Reflection on Ingathering
Most of you have heard about the fall of Carthage by means of the ancient cries of Cato: Cartago Delenda Est! You know that Rome won after many hard-fought battles. You know Carthage was burned to the ground. You know about the salt, and the ashes. It’s even become something of a meme in the technological era, which is quite impressive. However, I wonder if you’ve heard about Scipio Aemilianus, Carthage’s conqueror - specifically, what he felt when he finally sacked the great scourge of Roman destiny.
Scipio had decided to bring with him the historian Polybius to record what everyone already knew would be the fall of Carthage. Everyone knew this was the end. Scipio figured he ought to bring an historian with him to record that end. Within the pages Polybius filled of Scipio’s campaign - which, incidentally, became something of a trainwreck and lasted far longer than expected - Polybius records a rather curious prophetic vision Scipio had, which I will record here:
Scipio, beholding this city, which had flourished 700 years from its foundation and had ruled over so many lands, islands, and seas, rich with arms and fleets, elephants and money, equal to the mightiest monarchies but far surpassing them in bravery and high spirit, now come to its end in total destruction - Scipio, beholding this spectacle, did not offer rejoicement. Rather, he began to lament at the sudden misfortune of his nation’s great foe.
He withdrew from his men, and after meditating by himself a long while and reflecting on the rise and fall of cities, nations, empires, and individuals - after thinking back to the fate of the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Persians greatest of all - after thinking of the splendid reach of Alexander, and of once-mighty Troy long ago - Scipio, meditating on the mutability of it all, stuttered to speak at first. Then, either voluntarily or involuntarily, thus spoke Scipio:
The day shall come in which our sacred Troy,
and the people over whom Spear-bearing Priam rules,
shall perish all.
Polybius, tutor of Scipio, asked in a brotherly way what he meant by quoting Homer amiss Carthage’s doom. Thus spoke Scipio again:
Is this the fate of all great things?
Is this our fate?
And Polybius wrote this down.
Scipio’s realization - a realization that tempts the threshold of prophecy - was not well received back home. Neither the senate nor the people took kindly on his pity for Rome’s enemies. But there were those that did turn an ear: Scholars, poets, and a number of sensitive young men held Scipio’s words close to heart. They came to the conclusion that the foundation Rome was building its empire upon had been built on the wrong things. Theft, genocide, enslavement, and violent civil wars were not the stuff that built successful civilizations. Scipio’s words were, to them, a prophecy of how Rome would fall. So, they began to gather and form something of a tradition around him.
There are many stories from these men about Scipio - Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, in which on the eve of Carthage’s fall, Scipio fell into a dream-vision of Rome’s fate, where he saw the summus ipse deus, or “the Supreme God himself” - Horace’s Epode XVI, in which he calls moral Romans to abandon their city and flee to the virtuous countryside before it all comes crashing down - Virgil’s 4th Eclogue, written after he acquired a copy of Isaiah’s scroll, and foresaw in the promised Christ-child a remedy for Rome’s fated doom. It is unlikely Scipio was the birth of this peculiar form of poetic Roman monotheism, with its prophetic vision borrowed from Carthaginian and Judaic sources. However, in Scipio’s words, many of these men found an alternative foundation to build upon - one which could endure whenever things turned for the worst.
I will write more on this topic another time. Suffice is it to focus on this one thing: The poets and scholars were well aware Rome would not last forever, and they began to gather and share tales of Scipio, and others they found worthy of preserving, for whatever age would follow. Even though they lived at the zenith of Classical civilization, they could not shake the feeling that the Roman Republic had built its foundations upon poor ground. They could see the means by which Rome stood tall could never sustain itself forever. A moral decline would set in.
They chose to gather, and prepare.
They chose to found a new tradition.
The chose to lay a foundation.
Tennessee
This was the seasoning I brought to the meat - this year’s Scyldings Event in Tennessee. Like those poets and scholars, this gathering was focused on what kind of foundation ought be built to preserve our own Republican past. Everyone at the conference could see that we were losing our heritage of a First World nation, and what will remain when it’s all ashes will depend upon what we chose to grasp onto. It harkens us to justify what we hold fast to at all, and why? All this is to say, that’s how I interpreted the event’s theme of Foundation building.
When our neighbors in the progressive camp gather in such a style, we’re used to hearing the cringey land acknowledgements and privilege declarations they are prone to perform as a means to set the frame. We can see where they are building their foundation, upon the grounds of victimhood and vengance. They call it Justice, but it is oddly never satisfied with their “just” acts. Mr Stephen Carson called this a “weasel word” - a term I was not familiar with. Apparently, Weasles are known to suck up the contents of an egg without so much as a crack visible. In similar way, our progressive neighbors use words like Social to evacuate all meaning to our virtues. Social Justice sucks out Justice and replaces it with vengeance, Social Security sucks out personal wealth and replaces it with state dependency, Social credit sucks out your worth until you speak the regime’s magic, etc etc.
It is worth noting, dear reader, that when our progressive neighbors do perform these virtue signals and invent these virtue-words, this is not a new thing. Read any literature from the classical or medieval era and there is a good chance you will find some kind of virtue signal at the start. Tacticians will often open with praise toward Mars, while philosophers might open with a song of Athena. In many ways, Progressives virtue-play is a return to the norm. The loss of such a norm are due to, I suspect, some silly attempt to make our writing and speaking of a neutral secular style. I thank Christ such nonsense is going extinct, and whereas our enemies open their gatherings with the summoning of vengeful folkspirits, it was a rather rich blessing to receive Mr Carson’s words as the summoning the living God - and summoned he was, as he ventured through his talk.
Mr Carson’s tone-setting for Friday set the pace and reference for all the speeches that followed over the weekend. In their approach to building a foundation, I would divide up these proposals as follows:
Building “over there”
Building “over here”
Building “later on”
Over There
While there has been quite some discussion - often in jest - about up and leaving for greener pastures,
did an excellent review of what that actually looks like by exploring successful westerner communities outside of the west. Though, I think one of the most profound thoughts came from one of the questions at Q&A. One of the attendees noted that communities with tight kin selection tend to have more recessive traits than dominate ones. This is actually quite a good point. We’re all familiar with traits like blue eyes, which simply cannot exist without prolonged kin selection, but this also shows up in traits like time preferences and food selection. If you are going to go off yonder to found a new community, be sure evaluate the natives you’ll be trading with. Recessive traits are pretty good evidence for strong family ties and kinship.In many ways, the act of going “over there” can greatly benefit a mobile community to reinforce their self-image and kin selection. Throughout history, those that do choose to go to some far off land, do tend to express the best traits of their people. The Carthaginians were more successful than the Philistines. The Romans were more successful than the Trojans, the Marseillan were more successful than their Greek ancestors, and of course, the Anglo American Empire succeeded the British one - both of great stature.
Starting fresh also has the added benefit that you are forced to build a stable foundation without much reference to an old one. If it’s weak, your community will fail. Any new community won’t have to tolerate or assume the old foundation they came from. They can reinvent themselves. This has proven very useful a number of times in the modern era, most evident in the South African community of Orania, which continues to prosper even as all around them comes crashing down.
But, this comes with a guilty conscious. You did, after all, abandon your kin to start over. You made the judgement that you would rather God deal with their mess than your clearly able hands. Not everybody can accept that weight.
Let me return here to the Roman Poets I mentioned at the start of this article, to Horace’s Epode XVI. When asked by his countrymen how they may avoid the Scipio Prophecy, he wrote this poem - some think half-mockingly - that Romans of good nature should do as the Philistines did: Take ships and abandon the Levant for greener pastures elsewhere. If such men can build Carthage, surely Roman men can build back better!
I will here reference that specific section, which he titled “A Cure For Civil Wars”:
Alas, a barbarian conqueror will stand on the ashes,
and the cavalry will strike the city with resounding hooves,
and the bones of Quirinus - removed from the bashes of wind and sun -
will be scattered arrogantly (a crime to behold).
By chance you all together seek what would liberate us
to be free from these wretched toils.
Let no opinion be better:
Just as the cursed Phocaeans Polis
escaped their ancestral fields and gods,
and abandoned the temples about to be inhabited by boars
and grasping wolves, the infantry consider to go anywhere,
wherever through the waves Notus or violent Africus will call.
Is it thus resolved, or does someone have something better to suggest?
Why do we delay by a favorable fight to overtake the boat?
But let us swear to this: "When the stones from the lowest
depths raise up, let it be lawful to return-”
- Horace, Epode Sixteen.
Over Here
I oriented greatly towards NotMeNotYou’s speech (@NotMeNotYouAlso on twitter). We are, after all, near each other - perhaps a two hour drive away. The core of his speech was simple, but rough: what will you do if some future administration declares you are a terrorist simply because you question it? Such questions assume that the listener did not flee to greener pastures, but rather decided to plant roots here - and if you planted them, you ought take responsibility for them.
It’s a hard call, because most of us just imagine moving to a safer state if our own state goes insane. That’s been the playbook for America’s federal structure for centuries now, and it's worked great when there were fresh lands to flee to. But those days are coming to a close. There aren’t any undiscovered countries left in this world.
At its core, the speech asks for honesty. If you are a coward and won’t tend to the foundation you build, why are you even trying?
America has been stuck in a Darwinian selection game for a while now - one that is rather insane. Every few months our regime decides some new madness is the new bare minimum you must profess unquestionable fealty towards, or else be barred from its hierarchy. Every time it does this, a few people in the center shift to the right, and get removed. The problem is that the thing being sworn fealty to has now been disconnected from reality for a few news cycles. And thus, the selection pressure has been dismissing competent people with a connection to reality. Over enough news cycles, this filters out anyone left able to deal with reality, and the regime has effectively lobotomized its own institutions. I don’t need to give you examples of this. I’m sure something made you mad in recent memory for you to imagine this process with.
There are a few ways to deal with this lobotomization process. The path with the least violence is hijacking the news cycle to begin filtering out insane progressives in favor of the lost center. Musk’s take over of Twitter is somewhat doing exactly that. But there are those who see this process as the fastest and safest way to topple the violent regime we live under - to accelerate it to such a degree the regime loses all competency and struggles to keep the lights on. Under such conditions, this regime would ideally phase out in favor of private entities, which would fill the void and form a new governing body. Such paths might seem exciting because it means you live to see the end of this regime, but they are also violent. At the tail-end of competence, a eunuch with a gun can do a helluva lot of violence to you and your family, church, and business. It is in those final deathly gasps of air as the regime pulls out the last remnants of its spinal chord that NotMeNotYou’s speech can find its context in.
We assume those outside the regime are where the competency has fled to, but what if it’s not? What if our regime just starts destroying competent people? We may rather find ourselves in a situation where there simply aren’t any competent people left to run a lobotomized government. In that case, it seems likely we all will be hiding in the woods, or in someone’s closet, as zombie government goes on one final raging purge against all. At such points you may feel some desire to tap out and go on the “Over There” approach. To this, let me pull up yet another Horace quote:
They change the sky, not their soul, who run across the sea.
-Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Epistles
Later On
I would group
and together in something of a pairing. Auron’s reflections on why the modern state needs “woke” like a machine needs gas was quite on point, and Dave’s reflections on boomer moments felt coupled in a general reminder of the foundation we currently sit upon - one prone to cracks and sudden cave-ins and which we can all clearly see isn’t long for this world. In these reflections, the “let’s outlive them” strategy comes to mind as a viable way to build a foundation. After all, you get a lot of free building materials sitting around if you wait for a house to collapse, so to speak. Much as the later-stages of building here and now, waiting to build until it all falls down means both such approaches will inevitably join forces at some point. Indeed, Auron and Dave are both, technically, building here and now - but staying clear of the regime’s auto-lobotomizations as they go about their lives.I am something of a cross on these topics. My parents were born in the 1940s and had me in their 40s. As such, a great deal of the rust and ashes of the past few decades didn’t end up on me. I don’t hate boomers like most, nor do I see why woke has to continue indefinitely until the regime runs out of souls to castrate and folds into itself. But, these matters bring to mind an eastern curse my baba would say when she was very furious at someone she knew was stronger than her:
“Нехай ти доведеться побачити, як усе, що ти досяг, розпадається”
Or, in English:
“May you live to see all that you have accomplished, be undone.”
It’s a curse that contains a blessing, in truth - a hope that witnessing your sandcastles be cast away by the waves of time may spur you to repent and return to the natural order. It often comes to mind when I consider just how long Boomers have been sticking around with us. For what other reason would God permit Kissinger to live so many years, save that he might see it fall to nothing? Of course, I’m a bit of a fan of Kissinger myself, but not so much the people who Kissinger’s policies granted power to. But who knows what the Boomers will do in their Twilight years, and who knows who will ultimately get their savings.
When reflecting on this question, I found myself coming back to the speech of
. In simple terms, wherever you chose to lay that foundation, make sure the cornerstone is Christ and that you are willing to declare that you believe. You have to de-atomize, and your church can be an asset in that - but maybe your church can learn something from how this age has crushed you too.I am reminded of a little-known poet from the 5th century, Paulinus of Pella. At the remarkable age of Eighty Three, he decided to pen a reflection on those peculiar years of Roman decline - and what his Christian faith had meant through it. Having lived from 377 until some time in the 460s, he had quite literally seen Rome go from a resurgence, to total obsolescence. Furthermore, having been born in Macedonia, raised in Carthage, and settled with a wife in Gaul, he offers a keen insight into what that decline looked like in multiple regions. He was, like any number of twilight Romans, just trying to grill like his fathers had before him. But all that became closed off in the final days of 406 AD, when some 30,000 Germans entered the Empire fleeing war in Germany - The Huns had arrived.
Within the span of a few short years, Paulinus witnessed an Empire recovering from a shaky 3rd century, become warring states ruled by various Germanic tribes and their captured Roman institutions. It is in these peculiar years that the poetry of Paulinus was penned, and where we find the lamentations and prayers he jotted down.
He wrote:
I declare that I did not align myself with the weak tyrant, but rather, I admit to having followed the path of Gothic peace. This peace, which was desired by the consensus of the Goths themselves, was achieved shortly after through agreement [with we Romans]. It … should not be regretted, especially now that we see many flourishing under Gothic favor within our republic. Although many first endured the full range of suffering, not least of whom was I, seeing that I was stripped of all my goods and outlived my fatherland…
[Concluding Prayer]
Grant, I pray, an undaunted mind in the face of all sorrow, and through the gift of your steadfast virtue, grant constancy. Whatever direction your divine judgment leans, please bestow upon me a fearless spirit against all adversity. And since I, in this old age in which I now live, recognize that there are many fearsome things to come with death itself, I am not certain what I desire more. Whichever way your judgment inclines, please alleviate the fear of approaching death, to which all ages are subject. May the various uncertainties of life's ambiguous course not torment me with their alternating anxieties. Grant, O God, that I may avoid those dangers under your faithful guidance…But whatever fate awaits me at life's end, may the hope of beholding you, Christ, mitigate it, and may steadfast confidence dispel all doubt and fear. Whether I exist in this mortal body of mine or am dissolved into any part of your being, may I be yours, O God, to whom all things belong.
It is a peculiar thing to outlive one’s fatherland. These are things one rarely chooses to experience, but nonetheless some must experience them by accident of birth, or worse, advent of cowardice. Whatever the case may be, people don’t get to disappear when things come crashing down. We all become bound to the sins of our fathers. We can escape their guilt, but we cannot escape the consequences of their guilt.
Paulinus was Eighty Three years old when he wrote. There was little he could do to fight the new Status Quo - and yet, he was troubled with fear if he had done all that he ought to have. He was proud to declare he never followed any of the petty tyrants and usurpers as the empire fell, but rather maintained strong friendships with Goth and Roman alike, to see the gospel be the foundation of a new order. Paulinus may not have been sure what would come next, but the flourishing of the survivors brought him much peace that this new society had chosen a superior foundation in Christ - that the prophecy of Scipio had been proven true, but perhaps stalled so long as the Gospel held sway in men’s hearts. So, with little time left on this Earth, he made this appeal to heaven - simply titled, Eucharisticus, or in English, Thanksgiving. While Prude asked us what we say we believe when asked, I was thinking about this poem, and how very much so I pray I am not a coward, and can stand on that foundation without shame.
Event, Concluded
Beyond these focuses, much of the event dealt with Anglo-Saxon identity and history, such as that of Mr. George Bagby, and Mr. Grant Brooks, while both Charlemagne and Mike of Pol explored avenues of how that identity may reference itself with the European continent of the past, and economics of the future. I, a “Deracinated American Dimwit” as my friend Outremer calls me, did admittedly find it hard to relate to these speeches. But I want my own kids to have an identity to live into. What they offered was the brave claim that we have a rich and fundamentally good history on this continent that we ought not be ashamed of, as our Progressive neighbors demand. While they may desire to burn down that history and usher in their utopia, we in the real world know that their utopia will fail, and we would rather like to keep our history from their hands while they march into oblivion.
In conclusion, the event gave me hope. Specifically, that I may live to see that day, when the growing darkness of the here and now fades away. That it simply cannot sustain itself like this forever. I cannot say which approach to this inevitable decline is my preference. I certainly have been on the accelerationist train a few times, but I did get off. I think I’d like to try to build something here and now, now. But what that looks like may take some cooling down and getting serious. I laugh too much, Dear Reader. I haven’t had enough tragedies to break that youthful angst that stirs me to push a little bit more every day. I think, perhaps, I need that to be a better man, but I certainly don’t want to pray for hard times.
For now, I will reflect on the Scyldings Event. I will reflect on the 14 hour car ride with Mr. Wayne, Mr. Hunger Merchant and Mr.
that felt like just an hour because we all had such a blast. I will reflect on the cigars enjoyed, and the drinks shared. I will reflect on the fact Mr. J Burden is as fun in person as he is on podcasts. I will reflect on the fact Mr. Turnipseed is going to be taller than me after his next growth spurt, and that I was likely speaking with a future historic figure. I will reflect on Prude’s cryptic warning that I might end the world one day with one of my crazy projects. I will reflect on the 14 hour ride back with Mr. NotMeNotYou and a fellow architect, which also felt like just a few hours because we had just as much a blast back. I will reflect on all these moments, because they constitute a foundation - one, I pray, will endure as all else around us fades.I leave you with two of my favorite letters, written between the court of the Gothic kings in Iberia, and the court of the Roman Emperors in Italy - written as the Huns burned down the empire, and former enemies sought to appeal to senses of honor to defeat this great foe. It reflects the desire, by both Goth and Roman heart, to put aside differences and work to build a foundation together, in Christ. It follows:
Bravest of nations, it is the part of prudence for us to unite against a lord of the earth who wishes to enslave the whole world; who requires no just cause for battle, but supposes whatever he does is right. He measures his ambition by his might. License satisfies his pride. Despising law and right, he shows himself an enemy to Nature herself. And thus he, who clearly is the common foe of each, deserves the hatred of all. Pray remember--what you surely cannot forget--that the Huns do not overthrow nations by means of war, where there is an equal chance, but assail them by treachery, which is a greater cause for anxiety. To say nothing about ourselves, can you suffer such insolence to go unpunished? Since you are mighty in arms, give heed to your own danger and join hands with us in common. Bear aid also to the Empire, of which you hold a part. If you would learn how such an alliance should be sought and welcomed by us, look into the plans of the foe.
[Likely penned by future emperor Avitus, who was a personal friend of the Visigothic Royalty]
Romans, you have attained your desire; you have made Attila our foe also. We will pursue him wherever he summons us, and though he is puffed up by his victories over divers races, yet the Goths know how to fight this haughty foe. I call no war dangerous save one whose cause is weak; for he fears no ill on whom Majesty has smiled.
[Likely penned by Theodoric I or II, friend of Avitus]
Dear Reader, who do you know that would answer your call for aid in this style?