Manly Virtue or the Golden Calf...

.. the leaven raises the whole loaf.

There was once a land of Manly Virtues. It was populated by Free Men, who worked their free holdings with good cheer. They were a proud, and noble people, each keenly aware of his place in the community of the whole, and each respected in proportion to his fulfillment of those duties he found himself owing to the whole.

They were on the average not rich, even their 'upper class' (to use our 'barbarous terms') were not opulent but lived a life tempered by frugality. A life honestly toiling at their labors. A life differing in status but not kind from the rest. They were in effect an example to their kind. An aristocracy of Merit; chosen to lead at those things they both are inclined to do and do better than others, not merely taken at random from among any living bodies that pay for power!

Display and pomp was alien to their way and mores. It caused them to feel disgust rather than awe for those that engaged in such empty mockery of authority and power – both being based upon respect for duty well done, in these peoples' estimation.

Dignity and honor were earned by good work in the common cause. Their leaders were promoted based upon their potential merit to bring about good results for the Folk and demoted for failure or malfeasance of duty to do the same.  Their State operated upon two principles: The Will of the People Shall Be Done; and, The Highest Law is the Well Being of the People.

The minimum duties for all Male heads of Households were: paying a tax; serving as part of the call up force; and to point a fine point on it producing more citizens to carry on the kind. These duties increased as one's social status, power and wealth increased. They were not free choices – More wealth and more power meant more obligation as well as more social status for service well done.

The only 'ambition' seemingly at play among them was to be thought of the as the best use to their family, their kin and the rest of their kind in that order. This animated them with a high regard for duty done well. They struggled mightily for high regard from their kin and kind, attempting to outdo each other in deeds of all sorts that were of use to their families, clans, and eventually to the nation as a whole. In this struggle though they were wise enough to keep sight of the fact that many men together can do what no one man alone can.

This was a just, chaste and honest people. Justice and not legality was the letter put upon their hearts and actions. Lawyers and their way of lying at the bar was utterly unknown among them and would not have been allowed. First lying for a living to protect the guilty from their punishment would not be acceptable and second no person was allowed to take payment to help another plead at law.

Thus they keep dishonesty and the corruptible power of money out of their legal system. And they saved themselves the expense of a kvetching class of malcontents constantly plotting to use the law against them as a weapon. As well as having NO professional 'judges' to maintain at public expense or public prosecutors.

Their 'courts' were simple and resembled our 'manorial courts' of old. The older men of station acted as judges, the other adult male citizens the jury and each man presented his case. A law was either broken or not, and if so then the penalty was paid in either kind or labor. If it was a capital offense either a hanging or a burning commenced depending upon the crime – against persons and property it was hanging, against the state and common good burning was used. No appeals. No nonsense. Very simple and direct system. Few Laws made for the easy application of Justice.

Again very direct, very conducive to honest justice sans legalism, and was very hard to abuse by the deceptive, as the matters at hand were generally known to all involved. That is unlike our 'progressive' system theirs was almost impossible to use to foul means.

This system worked as much of their society functioned because the Manly People held their word to be a bond and held their head upright saying what was true with their mouths. This people held rightly and wisely, that keeping to your Father's Father's Fathers way was the tried and true way to ensure order, stability and justice to the whole of the Land.

And the way of these people was to organize around Patriarchal families, as the basis for the nation. The Father was the head of household, provider, and in effect was a mini-monarch in his own personal realm. The mother, the keeper of the hearth, and therefore of the folk's greater tomorrow. The children brought up as the growing potential of that tomorrow, a future which all worked to see come to fruition.

These freeholder households were more or less generally held by all adult male citizens, who were more or less universally married and had several children to carry on their patrimony. They varied in size from here to there by where generally large enough that a family of 5-10 and sometimes more lived off the products of the homestead.

The fact was that, on these homesteads, those veritable mini-monarchies, most everything needed for life was made by the freeholders and their families – though there was a limited but necessary amount of factories and other cooperative enterprises for building, supplying and otherwise manufacturing those things more economically built on scale for domestic sale.

Generally, though, what could not be made was traded for at local and regional Fairs which were strikingly similar to our ''farmer's markets''. It should be pointed out that since they made their own food, clothes and had an unabridged right to housing they were in even in monetary poverty quite rich in all the things needed to live and produce more of themselves. This is no small feat, my dear readers.

The children numerous and disciplined by labor and taught young the rudiments of the fighting arts, as well as the basics of letters, reading and numbers, by their father and mother, where strong and virile. Raised to be part of community as good well rounded citizens with the father bearing social responsibility for them being reared properly, while the mother took day to day charge of that grave responsibility.

It seems that the Manly People were accustomed to send their children to what are almost equal to our old 'Dame Schools' were the few older 'spinsters' and widows taught the children more advanced subjects and the other mothers and older children who were more 'bright' acted as teacher aids. So that rather than divided age groups the children were more placed by ability. They seem to have had a more or less universal curriculum and since there was almost no bureaucracy or administrative costs, it can be said that they were rather well educated at very little public expense for this almost universal basic education.

Also it should be noted that rather than break up the family and community as regimented systems do, theirs tended to reinforce said bonds of affection among the community members.

They found their joy in music, literature, poetry and other simple beauties of life. They sought to outdo each the other in these life affirming arts, and found greater joy in a lovely song than most merchants of our land do in their golden trinkets – shiny and dead.

They differed from ours and most other societies in that they strove to ensure that ALL that put in an honest day's labor were compensated with an honest living beholden to only their duty and the law. 

Early they learned to make money and exchanges done between them, as well as technological advances made by them the servant of the Folk rather than let it master them as others have to their doom. 'Trade' was not allowed by them to change their ways but only allowed in so much as it helped strengthen their ways and mores.

The 'Market' they made secondary to the men that give that market substance following something very similar to our ancient and nearly forgotten 'Just Price' theory IE that there is a just price for all goods and services such that both parties live a decent life and both are fairly remunerated in the exchange.

Among them nothing like speculation was known. Items are bought for use or stored until needed, or even perhaps traded for other goods or services. They are not bought with the idea of hording them until they are 'worth more later' as they were to these people worth the same eternally. Any attempts to change the customary prices resulted at best prosecutions, and at worst in riots and the death of the 'thief' and 'jabber'. All of this was very similar to the now almost forgotten 'Just Price' of the ancient trade and craft 'Guilds'.

These wise people mastered money by outlawing private lending, all usury, and by insisting upon public control of both the volume and worth of the money supply in a scheme rather similar to the idea called 'social credit'. The central idea being to line up the purchasing power of the citizens with the value of the goods they have to offer.

'Division of labor' seems to have been minimal among them, being limited to the very least amount needed to keep them apace of new technology such that it could ensure they were able to feed, clothe, house and defend themselves well enough such that they could be strong and well found.

This was so that any invasion of their lands would simply not be worth fighting the entire male population house to house to house, street to street, village to village.

These people had the inner strength, as well as the technological ability to destroy their own goods rather than see them stole, and their motto once fighting started was 'no treaty or truce with any occupier of our lands; nothing for the invader.' Consequently they almost never suffered invasion.

And when they did the invaders paid dear and the People though they suffered material privation survived as a free Sovereign Folk.

Thus we have Manly Virtue.

At the top a Golden Calf was indicated, and now we shall turn our mind's eye upon this lot.

The Land of the Golden Calf was separate by a sea from the Land of Golden Virtue. It was an almost opposite land. In the this land, Gold, and not the Folk was paramount. There was a trio of 'gods' among them: The Calf or as it was known among the vulgar 'The Market'; Mammon who is also known as greed; and Moloch, who personifies is selfishness to the point of being willing to sacrifice the youth to the wants and comforts of the old.

These resided in the sacred precinct of the gods known as the Avenue. The Market controlled all prices, production, commercial transactions and had a monopoly upon the issuance of credit.

If any in the land would buy or sell, or live they had to come and pay tribute IE tax to the great Trio of Calf, Greed and Selfishness, and to truly proper in this land they had to live and exemplify the 'morals' of their idols.

There are really 'two' peoples in this land. One, who are numerically very insignificant but who are favored by the Calf . These have all the money, wealth, control the political offices, courts, police and prisons. And the other that works to pay the tribute to the Calf, laboring away, to be given the crumbs of the system.

The One use the Calf the power it gives them to ensure the Other is keep low and servile. The One is not the Other and the Other is excluded from the One, the Poor is Equal but the Rich is Double Plus More Equal. Poverty Bad, Affluence Good! Wealth however gotten will gain you the favor the Calf and gain an Other entry into the One, wealth lost equates a One to the Other. However the One is always trying to ensure that NONE of the Other join the One by taxing them and putting them to fighting each other for crumbs like dogs, as they pick their pockets for the pennies yet remaining to the Others.

Thus in this land we find slavery, debt-bondage, nepotism, favoritism and all the selfish underhanded vile behavior that would be expected of a social order that encouraged men to act like robbers, bandits and thieves in all but name under the guise of Freedom, Liberty, and Happiness.

The myth was that all are equal before the Golden Calf. 

The Reality was that the select few have all the freedom, liberty and happiness they could seek, they use it in to bask in the light of the Golden Calf with Moloch and Mammon as their comforters. This trio then orders the Laws such that the Few have legal power with which to force the others to work under threat of police, poverty and prisons to pay the price tag for the Few's lavish lifestyles.

The Myth was that all are Equal; but in reality to not have wealth was to not matter by Holy Edict of the Market.

Those that cannot pay were put into slavery until they were of NO use and then they were exiled to parts unknown or just cast into the sea as the Market dictated. Men were reduced to material goods.

There were debt-bondage emporium in each town where such wretches were sold like so much cattle and with just as much fuss. Men were merely commodities to be sold before the Calf like any other at Profit. To the Calfers 'society' is but a short hand for 'human resource pool', thus they do not find it odd, nor immoral that people should be used, tossed out and then disposed off, just as the Calf, Mammon and Moloch demand of them.

These people were always unhappy with what they had and 'needed' more, more and more infinitely. Their entire economy and way of life depended upon always having more – for some, for a lot of others it meant always having either the same or less.

These people in their restless greed found the land of Manly Virtue and proceeded to attempt an invasion. As their army was made of servile and weak manlings, whose only motivation was greed they made little headway. They faced the Manly people who loved both their land and themselves more than any amount of money. The Calfer Forces were crushed at each attempt, and though they breed like rats in their slave pens, they were put to great task, by this set back in the growth of their domain – as the Calf had determined that its lands were empty and that growth would stop if the Manly lands were not had.

They came almost to a panic; to a fever pitch!

And then, they set upon a design. A nefarious plot. An inversion of common sense so bold it might just succeed where force had failed. They saw that the Manly people must see them as foul and ugly, and inverted that to their advantage.

They called together all the youth of their nation that could pass for fair, and that could lie best and with most convincing demeanor. These they sent as 'refugees' from the Market and they were to say that they came in peace and only desired to live freely in a small parcel of land. It was believed that the Manly people would believe this as who among them would not try to escape such a land as ours? And this lie was believed, and the fifth column taken in and allowed to slowly do its work.

First the natural attractions between sexes wrought unions among them of man and wife, and this allowed for some of the Citizens of Manly virtue to be raised by Golden Calfers and thus to slowly over time morph the one society into the other like a pathogen replicating itself by mutating its host, until out of what was once fair there was came forth only foul – for any good that occurred among any in the Land of the Golden Calf was more than offset by a degradation and marginalization of manners among the formerly Virtuous People. This continued until one was the other and the other was the one. And there was only the Market left feasting freely upon the ruins of this once great folk, and people!

And thus the Leaven: by this means the Manly Folk were subjected to those that never in a million eons would have been able to subdue them by force. Thus was destroyed their way of life. And thus was an end put to their being as they were mixed away before the Golden Calf's market as Mammon and Moloch cackled in delight.

For a slightly different and much longer edit of this go to this link.