My dad, Glen Stinson, always said that our society does not listen to those that are old and have lived a long and experienced life. And that we are poorer for it. One bit of wisdom he shared with me, I will share with you.

My dad was a WWII veteran, and had served in the Submarine service. 1/3 of the men in the submarine service did not come home from the war. They rest in silent metal tombs at the bottom of our world's oceans. And my dad grew up during the depression, the youngest son of a single-mother household...with a total of six kids in the house. Their father had left them...and the whole family had to work to survive. I tell you this, just so you'll know the perspective from which he was coming.

Why are the bonds between family members so weak? Why do people give up on marriages so easily and divorce? Why do people cheat on each other so easily? Why to fathers and mothers abandon their children to pursue selfish lives? Why do people have no loyalty to friends? Why do people lead jobless, purposeless lives? Why do people pursue drugs, cheap sex, and other self-centered indulgences rather than live up to their responsibilities? Why is our Society losing its values? Why is our Society decaying?

Dad had decades to consider why these things were happening...and why their frequency is increasing. And he was the sort of man that tried to put meaning to the things he observed. His answer was simple. People are increasingly self-centered, selfish, hurtful, and irresponsible because they can afford to be so. We have built a Society with very little starvation or true hardship.

There was a time when people needed family to simply survive. You needed the support and the assistance of you mother, father, brother, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, and everyone in your family to survive. If your crops went bad, or your spouse died, you lost your job, or you struck down by illness you needed your extended family to help you survive until you could recover through hard work and struggle from these negative events.

There was a time when people needed a stable marriage and homelife to simply survive. Life was hard, people worked long hours, and the challenge of survival could easily be lost if you did not endure in your relationships. Divorce destroyed not only the marriage it ended, but it threatened the very survival of both spouses and the children involved.

There was a time when you needed loyal and trustworthy friends to simply survive. If something went wrong in your life, without friends to assist you...you might not be able to recover from the hardship you faced. Maintaining those friends, and helping them when they were in need, ensured that you would receive help if by a bad turn of luck you were in need.

There was a tim when you needed the cooperation of your neighbors to simply survive. Neighbors worked hand in hand to lessen or eliminate the hardships of existance. They lifted each other up, and looked out for each other because they had to in order to survive.

There was a time that without these support systems and mutual relationships, you might lose your home, starve, or die. Your children might starve or die. Your very existance was threatened if you lived irresponsibly of failed to maintain your bonds and relationships with these groups of people.

But in today's world, none of this is true. We live in an incredibly rich Society. Even some of the poorest people in our Society have a place to live, a stove, a refridgerator, cars, microwaves, televisions, cell phones, a home computer, clothing, food, etc. We talk about poverty and homelessness, but those problems are nothing like they were just 50 or 60 years ago. Our average standard of living is so incredibly high...that we take it for granted.

During the Depression, my dad's toys disappeared in November, and he was given those same toys back as Christmas as presents. A huge treat was when his mom would bring home a single candy bar, and cut it into six pieces for the six children to share. They grew food in an empty lot nearby, just to have food to eat. They neighborhood pooled what little money they had to have their street covered in gravel and oil. And they lived inside the city of Kansas City. After WWII, when dad got married, he moved with his wife into a one bedroom apartment with a bed and a hotplate. They had to put food outside their window in the winter to keep it fresh because they didn't have a refridgerator. Dad was a hard worker with a fairly good job, but they had to save up for a long time to buy a refridgerator, and eventually they bought an old broken down car.

I've worked as a police officer in the inner city. The people that we all refer to as "downtrodden," "disadvantagd," and "poor" have homes filled with modern appliances, at least one car...usually two, their refridgerators are filled with food, and they have home phones as well as cell phones. Some of them work. We live in a Society of excess. A Society where the government provides a safety-net that can provide for you for years, and years. Even after Welfare-Reform, there are 11 Counties in Missouri where you can exist indefinitely on Welfare due to the "economic depravity" in those counties. Everyone has credit cards, and other means of living beyond their means.

So gone are the days where you need your extended family to help you survive. People trade in their spouses, cheat on each other, and hurt each other in the most selfish ways. People change jobs, have few close friends, and live as individuals confident that no matter how badly they choose to act, no matter how irresponsible their behavior, no matter how self-destructive they become...its extremely rare to starve and die in our Society. In a sense, our societial stability, values, and meaning have suffered greatly due to our material success.

And there is more. People are so incredibly mobile, jobs are relatively easy to come by, and housing plentiful and affordable, that people do not face the destruction of their reputation. They do not face the shame of bad action in their lives. They do not risk being shunned by those that they need, for they do not need anyone. Piss off you family by some horribly selfish action. Who cares...you don't need them anyway. Piss off your neighbors...you simply move. Piss off your friends? What friends? People collect aquaintences...not friends in our age of plenty.

So his answer makes sense to me. As I view the world, and the degenerate nature of our Society, it is hard to not see the world through his eyes. And the lessons he taught me about the world he grew up in...as opposed to the world we live in today.

Mark

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Mark Ludwig Stinson
Chieftain of Jotun's Bane Kindred
Heartland Hof and Hall Fund

Mark,
I can not agree with you more. Our society is unique and every day is a new section of the path we walk.

We are, most of us, slaves to consumerism. What I mean is the 'must have now' attitude no matter what the cost. That is why most of us (myself included) are now in debt up to our faces.

I think that most of us have been lured into that lifestyle by the things around us daily. The happy family gathered around the super leather couch with the 75 inch television in a nice, LARGE living room plays on our sense of envy and the human necessity of out doing someone.

What this teaches us, and our children, is to whore our values for stuff.

Outstanding post Mark.

Talk about a reality check. Sure we bemoan the degradation of society around us, but it has been some time since I looked deeper to try to find a root cause to this problem. A big part of the problem really lies in our own outlook and perspective. I can't change society as a whole, but I can change myself and my own outlook, and teach my children accordingly. It really comes down to baby steps. If we teach our children these values, and live by them ourselves, and share our outlook, then perhaps it will cause a ripple effect. Or maybe I am just being optomistic...

On a personal scale, my wife and I are moving right now, and moving into a place that is about 2/3 the size of our old apartment. The primary reason for the move is economics. We simply couldn't afford to continue living where we were on just my salary. One of the things my wife kept telling me was that we would need to go through our belongings and dramatically reduce what we had. For weeks I resisted this idea, believing that I had already reduced to the point where I couldn't reduce further. But then we signed the renters agreement on the new place and I got a good look at our options. Once we started packing I started taking a really serious look at my possessions, especially my books and such, knowing that we were going to be losing the capacity of a couple of our bookcases due to lack of space. I got drastic, and basically weeded out anything that I don't read on a regular basis, or feel that I will go back to for the sheer joy of reading it again. The end result was half of my library going into boxes to be taken to a reseller. The same thing happened with my clothes.

My perspective changed. I suddenly realized that I didn't need all of this "stuff" to be happy. I had my family, and I had room for a few treasured items. I could be content, even happy with that. In an odd way it was actually liberating to go through things like this.

Looking back at all the times my family moved as I was growing up I now realize that my family made similar choices, and many times all we ever had was these few treasured things. Yes, we lived a life of poverty, at least by this society's standards, but we were happy. That was 20+ years ago, in what seems like a very different world. Doing something like that today is unthinkable, but perhaps we need to think like that. Perhaps we need to lose the "stuff" in our lives, and learn how to be happy with a lot less. Hmm...I feel a blog post burbling...

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Jeffrey Jelmeland
Forest Grove, OR
Quote:

Ok, excellent observation that your father made ... one in fact is largely supported by the anthropology class I'm in. It has produced falling reproduction rates in the 1st world to near (the US) or completely unsustainable levels (Europe).

The challenge is what can be done to change this direction? If you see a problem ... what can be done to "fix" it?

I know you nor I can individually change the world ... but what can be done to truly affect change?

Are you asking to go back to the "good old days," we can't put the genie back in the bottle.

In thinking about all these "green" initiatives I see many places where their can be small changes made. However, one cannot change *back* one must go forward and progress to change. You have to make change the better alternative to what is currently happening.

So my challenge is to move beyond identifying "the problem" which you have done excellently. Now what?

I think that we have to create our own 'tribal society' in our areas. I think that by following Heathen principles and building strong Heathen communities where we look out for each other is essential.

Yes, we can not go back to the old days, but we can see the errors of our ways and start to get right.

What do you all think?

Quote:

That's a good start, but remember we can't go live off by ourselves. We have to exist within the world we live in.

How can we apply the values, morals, and ethics of our faith in the modern 21 century world? That's mostly a rhetorical answer because I don't have any easy answers either.

Quote:

I think this is a good start. Begin rebuilding those bonds through kindreds and then kindreds connect to other kindreds in a region. Then regions connect to other regions ... you get the point.

It start with the bonds forged and oathed to in a Kindred. Mark, Craig, Alex and Sarah are my kindred brothers and sisters. The bonds we have forged and oathed to are *important* not just for us individually but for us as Heathens.

The Luck that my Chieftain has flows to me, and the accomplishments I do flow back to him, same goes for the rest of my Kindred ... Those bonds are what the Well of Wyrd is made up of!

However, that does not mean we need to separate ourselves out of the "normal" world but excel and thrive in that world not only for our family's and kindred but as an example of the correct actions.

Again, the Nine Nobles Virtues (NNV) are a good starting place. Put them up in your cube, or on your bathroom mirror. Check you actions of the previous day against them. You won't be perfect, you don't have to be ... but in the striving ... you achieve much! Motivation and purpose are important in our faith, if anything because then it gives us something to toast in sumbel!

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Be Trْ to the Gods and Goddesses,
Be Trْ to the Ancestors, Vaettir, and your Folk,
and most importantly,
Be Trْ to Yourself.
Simply be Heathen in all things.

Rod Landreth
Godhi of Jotun's Bane Kindred

Awesome!

Thanks again, Rod.

You are right, it is impossible for us to all go live by ourselves.

We can only work together and live together via the world we live in.. you are right.

Connectivity is essential, yes.

I am pretty excited to see things start out here in the Lou!

Yes I am going to print out the NNV and carry them with me everywhere I go.

Thank you for the advice, Rod. I appreciate it.
Frith,
Sean

Quote:

Now, Rod...you know that I am never shy about a challenge. When I get some time, I'll post some ideas. Before you can solve the problem, you have to identify the problem. I told some co-workers my dad's theory about this problem, and they each came back to me days and weeks later and told me that the theory had had quite an affect on them. So I wanted to post his theory in as much detail as possible to see what you all thought about it.

Since commercial and material success, and a nanny-state government are some of the main causes of this problem...its a difficult one to solve. You can't get rid of the nanny-state. At least not right away. It took generations to build, and it will take generations to move away from it. That's a political problem, with a political solution. Unless of course, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down under its own weight.

The same for our material success. That is another factor of the problem that may not be long-lasting. You never quite know when it might come tumbling down under its own weight (mainly debt, foreign pressures, and energy dependence).

But what I'll try to address, is how to have influence over this problem assuming that our material success and nanny-state government are factors that are not going anywhere.

But my laptop battery is about to fail and I'm in a coffee shop with no electrical outlets....so it will have to wait until later.

Mark

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Mark Ludwig Stinson
Chieftain of Jotun's Bane Kindred
Heartland Hof and Hall Fund

Quote:

I have to say i agree with your Dad's theory Mark and i think you nail it with this passage above - the nanny state IMO just creates dependency and degeneracy where people expect things without having to earn any of it. This spills over also into things like reputation, respect etc, where people expect such without having to make any effort.

Just how feeble and nasty our society has become was really brought home to me in Bombay (Mumbai), where i saw a huge contrast in living conditions and expectations - what a culture shock! There you have whole families living basically on the pavement, in railways stations, on central reservations in the road, under bridges etc Mothers wash and do everything else for their kids in the street (the bucket seems to be their only possession apart from the clothes on their back). Being driven from the airport during the night revealed what must have been tens of hundreds of people sleeping on blankets, in doorways etc. This is all normal over there, and there's no welfare state to speak of. What i noticed though was that people helped each other, were grateful for whatever they had or were given, and they still managed to smile and laugh despite the daily grind of trying to find enough food etc.

I don't think we know what poverty really is here in the west nowadays. People have gotten somewhat indulged and pampered, have lost basic "happiness skills" which IMO are basically all to do with importance of family and community, seeing things through, making the effort, occupying oneself with puposeful activity etc. We have more depression , anxiety and suicide over here than ever before, despite our relative affluence. It seems obvious to me that we've lost something, something that i saw aplenty in India despite its problems - respect for traditional values, family, making the best of everything. They're what's important.

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"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/northanhymbreheathens/

Thanks, Lara...that does sort of illustrate the point. We have plenty of shelter, plenty of food, plenty of consumer goods, and you can change where you work, where you live, who you know, etc. on a moment's notice. Failing in your obligations to your community, your family, your spouse, or your friends is very unlikely to lead to any serious consequences for you. You won't be homeless, you won't starve, and everyones' relationships are so fluid...that being shunned or destroying your reputation has no real impact on a person.

So how do you fix any of this?

LEAVING SOCIETY TO ESCAPE THE PROBLEM?

I don't believe in completely splitting off from our society...or segregating ourselves in isolated communities. For reasons already stated here, I don't find that to be a very satisfying answer. So let's put that one aside. If someone wants to discuss this option further, it would make a great discussion. Start a new discussion string focused specifically on that though.

SOLVING THE PROBLEM FOR YOURSELF

On a personal level, we can read the Nine Nobles, and live as Tru Heathens. We can make sure that we live up to our obligations, and our oaths. As an individual heathen you can live up to your responsibilities to your community, your family, your spouse, and your close friends. We are all 100% in control of our own actions as an individual. We make our own choices, and shape our own Wyrd. So really...fighting the negative effects of material success and the nanny-state on an individual level is relatively easy. Just make the right choices, even when those choices are difficult.

SOLVING THIS PROBLEM WITHIN YOUR FAMILY

The pressures brought on a family by these two factors (material success and the nanny-state), are real pressures. You can't fully eliminate these pressures. No matter how much you resist them as an individual, and make the right choices...you can't control another person. You can't make your spouse make the right choices. You can't make your kids makethe right choices. You can't make your brothers and sisters make the right choices. You can be making the right choices for years, but really...in this society...your spouse can get up and leave at any moment, without real consequences. Alimony is assigned, child custody is chosen by a judge, your property is split up, and once he or she makes that choice...there's not much you can do to stop it.

So, all you can do is work your ass off on your relationship. Put as much work into your relationship that you put into your job, your hobbies, and your personal diversion. Make time for your spouse. Sacrifice for your spouse. Care for your spouse. Provide for your spouse. Listen to your spouse. Share with your spouse. Be honest and kind with your spouse. Make it clear how loyal you are to your spouse. Build and nuture the relationship, and make it the sort of relationship that they would not want to easily abandon. External factors make leaving a marriage easy...so you must shape the internal factors in the marriage to make it a great loss to leave.

In a sense, it is much the same with your children. Make time, sacrifice, care, provide, and listen to your children. Share with them, be honest and kind, and make it clear how loyal you are to them. Be a parent to them...not necessarily a friend. Learn to say "no." Set an example in your work-life, your relationships, your personal interactions, and your community obligations that make it clear to your children how a good heathen man or woman acts.

Setting this example includes the friends you choose. If you approve of a friend and their actions...your children will see that, and assume that reflects your values as well.

Have expectations for both your spouse and children that are clearly communicated to them...and hold them to those expectations. Find out what their expectations of you are, and live up to those expectations.

Now some people home-school, in an attempt to shield their children. I worry that this is only delaying the inevitable. Eventually those children will be exposed to the world at some point. But I don't have a strong opinion on that, just a concern.

WHAT CAN A KINDRED DO TO HELP?

A Kindred is a Family. A Kindred chooses who is allowed to join that Family. A Kindred should expect both its existing members and prospective members to live as Tru Heathens. To live up to their obligations. To keep their oaths. To resist the pressures of matierlal success and the nanny-state on their right choices.

No one is perfect. No one makes the right choices all the time. But a Kindred that allows members to abandon their obligations to the community, their family, their spouse, or their close friends easily...becomes a part of the problem. Not the solution.

An example for me personally, is marriage. People today leave marriages (a lifetime oath to another person) because they are bored, or they are unhappy, or they find a more attractive person, or their spouse doesn't seem to love them anymore, and a variety of other reasons. Its one thing if you spouse is beating you mercilessly, or having sexual affairs, or has become addicted to drugs, and over a period of time is destroying a family. These are situations which I think could justify a divorce. But a person who would break a marriage oath because they are simply "unhappy" or "irritated," is someone that is ill-suited to take a Kindred Oath. Why would we expect that person to not just break their Kindred Oath once they became "unhappy" or "irritated" with the Kindred. Relationships take work...Kindreds should avoid those that give up on that work. This is a case-by-case decision I realize, but its something that Kindred's will regularly face.

THE HEATHEN COMMUNITY

The larger Heathen community could have some small effect on the problem. Reputation matters within the greater community. But the impact of this is minimal. The main reason for that, is the on-line nature of the larger Heathen Community. We know each other mostly by our posts on message boards, and for many, this includes their "heathen name," or a "message board identity," not their legal name. We don't know what these distant people...these "pixels on a screen" are up to in their personal lives. We don't know if they are Tru or not, except by their words. And they could distort the truth of their personal situation easily, thus shielding their on-line reputation from their actions in real life.

THE PROBLEM CAN'T BE FULLY SOLVED

As an individual, you can solve the problem for yourself. Just be aware of the pressures upon you, and resist them entirely. Live right, and make the correct choices. A self-aware individual can individuallly solve this problem with just a little effort.

For our families, spouses, children, and close friends...it is more difficult. You can't make choices for another person. And its impossible to completely shield these people in your life from these external pressures. You can only do what you can to influence and shape your Wyrd, and the Wyrd they intermingle with yours...to lead to a Tru outcome. In the end though, it will be their choices that determine your success.

And there is little you can do for Society at large, except to educate others about the importance of keeping your word...and then setting an example. Educate them about what it means to live up to your obligations...and then setting an example. Set expectations for other people, and hold them to those expectations. When someone fails you, you will need to make choices about what to do regarding them. This gets a little more complex. The Havamal addresses how you interact with people in the larger Society, much better than I would be able (or willing) to paraphrase here. But your influence over those outside your inner circle is limited.

Can we solve these problems, or make them go away? Not really. We can only try to lessen their impact on our families and our friends.

Mark

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Mark Ludwig Stinson
Chieftain of Jotun's Bane Kindred
Heartland Hof and Hall Fund

Interestig topic. I do agree somewhat with your father Ludwig, though I don't agree that success, wealth, and material gain are necessairly an evil. We are supposed to reach and exceed our limits, be prosperous and strive for the best. The idea that we should deny ourselves success or luxury is foolish. Since when did being a faliure become any more moral then being a success? Like all things though, there's the matter of how you handle yourself- as you father said. If we do not honor our successes then they mean little. If we let success overcome our lives and take us away form family we have become failures.

But there are many factors that contribute to the problem...


Joseph Campbell wrote in his book, The Power of Myth, about the fracture in society. His conclusion, that I agree with, is that there is a lack of initiation. Boys, for example, no longer have a threshold that they cross over in front of their fathers and peers that proclaims that they are now a man. They never have that moment of acknowledgment and spend the rest of their lives stunted between youth and adulthood. The continue trying to gain that respect and the father no longer knows how to give it. This would be why many young boys turn to gangs- it's the only semi-tribal structure that forces them to meet a task and gain respect amongst their peers and leaders.

But these gangs are missing the fundamentals of spiritual connection. They don't have elders explaining the relation of man/spirit/divine. They know they yearn for something but are blind to what that something is. In leiu of a spiritual structure they turn to drugs, in the quest for any experience of mystical import.

You see this in all sort of youth programs, from poularity contests, fraternity hazings, gangs, sports. Children need milestones and the ability to declare their achievements and garner respect, and they need to see these thresholds in a spiritual light. Cultures aroundthe world have had coming of age ceremonies, even in nuclear America the sweet sixteen party was the platform on which a girl became a woman.

When no one gives us these structures, we are never allowed to pass through the door into the next stage. We remain stunted, searching for an elusive thing that will finally declare our achievements and usefulness to society. We become withdrawn, hostile, selfish. A good way to begin repairing society would be to reinstate these milestones and initiations in your own family.

Just my (and J.C'S) two cents...

Yes...we are already planning a ritual to mark the passage into manhood of the oldest boy in our Kindred, and that is still a few years off. This is something we intend to do for all our children. That's a valuable 2 cents.



I agree that wealth, comfort, fame, and success are not evil in and of themselves. We should strive for them. But, a social side-effect of having so much comfort, is that our society is a no-holds-barred, chaotic, cluster-f*ck...where the majority seems focused more on pleasure and entertainment, than on fulfilling their responsibilities. From a heathen perspective, I believe this is due to the fact we are suffering under a foreign religion with a slave-mentality...and people are completely cut off from their natural spiritual connections.

After all, you can be a horrible citizen, a horrible father, a horrible employee, a horrible person...and you have but to ask for forgiveness, and you get the heavenly reward. There is no concept of Wyrd and Orlog in Christianity, just the reward for obediance to the desert god. So, what motivation do people really have to be responsible in a rich, comfortable Christian society? None really.

Mark

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Mark Ludwig Stinson
Chieftain of Jotun's Bane Kindred
Heartland Hof and Hall Fund

The following observation isn't going to help in the short term; certainly it's of no good to us, but as an overall good you can see that this sort of trend has been self-correcting through history.

1) Society becomes rich and prosperous.

2) Society becomes soft and decadent.

3) Society crumbles under incursions from without.

4) Society rebuilds.


Sad, but true. As for ourselves, I don't think we in America can stem the tide at this late date without a massive push toward education; solid education, such as we were providing to kids a generation ago, but with updated data and tools. I'm talking about a major push toward math, engineering, and all the innovative fields which kids don't like to study and parents don't like to push.

Our crumbling process is already underway through offshoring, outsourcing, and the other forces of the IT revolution, and unless American parents start learning some child-rearing lessons from the Indian and Chinese parents of the world, we are in for some rough weather.

Here is a lovely quote from Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat, which is probably one of the most important works to come out of this decade:

"Helping individuals adapt to a flat world is not only the job of governments and companies. It is also the job of parents. They too need to know in what world their kids are growing up and what it will take for them to thrive. In short, we need a new generation of parents ready to administer tough love: There comes a time when you've got to put away the Game Boys, turn off the television, shut off the iPod, and get your kids down to work.

The sense of entitlement, the sense that because we once dominated global commerce and geopolitics - and Olympic basketball - we always will, the sense that delayed gratification is a punishment worse than a spanking, the sense that our kids have to be swaddled in cotton wool so that nothing bad or disappointing or stressful ever happens to them at school is, quite simply, a growing cancer on American society. And if we don't start to reverse it, our kids are going to be in for a huge and socially disruptive shock...."

I'll do up a proper book report on Friedman later, on the appropriate thread, but I thought you folks would appreciate that quote. I think Mark's dad would've liked this book a lot.

BTW, Mark, those insights from your dad were the best damn thing I've read this month. I actually read the post to my wife, and she concurs. He must've been a great man to know. Thank you for sharing his wisdom here.

Thanks. Dad had the benefit of being born back in the 1920's. He lived the Depression. He fought in WWII. He lived through the 50's, and saw the upheaval of the late 60's and 70's. He had a wide perspective, and a quick mind.

I'm glad you liked it.



Dad did believe strongly in the responsibility of parents. He distrusted government and distrusted the schools (after watching his older children get introducd to pot by their teachers).

Mark

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Mark Ludwig Stinson
Chieftain of Jotun's Bane Kindred
Heartland Hof and Hall Fund

100% true

instead of putting granparents in retirment communities they should be living with their kids helping raise the grandkids properly while their own children work to take care of the kids and parents.

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set my body on a ship and burn it in the sea, let my spirit rise valkryies carry me, take me to valhalla where my brothers wait for me.