Duty - pt. 2

Continued from Here:

But why even discuss our rulers and would-be rulers? The things they say, the things they promise, are just so much destructive wind. The only thing that has ever made them even slightly interesting to me is that I can't ever decide which is more scary; the ones who never do the things they promise, or the ones who actually do those things. IE, bureaucrats tend to scare me more than politicians do. Either way, "duty," to them, is just wind. A threat, at most. Nothing to be taken seriously.

Yet duty is a part of an honorable and civilized life. A person who genuinely possesses no sense of duty must not have a friend in the world. What good is life, if you genuinely have nothing in it toward which you feel some sense of obligation? I certainly don't deride the idea, I just don't believe other people can impose it on you. You can only impose it on yourself - and should.

Coincidentally, over at Sipsey Street Mike posted a piece on "Tribal Duties" yesterday, that seemed to fit similar thoughts I was trying to force into coherence:

How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history. It has proven it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem.
...

The solution to this problem is to build a tribe. A group of people that you are loyal to you and you are loyal in return. In short, the need for a primary loyalty to a group that really cares about your survival and future success.

So how do you build a tribe? A strong tribe, in this post-industrial environment*, isn't built from the top down. Instead it is built organically from the bottom up. A simple tribe starts with cementing ties to your extended family, a connection of blood. The second step is to extend that network to include other families and worthy individuals. A key part of that is to build fictive kinship, a sense of connectedness that leads to the creation of loyalty to the group.

Something that's sadly lacking in our society is the notion of voluntary association - I mean association in a group more serious than the Boy Scouts or Kiwanis Club - a group that forms itself around the ideal of mutual benefit, maybe even mutual survival. A tribe, for lack of a better word. Not one you're born into and "owe" allegiance because otherwise Unca Sugar will hurt you, but one you form yourself or earn entry to.

Hmm...sounds a lot like a gulch.

Duty is a rational and essential part of any complete human's life. But for duty to be legitimate, it must be voluntarily assumed. If I start a family, for example, I have a duty (a whole damned series of duties) to my spouse and children. If I form or join an alliance of friends for mutual support, I have a duty to fulfill my promises to that group. These are obligations I bring on myself, and they may bring me aggravation and hassle but if everybody else is doing their part they also bring me joy.

But I have no duty whatsoever to anyone - anyone at all - who tries to impose such duty upon me. No government, no organization, no self-proclaimed spokesman for any viewpoint, even one with whose aims I might generally agree, can put any obligation on me at all. They can only try to persuade me. Or, in the case of a government, they can try force. The first I may listen to, and I may be persuaded or not. The second is pretty nearly certain to carry unintended consequences, and the more so the more I seem to be going along. >:-(