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Across the galaxy in a far-off world and a long distant time existed a world not too dissimilar to our own, Earth. The dominant species of this world were known as Celts, and they mated Celats with Celasses. Now mating is a rather gross word for their procreational activity as the Celts were a compassionate people caring deeply for each other and their progeny.
In general Celt society revolved around their domiciles that Celts called baans, and they lived in small villages that they called muu-baans. These muubs did not have many Celts for the Celats used to have to travel far to cultivate crops and look after the animals that provided their sustenance, and that sustenance was meagre. But the Celts in their baans in their muubs were generally happy.
Nature itself didn't always make muu-baan life easy. Celats or Celasses would mysteriously die of disease leaving the muub to care for the remaining family members. And this was the strength of the muu-baan backed by the wisdom of the Elders. They ensured the Celts in their baans were happy in times of trouble, the Celts helped each other and those less fortunate.
Quite rightly you say they can't all have been happy, and that was true and the problem.
As children became older the planet of the Celts dictated that this species developed urges to procreate as happens in worlds across the galaxies. It was well known by Elder Celts that this was a difficult time for both the young Celats and Celasses. These urges took over, and sometimes even good Celts found it difficult to behave well. Now these Elders were wise, and knew it took good judgement to deal with these difficult times. But deal with them they had to. As will become clear later the Elders knew that the stability of their muubs depended on the sanctity of their baans. It was known amongst these Celts that neither Celats nor Celasses should stray. Their muu-baan was strong so few wanted to stray, but the Elders made sure they didn't. Crime was minimal in the muu-baan, and perhaps the one that most disturbed the Elders and the calm of the village was promiscuancy. Any Celt who was promiscuant was imprisoned and Celats forfeited parts of their land. The punishment sounds harsh but few were, however, promiscuant; the Elders knew it was for their own protection. Any promiscuant risked the wrath of all the Celats of the muub because they know that one promiscuant could damage many baans.
In the confusing time of the first arising of procreation the urge was controlled by the community. Through their education all children received an education that promoted the stability of the muubs through a strong and caring baan - helped by Elders and others in the muub. When the Celats began to eye the Celasses with more than just play in mind, their educated morality that was called sila, exerted some control. Because the Elders and the Celts knew of this difficult time they carried out what might be called social engineering. Closer familes in the muubs introduced the young Celats to the pretty Celasses, and once they saw that the Celat was tempted they began a process of cementing the relationship between the two in a baan of the next generation. And all was stable and most were happy.
Of course some of the Celats were greedy and, despite the punishment carried out by the Elders, as promiscuants they found themselves exiles. Whilst they were at first punished if that punishment did not work the Elders sent these Celats far away, if they had stayed other Celats of the muub would have killed them for their deviancy. And this exile was the source of the problem and the end of the Celt way of life.
For these stray men banded together and became marauders - mards. Whilst individually they were not powerful as a marauding group their strength in numbers caused tremendous issues for the peaceful muu-baans. Often they would raid muubs, take the food, and force themselves on the Celasses of the muubs - even capturing these women to become their slave-mates.
But within the muubs another force grew - the silics. Now these silics were Celats who did not seek a Celass and were content with their silic fortitude - a strength gained from sila developed over many years of constant mental effort. These Celats went off to find these mards and prevent them from attacking the muubs.
Over the years an uneasy balance developed in the muubs between the Celts, the silics and the marauders.
As the centuries passed the mards began to examine their lives, and they were hard. They had few Celasses and killed each other for them. They fought each other for leadership and realised this was self-defeating. And if they didn't defeat themselves the silics tried to finish the job off. They realised that the problem lay in their confrontation with the muubs. As mards they attacked the muubs so young men with their sila education could never be sympathetic with the marauders. Even their procreational drive would not attract them to the mards. Some of the mards developed a tactic of assimilation and reward. They would go to new muubs and subtly tell the young men how much better the mards had it. They told the Celats that they didn't have to go off to the fields working all day long to come tiibaan and enjoy the fruits of the Celasses. They told them that the Celasses of the mards were quite happy to share their fruits without any of the drudgery of crop-growing.
Because of the sila education many Celts preferred their baans even though it meant hours in the fields. They enjoyed living with their Celass and their children spending time watching the children grow into Celts. But the assimilation tactics of the mards worked and more and more the young Celts left the muubs to become mards.
Now this increase in numbers would have been dangerous for the mards if it hadn't been for the Nature of the Celt world. For some of the mards had developed an ability with metal and turned this metal into a weapon, others saw an opportunity to exploit the Celats. What if they turned this ability of metal in a way that would help the Celats in the field. So they developed these machines and traded the machines for Celat labour. But this wasn't enough for these mards. It began sensibly enough. Celats wanted the machines, and to get these machines they harvested many crops. It was bulky to carry the crops to the mards so they gave the mards a contract. Because the mards were strong and came from a tradition of killing the Celats always honoured these contracts - from fear.
But the mards were still fighting their internal battles of leadership and greed, and soon the Celats found that the contracts they made with one mard were being usurped by other mards. Soon there were only a few mards with all the contracts.
But contracts weren't the only way that this trading changed. Once the mards created the machines, they needed Celats to look after them. At the same time they also wanted Celats capable of creating new machines. So the mards started teaching Celats how to do this. So the Celats then had two sources of teaching, the traditional silic teaching and the teaching of the mards. This didn't suit the mards because the silic teaching of tradition and family was often in conflict with the mards. So the mards went to the muu-baans, and told the young Celats that they could get better contracts if they came to the mard encampment, worked for the mards there and let their children be taught by the mard teachers. Over a period of time these mard encampments grew as they had more food, more contracts, Celasses who offered their fruits for money, and where promiscuancy was not a crime because the mards had no Elders - they had contracts and crime.
Once the mard system began to develop away from the muubs, the Celats in the mard encampments began to be specialised. There were the teachers, the Celats who built and fixed the machines. Soon the encampments were so big, far bigger than any of the muu-baans. The muubs were too far for the Celats in the cities to get food so there developed stores where Celasses could trade for food. Soon the storekeepers began to complain that it was difficult to trade with foods, the teachers would argue they deserved more food, then the mechanics wanted more for building the machines. Disputes arose and the mard leaders were always around stopping the fights. They developed their own Celt militias to control the Celts and this helped, but it was the unwieldy system of trading that was the source of the problem. So the mards developed money. Rather than trade with goods the money would pay the teachers, buy the machines, fixing the machines and so on. The money would also pay for the fruit of the Celasses. Very soon this money became very important in mard society, and once it became important then the mard leaders began to accumulate this money, and once accumulated this money needed storing and guarding so there developed bankers. To begin with the bankers were just paid for looking after the money but as money grew in importance so the bankers learnt how they could use money to make more money. Now this money was either metal or paper and the bankers controlled the creation of both. Very soon these bankers realised that they could create these coins and papers even though the money did not represent goods as with the original bartering or trading. Different mards got very greedy and began printing more paper than was good for the wealthy mards so some Celts stopped using money and went back to trading goods. Seeing this problem the bankers decided they should control how much money was printed, and because it was convenient and because the mards were now very powerful affecting social behaviour even in the most distant muu-baans most Celts accepted the system of these powerful bankers.
Very soon silics began to realise that their society was breaking down. The mard cities were dominating Celt society rather than their original muu-baans. Celts were attracted to the easy money in the cities, and Celats were attracted to the Celasses who could be paid for their fruit. Other Celasses found that the temptations they had once used to attract the Celats in the old muubs were in competition with Celasses selling fruit. Some Celats would say why must we work in the fields all day to come home and give our money to the Celasses for the baans. Some Celasses didn't even sell the fruit, they found that they could attract the Celts with their fruit and get possessions from them. Because such relationships were not strong the Celts moved on to new pastures, but there were always more Celts and these Celasses were able to get possessions and live comfortably. This was not a problem because in the mard cities promiscuancy was never punished, the Celats of the cities copied the mards allowing promiscuants to go free. So in the cities there was unrest because the silics wanted the life of the muu-baans but mard life could never be that way because mard life was based on greed and part of mard life was that as marauders of the past they had been exiled from the muu-baans because they were promiscuants.
Amongst the dissatisfied silics grew a movement to leave this land of the Celts and settle in a new land, a new land where they could start again in the muu-baans. But there was only one way they could get to the new land, and that was to build ships. The bankers saw this as a tremendous opportunity, and so they encouraged these silics by lending them money to build. But they also made sure that on the ships would be Celats who were working with and for the bankers. So when this silic Bretheen set sail from Portsmouth they set sail with a significant proportion of the evil of mard society that they wanted to leave behind.
Previously the bankers had sponsored trips to new lands searching for wealth, and they had come back with much pretty rare metals from far-off lands. Soon the bankers realised that these rare metals could add to their wealth, and the ships went to further and further lands. So the Portsmouth Bretheen had a plan, they knew where they wanted to go. The land they chose did have Celts living there, well they were like the Celts. But they didn't live in muu-baans, they didn't live in cities like the mards, they just travelled around. The Celts thought they were primitive. Some of the more arrogant silics wanted to teach these Flanders (as these Celt-likes of the land came to be known) how to live in muu-baans and respect the sila, but the genuine silics just wanted to find a place where they could settle down and build muu-baans and get back to the old ways - before the mards became bankers. These silics negotiated with the Flanders and were able to find land where they could live in muu-baans. These Flanders were nomadic people living off the land roaming with their cattle. Whilst they didn't like losing some of their lands where they roamed they knew the land was not theirs, the land belonged to their spirit Gods and these silics were respectable Celts and the Flanders knew they loved the land with their sila.
But elsewhere others of the Bretheen took advantage. These were not silics but their agenda was to increase the profits of the bankers. Once they saw that the Flanders would negotiate with the silics, they decided they would negotiate but in their own way. They began to take the land, and this was very simple and straight-forward. The Flanders lived on the land but they didn't consider it their land, how could it be their land? It was just land for all Flanders, Bretheen, Celts whatever. But these Celts working for the bankers had been told "own the land". So the Celts wrote contracts, and they spoke to the chiefs of the Flanders who were quite happy to sign these contracts for free gifts or even some of this Bretheen money because it didn't matter to them - because it was land no-one could own land.
Over the years these Flanders tended to group together. They were not muu-baans but small groups of families travelled together on different bits of land. Over time the different tribes of Flanders knew the land they lived off, and they more or less respected which land was travelled by which tribe. Occasionally there would be fights but mostly the Flanders travelled their lands peacefully - after all why would they need to fight. Flanders' life was simple. The children grew up learning about the land, and the Elders made sure that parents could help their children learn. When the children started to feel Nature's urge for procreation these tribes would have manhood rituals, rituals where boys became men and could choose the women that attracted them the most. At the end of the ritual there would be a ceremony in which all the young women of the tribe would parade around showing their temptations and the boys-become-men would go through an apparent procedure of choosing. But the choice had already been made. As boys they had known the girls, the families had watched the girls and boys grow together, and at the time of the manhood ritual matters had already been decided.
The silics were shocked at these manhood rituals. These boys would have to leave the protection of their families and go off onto the land. They had to learn to live off the land, and if they couldn't they died. Now the scourge of the Flanders were the leons because the leons attacked the cattle that roamed with the Flanders. The boys-became-men when they returned to the tribe with the head of a leon. The more arrogant of the silics detested this and wanted to teach them what they considered the better ways of their own muu-baans, but the genuine silics had found their muu-baans. They were happy, the Flanders around them were happy. And, they thought, any boy who can go off to the land, survive and use skills to come back with the head of a leon has learnt more than enough to be a man and contribute well to the Flanders caravans - as they called their roaming muu-baans.
The biggest crime for the Flanders was promiscuancy. Flanders' society was small, they lived close to each other, and needed to rely on each other especially if leons attacked. Once the boys-become-men formally began living with their childhood friends the women made a home, the men went off to hunt and gather, and they brought home what was needed for the children. Then they would teach the children, and life had gone like this for a long while. Occasionally some of the young men decided they would take advantage of women either forcefully or through verbal persuasion. Few did this but if caught they were tried for the crime of promiscuancy. If they were found guilty by the tribal Elders the Flanders' men were castrated and told to leave the tribe. Often these men would band together to form a new tribe and would attack the existing caravans but these tribes were short-lived because the men soon died out and there was no possibility of children.
There were rumours of tribes from far away where men had several partners, but Flanders' men laughed at this "it was hard work keeping one Flander's woman happy but several". Some Flanders thought it would be nice to have more than one woman but they never thought of having a woman who had been chosen by another man at the ceremony. It was also rumoured that the crime of promiscuancy was punished by castration and exile in this society of several partners, but who knows with rumours?
Over the years the bankers' Celts began to dominate life in this new land whilst the silics mostly lived happily in the muu-baans. Over that period of time these bankers accumulated many contracts in which they owned vast portions of the land of this new world. To begin with this wasn't a problem because it was only paper. But then after a while the bankers' wanted a return on their loans and insisted that their Celts develop the land. Because of where they came from this meant developing the land initially as towns and then becoming cities. This conflicted with the roaming way of life of the Flanders' people, and this conflict developed into aggression. The Celts would tell the people back home that these ignorant savages had taken their money and that the contracts were valid, they didn't tell them that the locals had been tricked - given trinkets for land which the Flanders believed could never be owned. Soon this became a war of occupation which continued for many centuries as the Celts funded by the bankers expanded their territories exploiting the new lands for farming and mining leading to money going back into the coffers of the bankers.
As the centuries developed the balance of society remained much the same. The way of life of the Flanders gradually fell apart as the land was taken from them. They were corralled into land that couldn't cope with their lifestyle, the people lost their pride and culture eventually turning to forms of escape such as drunkenness to cope with the passing days. Some of them promoted their culture but for many their lives lacked hope.
Within the generations that developed from the Bretheen there was little that resembled the dream of the original silics. There were muu-baans scattered throughout the new world but these muubs were mocked by the rest of the Bretheen progeny. Huge cities grew from the initial towns, and these cities were dominated by the ethos of their founders - the ethos of profit at any cost. Gone was the sila that was the backbone of muu-baan culture way back when.
Obviously the Celats still sought the Celasses, and the Celasses fitted in with the lifestyle that was currently observed. But this lifestyle had no sila. Profit was profit, and the Celats became wage-slaves to that profit. Some Celats made sufficient money to make a home for the Celasses and the children, but often enough it was the materialist side of the home that was lavished upon. And if their money was not enough then the Celasses were taught how to make machines, join the army, work in the police force, and so on. With two wage-slaves there were two sets of money that the bankers could profit from.
Out of the storekeepers the principle of accumulation began to apply to these small businesses. As had been seen with the bankers' accumulation of money, much more profit was to be gained from accumulating. So what started as a small store selling to the people became huge chains of stores, and once this started to happen these stores, being a monopoly, began to fashion the taste of the purchasers. Manipulating the temptation aspect of the procreative urge these businesses began to mould what people bought, and soon what was bought was indistinguishable from what the corporations wanted them to buy. This was most blatant in food. This new world was a huge wide open vista of Nature whose natural produce could easily sustain the people, but that way would not provide the profit that the bankers wanted. It was easier if all people ate what was made in the factories. That doesn't sound too bad until you find out that what was made in the factories contained poisons that damaged the peoples' health. Natural food loses its food value quickly and soon becomes inedible - it is not fresh and healthy. The corporations decided to break this natural law and tried to extend the life of the food. Using acceptable words like preservatives these toxins were added to the food in the hope of maintaining the life the food could be sold. Diseases from the food began to combine with other factors such as the pressures of living in the cities, and new diseases developed that killed the descendants of the Bretheen.
There was much else that these Bretheen progeny did which did not match the sila of the original silics from the muu-baans. Wars were started for profit, just like the war of occupation that gave them ownership of their land in the first place. Wars were started all over the globe where these Bretheen wanted resources that they had already usurped or did not have enough of. Many excuses were given for these wars, philosophical differences, religious differences, it mattered not. These were only the excuses, like the contracts, to enable these bankers' and corporation progeny to exploit new parts of the globe.
But controlling the Bretheen became a real difficulty. The bankers sought only profits and these were profits that the Celts never saw. So why would they do it? They needed to be fooled, deluded into being the wage-slaves that gave the bankers their loot. So the Bretheen pretended that life in this world of theirs was the best that it could be, all should live up to the ideals of such a wonderful land. And where there was wonderful land the Bretheen sent troops. Soon other parts of the globe began imitating this land of the Bretheen. You can have some of our profits by trading with us if you join our wars in far-off lands.
Significant in this delusion was the increase in drugs and sexploitation. Celat descendants were installed as puppet leaders by the banker corporation alliance. And these men were encouraged to give off the image that their lifestyle was the envy of all. And symbols of this lifestyle were the Celasses who were dressed in splendour and wealth. As temptresses they appeared ideal, beautiful and promiscuant. But to match this sales pitch there needed to be the equivalent in daily life. Celasses were discouraged from promoting the values of the baan. These were not exciting values, simple comforts, a loving environment, a home where children had a strong base to go forth and learn from. These were values that could not be profited on. But escapism, splendour, gaudiness, frivolity these were all marketable as drugs, fashion and lifestyle to be envied - whatever the consequence to health and psyche. The very word promiscuant needed to be changed as for some this word still contained a negative connotation that they were doing something wrong. Sex outside of marriage became known as consensual because the man and woman both said yes irrespective of all the social pressures that had led to the consummating act. They called it "friends bearing gifts". Few men questioned it because this allowed them to have the fruits of the tempting Celasses, and the women had no choice if they wanted to survive. They still needed to bear children so they had to accept the only way they could to form an interaction with the men and hope that it would provide some long-term solution.
But as with much in the life of that modern world it was all delusion. The consensuality was a delusion as was the apparent happiness based on wealth and profit. Throughout that world there still existed cultures comprising of muu-baans where silic Elders helped the people survive the day and rigours imposed on them by Corp-Bank. And where there were these cultures there was happiness. But the New Bretheen made sure no-one saw or heard of this happiness. The delusion became solid.
Epilogue
So honourable silic, what do we learn from this history? Surely in this day and age promiscuancy is not the answer?
Quite right, young one. Now that the loins of our society have gone unchecked, it would be hard to turn back the clock. In our muu-baans this sexual morality is still practised and it is integral to the stability and happiness we have, but the clock ticks.
In our modern cities there is little help during their youth. As their sexual urges develop they look at the icons in the dream factory, and they imitate their lifestyles. This is where society begins to break down. Even the people who struggle against the mard system begin from the wrong place. I spoke with a committed socialist, and he described a promiscuant lifestyle amongst those who were trying to effect change. The people who are trying to change especially need a deep sense of sila, an underlying moral integrity that defines all their actions. Without that the people will not follow because there is no trust.
Focus on the struggle alone is not the answer because this is beyond the understanding of the ordinary people. They feel such dedication is misplaced. And within these organisations there needs to be compassion for the people. Far too often these fighters stand up and say do this - follow our ideal, but the people see someone who doesn't care. There is a struggle inside and out, inside the struggle to find sila, and outside the struggle to organise and work together to improve the mard system.
But remember the corruption is deep, the system has broken down. The mard system can withstand the organisations that fight against it. It requires all the people to stand against the people the mards pay to defend it, and with the way things are at the moment that can never happen. Maybe a few inroads can be made but it is the mard system, the mard cities, the mard economy and so on. Maybe for some happiness can be found in struggle but that seems unlikely, how can you be happy in a place so evil?
More and more people are leaving mard society and setting up their own muu-baans. They don’t have the silic tradition but they are beginning. They have separated their bodies from the damaged economic system, now they need to separate their minds by digging deep to find their sila. I see a hope in the new muu-baans.
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