You, Yourself, Are a Noble HOUSE

The first organizing unit of the distributed nation (DN 3.4)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX | 2.18 | 2.19 | 2.20 | 2.21 | | Where: 3.0 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4

Chapter 3.4
Organizational units, 2

Malthus was wrong. Everyone who has been influenced by Malthus is wrong.

The psychotic globalists who speak ominously about needing to reduce the human population are wrong.

Every lefty who has ever whined about the threat of overpopulation was, is, and will be WRONG. (I know it bothers some of you when I get ‘partisan,’ but it is what it is: ‘overpopulation’ has long been a hobby horse of the political left.)

Overpopulation is not a threat. Underpopulation is.

Nearly every cultural, reproductive, and hormonal trend is pushing mankind toward demographic winter. We of the distributed nation must begin reversing these trends. Our survival depends on it. (If things keep going as they have been, the survival of the species may one day depend on it.)

Thus, we must begin our discussion of different types of groups and units of organization with the most organic of all: the family.

Natural groups

As we have discussed at length throughout this work, the individual is the fundamental unit of moral concern and analysis in human society, and the fundamental unit of our distributed nation. Naturally.

But humans do not appear out of nowhere. Each is created by a man and a woman.

The future is built by men and women choosing to create children and raise them to adulthood. Thus, our first natural unit beyond the individual is the couple. A “breeding pair,” in biological parlance.

Beyond this point, definitions are rendered more complicated by the huge variety of different familial arrangements across the cultures of Earth. Nonetheless, I will attempt to create some standardized basics. They might not be perfect, but they will serve our purposes well enough.

A couple who have children are a family. We will call this a nuclear family.

A child who grows up and forms a new nuclear family will still also have his or her parents and siblings. We will call this his or her immediate family. This is not always how the term is defined, but we do need a way of distinguishing between the nuclear family in which one is born from the nuclear family one forms. Changing the former into “immediate family” is the easiest and best way to do this. (One’s spouse’s immediate family are called “in-laws” in America and elsewhere, but this raises the specter of the state and law. Perhaps we should prefer “spouse family” or “affinity family” instead.)

An extended family, band, or clan adds in all the aunts, uncles, and cousins who share a common ancestor. But which ancestor? What name is used? Is it patrilineal or matrilineal? All of this varies between cultures and specific familial contexts.

In all cases, however, a couple is required to produce the family in the first place. Thus, if we wanted to create a standardized definition of clan (extended family, band, etc.), we could say that it is all the family members who descend from a pair of common ancestors.

Based on life expectancies and behavior patterns throughout the world, this common-ancestor couple is often a grandmother and grandfather. If you think about your own patterns, you might recognize this. For example, this Thanksgiving, I traveled with my nuclear family to my parents’ home. We were joined there by my siblings. That was my clan, with my child’s grandparents as the common ancestor. This Christmas, we will spend most of our time with my wife’s clan, which also includes a lot of aunts, uncles, and cousins—all descended from her parents. (This grandparent-based definition of clan is also sometimes called a “grand-family”—especially in cultures where all three generations live in the same home.)

Looking at natural patterns of organization throughout history, we see that clans often join together in tribes, and tribes can further combine into chiefdoms. Naturally, these have different names and take different forms, depending on time and culture.

None of these definitions are intended to serve as constraints; they are simply meant to add clarity. At the moment, we are simply trying to understand the landscape.

Indeed, “landscape” is a good word for it, since these units are all the result of the organic process of life: procreating and interacting for mutual benefit. As such, we can rightly expect that in the absence of forcibly imposed, artificial structures, any civilization will develop some variant of these.

Once such units grow in complexity, however, cultures do tend to codify them with rules, norms, names, and symbols. Families grow. An extended family might take on a greater degree of cohesion, eventually becoming an official clan. Clans take on names, develop norms, and adopt unique symbols. Multiple clans form into tribes. And so forth.

Can any of this be prescribed or engineered ahead of time, as we develop our distributed nation? Or must it be solely left to develop organically?

There is a tension here. On the one hand, the development process of something like a distributed nation—something that has never been tried before—does need some guidance. On the other hand, emergent order is a good and desirable force…and ultimately, it’s gonna do what it’s gonna do.

I am loathe to offer a complete organizational paradigm at this time. This is one of the areas in which we will benefit from a little patience. We may be better able to guide a process once we see how it has begun to unfold, rather than preemptively imposing a totalizing blueprint upon ourselves.

The HOUSE

We can, however, start with a few things we know for sure.

We are sovereign individuals in our sovereign spaces. We are all part of families, and many of us will form families of our own (and the more, the better). Nuclear and immediate families will likely continue to be the most natural organizing units. The de facto “clan,” based around grandparents, is also quite natural and will likely continue long into the future. I believe these will all play a role for us.

For the distributed nation, I would like right now to propose the creation of at least one formal organizing unit: the house.

In chapter 2, drawing from earlier hints in our introduction, we began a discussion of the concept of nobility.

We began by noting that

The distributed nation begins with you, on your own land or in your own home. That home, that land, is your kingdom. The distributed nation is a network of sovereign beings living in their own sovereign kingdoms.

If you do not own a home, it still begins with you, wherever you are…anywhere in the world. Even if you own nothing at all, you are still a sovereign being. You belong to you and no one else. That makes you king or queen in the space you occupy. And that is what this is all about.

Of course, we are not talking about kings and queens as we understood them in the past—as rulers with power over OTHERS. Rather, we mean that you, and you alone, have dispositive decision-making authority over your own life, being, and body. You are king of your castle. You are queen of yourself. You are sovereign within the space you occupy. No one else is the boss of you.

Next, we noted that if you decouple the concept of “nobility” from power and privilege, and instead think of it as a series of behaviors and beliefs, it has a lot to recommend it.

Kings and aristocrats of the past sullied and despoiled the concept of “nobility” with their cruelty, elitism, and serial violations of the rights of the individual human person. Today’s so-called ‘elites’ are doing the same thing.

Yet we still have the word “nobility.” There is still an ideal in there somewhere.

The problem comes from the temptations of authority and power. Indeed, our understanding of natural law tells us that authority and power are a big part of what is wrong with the world.

But why can’t nobility be decoupled from power?

Our principles and protocols already recognize—better than most, and better than anyone in power—the infinite preciousness of the individual human person. We know that each and every one of us is sovereign—in our selves and in our own spaces. And that each and every person has an equal claim to their sovereignty and rights.

In essence, we recognize the nobility of every person.

Our would-be overlords do not. They think of us as rabble. To them, we are a herd to be corralled and culled. Free-range humans on a tax farm.

Keep producing. Keep voting. Keep your filthy plebe mouth shut.

How are we to respond to this? By remaining the rabble they expect us to be? Or by becoming the aristocrats they never saw coming? Not a ruling class, but individuals ruling our own lives with class. Sovereign people, nobly defending noble principles.

Noble people, with our noble houses in order.

They expect us to pour into the streets every once in a while, to protest what they are doing to us. They expect us to be violent. In fact, they would love nothing better, since it would give them the excuse to do the things they really want to do to us.

What they don’t expect is a worldwide aristocracy of sovereign humans.

We already outnumber them by a thousand to one. But why just outnumber them as a throng of ‘the masses,’ who presume their leadership and complain once in a while?

Why not outnumber them as noble people and noble houses? Each aware of his own power. His own sovereignty and freedom. His own worth. Even his own noblesse oblige.

Something tells me that if this were successful on a large enough scale, our elitist overlords won’t need to be overthrown.

They will wither in fear and awareness of their own vulgarity.

Following the work of Hoppe, we recognized that democracy itself has produced a decline in character. Why not buck that trend?

The benefits are enormous. Separated from the concepts of fixed class and birthright authority, “aristocratic” behavior has a lot of benefits. Its positive impact can be felt within our own lives, and in the impressions others develop of us. In essence, it is us making ourselves the best that we can be.

As we discussed previously, if one does not govern oneself, one is far more likely to invite governance from without. If you control yourself, there is less justification for anyone else to claim that they must exercise control over you.

We will be seeking greater freedom and independence. We will eventually be insisting upon our right to self-governance and self-determination. Setting aside, momentarily, discussion of the obstacles that lay in our path, what gives us the better chance?

If the people around us look at us, and how we conduct ourselves, and say,
Ugh, what a bunch of low-rent schlubs.

Or, if they say,
Wow, those people are always so decent and upstanding.

Again, I am not talking about salad forks and monocles. I am speaking of nobility in the best sense of the word.

This is not some sort of Game of Thrones LARP. For all the reasons stated above (and more we could probably think of), the concept of the house makes a lot of sense as a basic organizing unit.

I propose that it would be an appropriate descriptor for an individual or a family unit…

• For individuals, it speaks to the moral inviolability of our nature as sovereign beings. It speaks to the sovereignty of our property, or of the space in which we dwell. It represents the nobility of our aspirations, and of the natural-law principles by which we live.

• For a family, it speaks of nature—of the nuclear family's status as the most fundamental unit of human organization. It speaks of hearth and home as the locus of love and support. And it speaks of the future—of the family as the generative force, and the home as the locus of future-orientation that is needed in order to build a nation and a civilization.

The principles that animate and guide the distributed nation are based in the rights of the individual. But a nation also needs a strong foundation upon which to create a future. The concept and unit of the noble house gives us that foundation.

Let us then establish the house as the fundamental organizational unit of the distributed nation, and offer a working definition as

An individual, family, or group, on sovereign property or in a sovereign space, living by (and free and independent because of) the principles of natural law.

House Jones might refer to you, doing the best you can in your own space. Or it might refer to a nuclear family working together in mutual support, with an eye to the future—to continuance of themselves and their family, and thus of our people and our shared goal of freedom, independence, and prosperity.

And joy. Don't forget about joy!

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