“All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.”
Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem.
– Hunter S. Thompson
This is the second article in a series about building a community of like-minded individuals, above and beyond what we already have, here, in the comments section of ZeroHedge. We first began to assess this idea in terms of starting an Intentional Community in my article, “What if some like-minded people on ZeroHedge decided to create a new community?” In this article and the comments, below, I hope we can continue the discussion, but with the focus instead being on a widely-distributed modern-day club, tribe or gang, like Freemasons or The Knights of Columbus, rather than a geographical location such as a rural town in Texas. I have not given up on the idea of an Intentional Community. In fact, there has been a tremendous amount of interest. I am merely broadening the discussion as we assess the realities of the world we live in.
One of my favorite books on this topic is Hunter S. Thompson’s great work, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. If you have never read it, and have any interest at all in the concept of freedom, or you simply like reading a truly gifted author at the top of his game, then pick up a copy. It is fantastic!
What do most widely-dispersed yet successfull, “fraternal orginizations,” have in common? I think I have identified at least five things:
- Common beliefs
- Rights of initiation
- Means of identification
- Shared enemies
- Regular gatherings
Are there others?
The Hell’s Angels motorcycle club of the 60’s believed in chopped hawgs, initiated new members by pissing on them, were identified by their filthy Levis jacket with the sleeves cut off and the gang’s emblem on the back, fought absolutely anyone, “all on one,” and went on frequent runs where they would take over a bar or small town to party, fuck, and fight.
Do we ZeroHedgers have any, some, all, or none of these characteristics? It is an important question to ask, and answer, if we really want to build a tight community, and I hope it will be the focus of the discussion in the comments section. Could and should we develop some of these? Maybe bring back CAPTCHA as initiation? Tyler Durden tattoos, anyone? Who is going to Marfa next year?
I recall that I first wanted to be a member of a gang after watching The God Father movies as a kid. Then, more recently, after reading Dmitry Orlov’s super book, The Five Stages of Collapse, especially the section on the Pashtuns.
Political collapse as a steady state condition is described through the example of the Pashtuns—one of the world’s largest ethnic groups inhabiting parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan—whose code of honor (Pashtunwali, or the Pashtun Way) has allowed them to fight off (and, in some cases, help destroy) every empire that ever blundered into their habitat. (They are known to the consumers of Western propaganda primarily as the Taleban.) The Pashtuns allow us to clearly see the dividing line between a hierarchical, imperialist, collapse-bound society and that of a steady-state, entrenched, well-organized anarchy.
However, now, this desire for fraternity is very much tempered in me by Frederic Bastiat’s work, The Law. In it, Bastiat argues that forced fraternity will always destroy liberty.
The Seductive Lure of Socialism
Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.
This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.
Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty
Mr. de Lamartine once wrote to me thusly: “Your doctrine is only the half of my program. You have stopped at liberty; I go on to fraternity.” I answered him: “The second half of your program will destroy the first.”
In fact, it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot
Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.
If a tribe, gang, or group has liberty or freedom as the core common belief, like the Hell’s Angels in Thompson’s book seemed to have, and as I also believe we here on ZeroHedge do also have, is it really possible that the gang’s bylaws can be such that fraternity is not forced and will allow for individual liberty? How might we structure our gang to assure that individual freedom will always trump brotherhood? Is it as simple as allowing people to join and leave at will…or maybe just continuing our tradition of anonymity?
“The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.”
What would an anonymous, open-source, distributed-network, outlaw-gang look like? What would y’all want it to look like?
Do we have other core beliefs? What are they?
Peace, prosperity, liberty, and love,
h_h
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