons, regarded as being contrary tosuch numinous law [1].

In respect of the folk, its essence lies in a personal knowing, due to its

smallness and localized nature, and due to the relation one has to the people of that folk, either ancestrally or developed by and through marriage andlongevity of shared work. That is, the criteria for a folk is locality of dwellingand of work, and a community that one is part of by virtue of being related tomembers of that community or having worked and lived within thatcommunity for an extended period of time and thus become related to thecommunity most often by ties of marriage but occasionally by ties of personalloyalty and duty.

Thus, a folk is a living, naturally changing, entity, born out of shared personal

experiences and shared personal relationships, and nurtured by suchrelationships, by a belonging to a particular area, and by the sharing of newpersonal experiences. Thus evolves a particular attitude, ethos - a verylocalized weltanschauung - and also, over long periods of causal time, twointeresting things; first, a certain balance, a mutual respect often derivingfrom a mutual need and familial relations and personal knowing, and ofteninvolving the necessary communal use of local resources; and, second, afeeling of belonging to and pride in one's community, and thus a mostlyfriendly rivalry and sometimes competition with other nearby communities,but a rivalry and competition that tends, over causal time, not to beyond the

due bounds (and thus become destructive of such communities), if there ismaintained within such community a sense and knowing of the numinousitself, developed as this sense and knowing is by the accumulated pathei-mathos (the wisdom) of the ancestors of those of the community, and whichwisdom often in the past gave rise to local customs and to beliefs concerningNature (the land, the living beings of Nature), how the individual relates toNature, and what occurs beyond death.

If this local and localized wisdom - founded from the accumulated personaland practical experience of one's ancestors - is lost, or if there is an intrusioninto such a community of abstractions (often, in the past in the form of somedogmatic religion) or the emergence of a Tyrannos, then the folk becomesundermined and more often than not wanes and dies, because the naturalbalance is not restored.

This upsetting of the natural balance by, for example, a Tyrannos or somedishonourable personal deed or deeds, is the subject of the works of Aeschylusand Sophocles - and also a theme in both The Iliad and The Odyssey.


3 of 11



Oedipus is the classic example of a Tyrannos - who upsets the natural balanceand brings misfortune (upon himself and others - upon his folk, his polis) byhis killing of his father and his insatiable desire, against advice, to uncover hisown identity and that of the killer. Creon - in Antigone - is another suchexample, who scorns the ancient wisdom by his decree forbidding the burial of

Polynices. Agamemnon is another example of someone upsetting the naturalbalance and bringing misfortune: by his sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, byhis rape of Cassandra, and by his insult (to his wife, Clytaemnestra) of bringing Cassandra into his home. The unwise deeds of these individuals -their hubris, their insolence against the natural balance of Life - leads totragedy.

But the greatest tragedy to befall a folk is and has been the importation of abstractions - from some dogmatic religion, born in some foreign land, to thehorrid abstraction of "progress" [2] to the ideation of The Nation and The State

[3].

The criteria for a folk is thus not one of consciously striving to be of someabstract ethnicity, or of such ethnicity of itself being desirable and regardedas a necessary qualification to join such a folk community.

But in order to try and further elucidate this, and the folk itself, I shalldigress into the personal. As an individual, I feel myself to be English. Orrather, and more accurately, I still feel myself to be English despite all my

peregrinations and my pathei-mathos.

This feeling means two things for me. First, that I had and have an affinitywith rural England, both innate, and due to personal experience: an affinity tohow and to where I have worked in the past. Second, I can trace my Englishancestry back to at least Elizabethan times, with many of those ancestors of mine toiling on the land, for their families, and with some having fought for orworked hard on behalf of England, and the Empire, in times of peace and of war - my father, for instance, was in the armed forces during the SecondWorld War, as were other relatives, while my mother endured The Blitz.

Thus, and if I may be excused the clichés, my roots are in the land of England,despite a childhood abroad during the time of a still existing if then fadingEmpire - a land, a place, where I feel at home, a place whose rural landscape Ilove, from the small fields of rural South Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon,Somerset, Kent (and elsewhere) to the Dales of Yorkshire, to the Fells of Cumbria, to the vistas and waters of old Fenland [4], to the North Norfolk coast. In these places - especially among small villages, hamlets, farms - I have


4 of 11



my being, as I seem to share something with the people in such places, as if they are distant almost forgotten relatives of mine. And it is not only that wespeak the same language, but also seem to share something wordless: a way of living, of viewing the world, an instinct about life, about work, about valuesand goals. This sharing is of the real culture, the world, of my ancestors: theworld so beautifully recalled in the writings of Flora Thompson and Thomas

Hardy and Laurie Lee (and also to some extent by Mary Webb and others), andrecounted by William Cobbett - but a world, a culture, a way of life, that sadlyis being lost, and has all but vanished in many parts of England, replaced bylarge cities and large towns, unnecessary industries, and rapid un-numinousmeans of communication. Indeed, in many ways such rapid communications,and the convenience of rapid and easy travel, are products of hubris -un-numinous by their very nature - and thus antithetical to the folk. For everyTyrannos, every supra-personal Empire, every Caesar, every dogmatic andorganized religion, and now every State, always makes such rapidcommunications, and such ease of travel a priority (if only at first to convey

their armed forces, their tax-collectors or, in the case of religion, theirmissionaries) and it is by such means that destructive abstractions are spread,to the detriment of folk communities everywhere, so that some kind of material prosperity, or progress and the scrabble toward it, comes to regardedas more important and more desirable than a life wisely lived in balance.

My feeling of being English thus means that I have an affinity for such small,rural, English folk communities as existed, for generation after generation, formy ancestors, and which still - if only just - survive in parts of England. An

affinity with my ancestral past.

But what does this affinity that I feel imply, in a practical way? It impliesthat I have a desire to live and work and end my days in such places; that Iwould like to see such places - their way of living, the very land itself - surviveby having my descendants, or some of my family or some of my friends,treasure them, husband them, in that slow rural almost acausal way that isgermane to such places where modern abstractions are an intrusion, out-of-place, or destructive. At the very least it means that one hopes that some of one's descendants, or someone perhaps inspired by such an affinity to suchplaces and such ways, can establish and so live in similar folk communities asexist here or elsewhere.

Yet does this mean such new folk communities as may be established, or oldones, husbanded and maintained, have to consist of people of English descent -of Angle, Saxon, Norman, Celtic [5] blood? Is that what being English means?Or does it mean a particular ethos, a particular and local weltanschaaung. Orboth such ancestry, such blood, and such an ethos?


5 of 11



To me, it means a certain way of life - a dwelling in a certain type of ruralplace, a certain way and type of work - as well as a certain ethos, a particularoutlook on life. This outlook on life is the archetypal English way of fair-play,of sportsmanship, of humour in adversity, of thrift, modesty, of the dignity of work, and respect for both land, duty, and traditional customs - an outlook

evident, for example, in many of the characters portrayed by Flora Thompson,Thomas Hardy, and Jane Austen, and others. In, for example, the characters of Queenie and Alf Arless of Lark Rise; in the character of Colonel Brandon inSense and Sensibility; in the character of Gabriel Oak in Far from the MaddingCrowd; in the character of Peggotty in David Copperfield.

This way of life, and such communities, were formed by combinations of circumstances, and by a diversity of peoples who, though initially of differingtribal descent (Angles, Saxons and native Celts, for instance) were ethnicallyand to an extent culturally similar enough (for example, in respect of

manners) to assimilate reasonably well without under conflict. Thus, in earlyEnglish villages, the criteria of acceptance was not whether someone had blueeyes or blond hair (and thus seemed to fit some abstract criteria), but personalknowledge of them developed over a period of time, possession of necessary orrequired skills (in terms of work, for example) and a certain similarity of bothlife-style and outer appearance - not so different, in terms of attitude, beliefs,manners, or appearance, as to appear some outlandish (and possiblydangerous, disruptive) foreigner, and yet also not necessary identical to the villagers themselves.

There was thus a natural balance - between the instinctive (and necessary)clannish wariness of strangers, and hospitality and fairness towardsnewcomers.

For myself, I would love to see the old unique English way of life - and theEnglish folk of rural England - survive in a natural way somewhere or in manyplaces by such folk valuing that rural way of life, abandoning modernabstractions, and returning to a more numinous type of spirituality.

In a similar way, there is nothing un-numinous, nothing un-ethical - nothinginherently contrary to The Numinous Way - in European folk in other lands(such as Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany, Serbia, Russia, and soon) desiring this for themselves and their own, small, still existent, folk communities with their own still living and still numinous traditions, just asthere is nothing un-numinous, nothing un-ethical - nothing inherently contraryto The Numinous Way - in folk on other continents doing likewise for their ownliving communities.


6 of 11



But this does not mean - and should not mean - that one sets any abstractcriteria for belonging to or becoming part of such communities, in terms of race. Instead, one simply tries to live in a certain numinous way, sansabstractions, and sans any desire to impose abstractions upon one's self andothers.

Which leads us onto to the basis of new folk communities, and how to establishthem, and which will explain what is meant here. A new clan essentially beginswith a family - with, for instance, two people who desire to live together andloyally and honourably share their lives, who both possess the same numinousethos, or who desire to develope the same ethos, and who thus also seek toseparate themselves in some or many ways from The State, and fromenervating abstractions, and who seek to raise a family in a numinous way.

What distinguishes a clan from an ordinary family is the loyal and honourable

bond between them, and a desire or the need to live numinously, that is, in anethical manner and without the need to be reliant upon The State. Of course,to do this might take some duration of causal Time, as it could possibly involvemore than two people (and their children, if any) initially.

What is important here is that the choice of partners - and of friends - isentirely a matter for individuals. A question of love, of loyalty, of honour, of what feels is natural for one, and not a question of something called "race" orethnicity. A question of Life working as Life works, in a natural manner in itsspecies of time, with no abstractions imposed; no ideology followed or

formulated, no dogmatic rules for individuals to try to or have to conform to.

The best illustration here is falling in love. To fall in love is natural, human -indeed possibly one of the most human things to do. If we happen to fall inlove with someone similar to ourselves, in outward appearance or whatever,fine. If we happen to fall in love with someone different from ourselves, inoutward appearance or whatever, fine. The flow of Life within and exterior tous naturally decides.

What matters is the love; the returning of love. The wu-wei of love. Thenuminosity of love. The loyal and honourable sharing. The experience of lifetogether. That is the foundation on which a clan, and from it a new folk,comes-into-being - and should come-into-being: not some abstract criteria weimpose upon ourselves or upon others, and which imposition is or can be thebeginning of suffering. Not some dogmatic belief in some idealized race andthe need to try and "preserve" that race. Not the rejection of empathy and lovefor the sake of such an abstraction, such dogma.


7 of 11



Thus, if one is happy living among one's own kind in a village of one'skind and treasures their traditions and ways and wants to hand them onto toone's own children - fine. If one falls in love with someone of one's own kind,and is happy, fine, and thus may begin a new folk of similar people. If one fallsin love with someone different from one's self and one's own ancestors, fine. And so on. It is the numinosity of love, of living numinously, that is important -

that is ethical. It is the imposition of some abstraction one's self, on others - judging others by some abstraction - that is immoral, wrong, contrary to TheNuminous Way.

It is, simply expressed, a question of the natural balance of Life; of usingempathy and honour to find and feel and appreciate and try to live thatbalance.

But how does the folk relate to clans and tribes, and is there a difference

between a clan and a tribe?

The folk communities such as I have outlined can form the basis for those newclans and tribes which will offer people an alternative way of living to the nowubiquitous, un-numinous, tyrannical, de-evolutionary State.

Exactly how and where such new clans and tribes can be formed, is a matterfor individuals to decide. A new clan really begins - comes-into-being - when afamily decide to live in a certain, more numinous, manner, especially if thisliving is rural and isolates them from The State and its abstractions, and they

do not have to depend on The State to provide them with all the necessities of living.

To be technical, I consider a clan to be an extended family, bound by ties of kinship and loyalty, and thus somewhat small, whereas a tribe can be said tobe a small collection of clans living or dwelling together in the same locality oradjacent localities who initially are bound by ties of loyalty and often by acommon need to cooperate (for reasons of food, or survival, or the sharing of natural resources, for instance) but who later on also become bound togetherby ties of kinship.

Thus, clans can evolve to become tribes which becomes a new folk. In theterms of old England, a clan is akin to a farm, home to many generations of the same family, who may expand to become a hamlet, while the tribe is akinto a small, rural, self-sufficient village of many families, where there is somespecialization of work, for instance a farrier, a wheelwright, a miller.


8 of 11



Given your explanation above of the finer differences between a folk and arace, why didn't you include this in your earlier essays about race and the folk?There seems to be some confusion, here.

In many ways, my Philosophy of The Numen (The Numinous Way) is a work inprogress, which I refine, and extend, and hopefully better express in wordsover the months and years, as experience and insight is gained.

For quite some time - for nearly a decade, in truth [6] - I have felt the essenceof this Way within me, growing, and attempted to outline it, in essays andletters to friends; sometimes perhaps not very well, as in the contentiousmatter of the folk, and how, if at all, this relates to the concept of race, and if such a folk, such a communities, is or can be numinous. Sometimes - to behonest - I was myself confused about certain matters, as shown for instance

by the fact that I still clung onto Al-Islam, out of a now understood misplacedsense of duty, even when I was developing this Way, and which Way I inwardlyfelt throughout all the years of the past decade was an expression of my ownbeliefs, my own true inner nature.

In this period of almost a decade, many of these attempts, by me, to outlineand explain this Way have been published, and possibly led others to becomeconfused about not only my intentions, and beliefs (and possibly even becomeannoyed at me personally), but also about what this Numinous Way of mineactually was and is. Perhaps I should not have published all this material, and

waited until I had everything neatly, precisely, formulated and so could writemy magnum opus - a weighty tome about which there hopefully would not beany misunderstanding and which would not cause confusion about the intentof its author.

But my excuses are that the very act of so writing - and of occasionallyreceiving comments and criticisms from others - was for me a necessary partof the creative process, and enabled and entailed further and deeper reflexionupon certain matters; and that I was never overly concerned about what peoplethought about my intentions, or beliefs, trusting that the perspicacious amongthe readers of such missives would understand at least something of theessence of what I was attempting, albeit so imperfectly, to communicate.

Regarding empathy - which you have described as the essence, the foundationof your numinous way - would you not agree that not all people possess it, sohow can this be the basis for a general ethics?


9 of 11



As I have mentioned in several other of my writings, I regard empathy anatural human faculty, as an extension of the other senses by which weperceive the world and by means of which we can try and understand theworld and other human beings.

In many it is a dormant faculty. In others, it is more developed. In some others,

it is an important part of their lives, a necessary means by which they live andinteract with other human beings and with the other living beings with whichwe share this planet.

As a natural human faculty, it can - and in my view should - be developed andused. How can it be developed? By an appreciation of the numinous, bycultivating compassion, and by striving to live in a honourable way, accordingto a code of personal honour, for honour is a practical manifestation of empathy. An appreciation of the numinous, for instance, is one of thefunctions of a living culture, a living tradition, of all numinous works of Art, of

all numinous music, literature, of the transmitted pathei-mathos of ourancestors and that of others.

So, there is nothing mysterious or difficult about empathy and its cultivationand development.

David Myatt

January 2011 CE

Notes

[1] Refer to the essay The Principles of Numinous Law

[2] For the destructive nature of the idea of progress see, for example theessay Homo Hubris and the Disruption of The Numinous.

One can almost feel the disruption of this abstraction, "progress", in the Lark Rise trilogy of Flora Thompson.

[3] I have outlined the true nature of these two abstractions in several essays,including The Failure and Immoral Nature of The State.

[4] I remember hearing tales in my youth, when resident in the area and whileworking part-time on a farm, of how the local people in many places fiercely


0 of 11



resisted attempts over long periods of time - by the distant nationalgovernment and by wealthy landowners - to alter the ancient drainage systemand pattern of drainage, and how such pumps to do such unnecessarydrainage were occasionally sabotaged.

However, as almost always, the "foreigners" in Westminster and the wealthy

landowners (both of course bleating about "progress") got their way, resultingin more wealth for such landowners, and the beginning of that monoculture(and that demand for better and better yields per acre) that has destroyedtraditional husbandry of the soil, to the detriment of Nature and a lot of localfolk.

[5] By Celtic I refer here to the indigenous, the native, peoples of the landsnow known as England before the later settlement of the Angles, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans.

These were the people referred to, for example, by Julius Caesar and a fewother Roman writers, and it may be from among these early Britons camemany of the individuals of Arthurian legend - such as Vortigen, Mordred,Morgana, Arthur, and Merlin.

[6] Since when I left the Malvern area in 2001 CE to live, briefly, again inShropshire, before early the following year moving to live as a wanderer(again) in a tent in the hills and fells of Cumbria, before finally settling to liveand work (again) for many years on a farm.


1 of 11

david myatt: concerning the folk, race, and empathy

Documents