David Myatt - Concerning T he Folk, Race, and Empathy

Some Questions Concerning The Folk, Race, and Empathy

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

Race is most certainly, according to The Numinous Way, an unethical

abstraction - as are folk communities if (and I stress if) a certain ethnic
exclusively is made the raison d'être for maintaining and/or founding such
communities. There is thus some distinction here, between race and between a
living folk which is part of a living tradition, which certainly requires further
clarification, since such a living folk is itself not an unethical static
abstraction, but rather a type of living, changing, being.

In respect of the concept race, this one ideation is, by its very large and
abstractive 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 comes
to be regarded, due to its size and nature, as the necessary condition for the
survival, and betterment, of a particular race or of what is regarded as a
category within a particular race, what is sometimes regarded as a
sub-species. Such a proposed ethnic nation-State most often - in theory as in
practice - becomes centralized and so does away with, or strives to do away
with, regional, local, authority, placing an idealized, supra-personal, duty and

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loyalty to the nation-State (and to some idealized National people) before

regional and personal duty and loyalty. Similarly, the resources of regions are
harnessed to National goals, with some centralized authority given authority to
control such regions and make and implement plans based on some abstract
goal or goals.

This is, for example, what NS Germany saught to do, with race defined
according 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 or
exclude the undesirable.

In addition, personal sacrifice and suffering - by the people of the nation-State

and often of great magnitude - are to be expected and even endured, in the
service 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 be
representative of that race, that people. Similarly, suffering inflicted on others
- not of one's people - is also to be expected, and regarded as sometimes
necessary, for such goals to be achieved in some future. Similarly, war - the
employment of large armed forces, equipped with technological, impersonal
weapons - is regarded as sometimes necessary, if not of itself desirable.

Now, given the personal nature of empathy, the desire to cease to

cause suffering arising from such empathy, and the personal nature of honour
itself, 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, for
The Numinous Way, loyalty and duty can only be to individuals that one
personally knows and respects, and not to some abstract, remote authority or
some abstract entity such as a Nation, ethnic or otherwise. Also, no abstraction
- strived for or believed in - justifies inflicting suffering on others, with the
ethics of empathy allowing only for personal, familial, self-defence (including
the use of lethal force) in personal situations - that is, for inflicting suffering
(and retribution) upon another human being only according to the guidelines
of personal honour.

According to honour, impersonal war - of large armies using impersonal

destructive weapons and the killing of people who, personally, have done
nothing dishonourable to one's own person or to one's extended family - is
dishonourable, 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 have
actually dishonourably done. That is, for numinous law - based on the axiom of
personal honour and applicable only to small communities - there are only

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honourable and dishonourable deeds, with only actual dishonourable personal

deeds done, against another person or persons, regarded as being contrary to
such 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 and
longevity of shared work. That is, the criteria for a folk is locality of dwelling
and of work, and a community that one is part of by virtue of being related to
members of that community or having worked and lived within that
community for an extended period of time and thus become related to the
community most often by ties of marriage but occasionally by ties of personal
loyalty and duty.

Thus, a folk is a living, naturally changing, entity, born out of shared personal
experiences and shared personal relationships, and nurtured by such
relationships, by a belonging to a particular area, and by the sharing of new
personal experiences. Thus evolves a particular attitude, ethos - a very
localized weltanschauung - and also, over long periods of causal time, two
interesting things; first, a certain balance, a mutual respect often deriving
from a mutual need and familial relations and personal knowing, and often
involving the necessary communal use of local resources; and, second, a
feeling of belonging to and pride in one's community, and thus a mostly
friendly 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 is
maintained within such community a sense and knowing of the numinous
itself, developed as this sense and knowing is by the accumulated pathei-
mathos (the wisdom) of the ancestors of those of the community, and which
wisdom often in the past gave rise to local customs and to beliefs concerning
Nature (the land, the living beings of Nature), how the individual relates to
Nature, and what occurs beyond death.

If this local and localized wisdom - founded from the accumulated personal
and practical experience of one's ancestors - is lost, or if there is an intrusion
into such a community of abstractions (often, in the past in the form of some
dogmatic religion) or the emergence of a Tyrannos, then the folk becomes
undermined and more often than not wanes and dies, because the natural
balance is not restored.

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

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Oedipus is the classic example of a Tyrannos - who upsets the natural balance
and brings misfortune (upon himself and others - upon his folk, his polis) by
his killing of his father and his insatiable desire, against advice, to uncover his
own identity and that of the killer. Creon - in Antigone - is another such
example, who scorns the ancient wisdom by his decree forbidding the burial of
Polynices. Agamemnon is another example of someone upsetting the natural
balance and bringing misfortune: by his sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, by
his 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 to
tragedy.

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 the
horrid 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 some
abstract ethnicity, or of such ethnicity of itself being desirable and regarded
as a necessary qualification to join such a folk community.

But in order to try and further elucidate this, and the folk itself, I shall
digress into the personal. As an individual, I feel myself to be English. Or
rather, 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 affinity
with rural England, both innate, and due to personal experience: an affinity to
how and to where I have worked in the past. Second, I can trace my English
ancestry 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 or
worked 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 Second
World 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 fading
Empire - a land, a place, where I feel at home, a place whose rural landscape I
love, 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

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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 we
speak 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 values
and goals. This sharing is of the real culture, the world, of my ancestors: the
world 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), and
recounted by William Cobbett - but a world, a culture, a way of life, that sadly
is being lost, and has all but vanished in many parts of England, replaced by
large cities and large towns, unnecessary industries, and rapid un-numinous
means 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 every
Tyrannos, every supra-personal Empire, every Caesar, every dogmatic and
organized religion, and now every State, always makes such rapid
communications, 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, their
missionaries) 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 regarded
as 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, for
my 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 implies
that I have a desire to live and work and end my days in such places; that I
would like to see such places - their way of living, the very land itself - survive
by 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 is
germane 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 such
places and such ways, can establish and so live in similar folk communities as
exist here or elsewhere.

Yet does this mean such new folk communities as may be established, or old
ones, 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. Or
both such ancestry, such blood, and such an ethos?

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To me, it means a certain way of life - a dwelling in a certain type of rural

place, a certain way and type of work - as well as a certain ethos, a particular
outlook 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 in
Sense and Sensibility; in the character of Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding
Crowd; 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 differing
tribal descent (Angles, Saxons and native Celts, for instance) were ethnically
and to an extent culturally similar enough (for example, in respect of
manners) to assimilate reasonably well without under conflict. Thus, in early
English villages, the criteria of acceptance was not whether someone had blue
eyes or blond hair (and thus seemed to fit some abstract criteria), but personal
knowledge of them developed over a period of time, possession of necessary or
required skills (in terms of work, for example) and a certain similarity of both
life-style and outer appearance - not so different, in terms of attitude, beliefs,
manners, or appearance, as to appear some outlandish (and possibly
dangerous, 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 towards
newcomers.

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

In a similar way, there is nothing un-numinous, nothing un-ethical - nothing

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

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

Which leads us onto to the basis of new folk communities, and how to establish
them, and which will explain what is meant here. A new clan essentially begins
with a family - with, for instance, two people who desire to live together and
loyally and honourably share their lives, who both possess the same numinous
ethos, or who desire to develope the same ethos, and who thus also seek to
separate themselves in some or many ways from The State, and from
enervating 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 an
ethical 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 involve
more than two people (and their children, if any) initially.

What is important here is that the choice of partners - and of friends - is

entirely 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" or
ethnicity. A question of Life working as Life works, in a natural manner in its
species 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 in
love with someone similar to ourselves, in outward appearance or whatever,
fine. If we happen to fall in love with someone different from ourselves, in
outward appearance or whatever, fine. The flow of Life within and exterior to
us naturally decides.

What matters is the love; the returning of love. The wu-wei of love. The
numinosity of love. The loyal and honourable sharing. The experience of life
together. 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 we
impose upon ourselves or upon others, and which imposition is or can be the
beginning of suffering. Not some dogmatic belief in some idealized race and
the need to try and "preserve" that race. Not the rejection of empathy and love
for the sake of such an abstraction, such dogma.

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Thus, if one is happy living among one's own kind in a village of one's
kind and treasures their traditions and ways and wants to hand them onto to
one'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 falls
in 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 The
Numinous Way.

It is, simply expressed, a question of the natural balance of Life; of using

empathy and honour to find and feel and appreciate and try to live that
balance.

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 new
clans and tribes which will offer people an alternative way of living to the now
ubiquitous, un-numinous, tyrannical, de-evolutionary State.

Exactly how and where such new clans and tribes can be formed, is a matter
for individuals to decide. A new clan really begins - comes-into-being - when a
family decide to live in a certain, more numinous, manner, especially if this
living 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 to
be a small collection of clans living or dwelling together in the same locality or
adjacent localities who initially are bound by ties of loyalty and often by a
common need to cooperate (for reasons of food, or survival, or the sharing of
natural resources, for instance) but who later on also become bound together
by ties of kinship.

Thus, clans can evolve to become tribes which becomes a new folk. In the
terms 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 akin
to a small, rural, self-sufficient village of many families, where there is some
specialization of work, for instance a farrier, a wheelwright, a miller.

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Given your explanation above of the finer differences between a folk and a
race, 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 in

progress, which I refine, and extend, and hopefully better express in words
over 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 essence
of this Way within me, growing, and attempted to outline it, in essays and
letters to friends; sometimes perhaps not very well, as in the contentious
matter 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 be
honest - 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 misplaced
sense of duty, even when I was developing this Way, and which Way I inwardly
felt throughout all the years of the past decade was an expression of my own
beliefs, my own true inner nature.

In this period of almost a decade, many of these attempts, by me, to outline

and explain this Way have been published, and possibly led others to become
confused about not only my intentions, and beliefs (and possibly even become
annoyed at me personally), but also about what this Numinous Way of mine
actually was and is. Perhaps I should not have published all this material, and
waited until I had everything neatly, precisely, formulated and so could write
my magnum opus - a weighty tome about which there hopefully would not be
any misunderstanding and which would not cause confusion about the intent
of its author.

But my excuses are that the very act of so writing - and of occasionally
receiving comments and criticisms from others - was for me a necessary part
of the creative process, and enabled and entailed further and deeper reflexion
upon certain matters; and that I was never overly concerned about what people
thought about my intentions, or beliefs, trusting that the perspicacious among
the readers of such missives would understand at least something of the
essence of what I was attempting, albeit so imperfectly, to communicate.

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

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As I have mentioned in several other of my writings, I regard empathy a

natural human faculty, as an extension of the other senses by which we
perceive the world and by means of which we can try and understand the
world 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 and
interact with other human beings and with the other living beings with which
we share this planet.

As a natural human faculty, it can - and in my view should - be developed and

used. How can it be developed? By an appreciation of the numinous, by
cultivating compassion, and by striving to live in a honourable way, according
to a code of personal honour, for honour is a practical manifestation of
empathy. An appreciation of the numinous, for instance, is one of the
functions of a living culture, a living tradition, of all numinous works of Art, of
all numinous music, literature, of the transmitted pathei-mathos of our
ancestors and that of others.

So, there is nothing mysterious or difficult about empathy and its cultivation
and 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 the
essay 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 while
working part-time on a farm, of how the local people in many places fiercely

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resisted attempts over long periods of time - by the distant national

government and by wealthy landowners - to alter the ancient drainage system
and pattern of drainage, and how such pumps to do such unnecessary
drainage were occasionally sabotaged.

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

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

[5] By Celtic I refer here to the indigenous, the native, peoples of the lands
now 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 few
other Roman writers, and it may be from among these early Britons came
many 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 in
Shropshire, 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 live
and work (again) for many years on a farm.

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