Totalitarianism, upheaval, and even the collapse of a whole civilization are the fruits of the lack of a strong social fabric that connects people on a purely freewill participatory basis. This social fabric connects people from the individual to a very large scale and provides a sanctuary against the centralized and top-down hierarchies of control, which always devolve to serfdom for the many for the benefit of the ruling class.
The social fabric of human civilization exists within such known structures as marriage and the family, but also within more ancient and weakened or even forgotten structures like the extended family, kinship groups of around 15 or so adults, and kinship communities of around 120 adults, all with some form of shared faith and ethnic/national identity. Rebuilding such social fabric is not about reform or using politics and laws, it is about both using our own models and blueprints and it is about imparting these ideas to others but mostly through a living witness and example they can see and interact with.
Eventually, networks of such kinship communities form the basis of larger distributed communities (we call them “Shires”) like unto free cities, cities of refuge, or spiritual city-states all based on spiritual as opposed to political sovereignty. In this manner we build the genesis structures both for a new qnd globally-distributed nation and a new civilization of many such nations even in the midst of the decline of old civilizations whose cultural and spiritual life has been politicized and corrupted.
We both propose our own model, the Upadarian Model based on our spiritual nation as a vanguard people of a new civilization, and the broader adaption of its more universal principles to other peoples and nations around the world, all based on Kingdom essentials, like the core of historic Christian doctrinal and ethical orthodoxy.
We begin with a Upadarian Kinship Group which you and others can unilaterally and autonomously build together using our blueprint qnd framework. Aside from the need to secure a very low cost “license” to use our brand and nomenclature, the development and management of your kinship group is controlled by you and can connect to the larger global Upadarian community through our website and eventually our platform.
A Upadarian kinship group is a more formal extended, but intentional, familial group of around 10-20 adults who treat one another like an extended family in terms of mutual support, mutual self-reliance, and a shared purpose. Imagine 20 other adults who live near you and who care for your well-being, success, and happiness as much as they care for their own and where you feel the same way.
A Kingship Group is like unto a small extended family, but it does not replace your own blood kin. In fact, many such groups may form mostly among people already related by blood, though blood relations are not the sole basis of a Kinship Group and every adult member is both a Christian and a peer of our spiritual nation. But, that being said, Kinship Groups do not replace your own blood relations to whom you have mutual obligations.
In an ideal world, using historical examples as our inspiration, kinship groups generally occupied the same property. But in the real world where people have leases and mortgages and cannot just up and relocate, or may not wish to, such groups may be “distributed”, as in people who live near each other connect and gather at some sort of common space or in each other’s houses. Either way, it is possible to reconstitute a modern version of the ancient kinship group whenever a group of people meet the criterion for such a group and choose to practice mutual self-reliance and support in pursuit of shared goals.
We propose that nationhood, as in a form of shared identity that can be shared with two people or more and that can scale upward to include millions without a neee for some centralized hierarchy of top-down control, or something like it, is an essential criteria. A kinship group requires a deep degree of shared beliefs, values, and convictions about daily life and practices, otherwise the only form of cohesiveness that is possible would be through some form of charismatic and/or authoritarian leader, which is most certainly not what anyone needs.
When the connections and bonds of unity are organic, that is, from the heart and strictly voluntary and open-ended (free to enter, free to leave), then the need or tolerance for top-down control is almost zero. It should be zero. The difference between a healthy kinship group where people’s individual destiny and happiness are served and a cultish environment where people’s individuality itself is subsumed may in fact be this organic cohesiveness.
Cultish behavior is considered by Upadarians to be one of the greatest threats to human dignity, happiness, and autonomy as God intends it. People lording it over others and forcing or manipulating them to conform for the good and benefit of the few is a gross sin against God and your fellow human beings.
Where something like nationhood as we define it, on strictly voluntary and spiritual grounds and through freewill participation and adoption of shared ideals and the such, is applied, we have organic cohesiveness that is open-ended and that enhances the individual’s quality of life. In theory other forms of organic cohesiveness may be created, but unless they embody shared social, cultural, economic, and even civic virtues and standards that guide the whole and reflect the actual beliefs, values, and convictions of the participants on a freewill participatory basis, then the opportunity for some form of top-down control to emerge is there.
Through our 17 Protocols, for instance, we can spell out what those things are on a very transparent manner and people can then decide, on a voluntary basis, whether or not these things reflect their own beliefs, values, and convictions. It’s not a matter of us saying “you need to change to relfect these Protocols”, it’s us saying “we are being totally transparent about the things that guide us and IF AND ONLY IF this REFLECTS your own beliefs, values, and convictions and FITS AND SERVES your own destiny and happiness, then perhaps these 17 Protocols are yours as well, perhaps you already are a peer of our spiritual nation.”
It is not unusual for one of us to tell people that their choice to affiliate with our spiritual nation, by making a pledge between themselves and God alone to be guided and inspired by these 17 Protocols, is entirely their own and should only be made if they are ceertain this fits and serves God’s best for their lives. If we maintain this stance and Upadarian kinship groups and communities emerge around bodies of people autonomously pursuing the use of these Protocols to have and experience mutual self-reliance and support, then every Upadarian kinship group will be a launching pad for the dreams and visions of each individual participant.
As we must often say, Upadaria isn’t a church or denomination. As a spiritual nation, any person, anywhere in the world, can adopt this form of nationhood, call it an intentional spiritual nationality, without formally joining any organization or buying anything. There is no hierarchy of control deeming who can become a Upadarian nor how using the 17 Protocols best fits your life, your needs, your dreams, and your circumstances.
Likewise, while every Upadarian kinship group will use these 17 Protocols as a guide, just how they do this, in what order or priority, and in all the details and specifics, is up to that autonomous and self-governing body of people. While Upadarian structures, organizations, enterprises, and institutions can and must exist, no Upadarian, by virtue of having taken the Pledge, is obliged to subscribe to our join or otherwise be governed by any of them. If you choose to adopt this spiritual nationality in addition to your political citizenship or ancestral ethnicity/nationality, and layered within and subordinated to your identity as a follower of Yeshua and citizen of the Kingdom of God, that is totally and solely, to be abundantly and painfully clear, between you and God!
Upadarians are first and foremost Christians, followers of Yeshua and citizens of the Kingdom. That, and not Upadaria, is our core identity. Being a Upadarian is a diversity expression of nationhood as prescribed by God who ordained a multiplicity of diverse nations of people whose God is the Lord. Not all Believers are called to our diversity expression of nationhood in Christ.
So even as we propose and lay out frameworks specifically for Upadarian kinship groups, the broader principles apply to all, and at the heart of this must be some form of organic cohesiveness like unto those who, through adopting the 17 Protocols, have become peers of our spiritual nation on a strictly voluntary basis.
This is the most difficult concept for people in the West especially because they live such atomized, as in separated to the smallest scale, lives. They are individuals and at most nuclear families that are easily and lightly separated by a form of divorce that has no deeper mutual commitment than what satisfies each individual person’s lower order needs. Such an atomized life is easy prey to any cohesive group with more wealth and power in society, for which reason slaves were never allowed to develop their own nuclear families on a long-term basis (mates would be separated and sold out, for instance, and children were taken from parents). They certainly weren’t allowed to create extended family groups or cohabitations with them.
The idea of a grand scale form of voluntary kinship which includes both people related by blood who maintain the same connections and others who aren’t blood related but who you have a spiritual connection to is difficult to envision. We cannot say “here is a modern example that is exactly what we are talking about.”
Historic examples existed and students of history know that from hunter-gatherer bands to the first village-size settlements, for most of human history, most human beings were connected to, but did not lose their personal identity within, bands and villages of around 15-20 adults which were usually connected to larger community groups pf around 80-150 adults. What has been lost and is being suppressed is that we “modern” humans have not by any means lost our needs for these kinds of social, cultural, economic, and civic connections based on a shared form of identity, like nationhood. The number one reason why we are seeing corporations and governments run amuck and violate basic human rights with impunity is their deliberate suppression of the social fabric.
Hedonism and the destruction of the family and extended family through atomized libertinism are the hallmarks of a society headed toward some form of tyranny or collapse, or both. While we would not mandate who you loved or lived with or how you define marriage or family, it is our conviction and belief that a man and woman raising their own biological and/or adopted children in connection with a larger extended multi-family community of like-minded souls is the ideal and perfect fractal of human civilization.
It is not for you to agree or not. Our holding to the dream of creating our own scalable social fabric on this basis alone, to the exclusion of all other arrangements, is not a threat to your holding to other opinions and ideas in your own connections and relationships. We believe that in a sick society, politics and the corporate world tend to create, or impose is a better word, a top-down culture that atomizes individuals and that thwarts efforts to create a more positive and voluntary social fabric. In a healthy society politics and corporate policy serves culture, it doesn’t impose sociocultural norms throughout coercive or manipulative means from above.
The idea in Western Civilization that one can change culture to change politics is idealism. One must so change politics that it retreats from culture and thereby also prevents the emergence of monopoly corporations that also use their influence and economic power to punish those who don’t adhere to the corporate ideology. But it is also possible to find and create carve-outs from even this political-corporate regimentation of atomization of individuals into an amorphous blob. While one ought to engage whatever powers are engaging them, by all reasonable means at hand, the deliberate creation of these kinship groups and the restoration of the social fabric of human civilization on a unilateral and freewill basis could eventually become pervasive enough that politics and corporate policy will change.
To create a kinship group with people who have adopted the 17 Protocols of Upadaria as a guide for their shared identity, conduct and behavior toward each other, and goals and purpose, is to walk away from the atomized life of top-down control and opt for more individual liberty and self-sufficiency using this most successful model for human flourishing. It is a change on lifestyle, particularly who you spend time with, where you spend that time, and how you spend that time, and even how you use your wealth, property, talents, and resources.
Changing from the atomized collectivism of a centralized command culture that serves the ruling class to an organic cohesiveness in connection to a kinship group based on a shared spiritual nationality is a major shift for most people akin to moving to an entirely new and alien land with a different sociocultural framework than you have ever known. It is an ancient way of life that is readily adapted to modern needs and possibilities, but for most people it is as novel as an imagined culture on an alien planet.
Part of why we have “Experiences” that start on the basis of you being a “refugee” is that the understanding of this form of social fabric is outside most people’s previous experiences within Western Civilization. Reconstituting these ancient norms and connections in modern form will take some effort and it requires a careful balance to prevent abuse: forming a strong social fabric should in no way subordinate or bury your individuality or allow anyone to control your life. The opposite should be the case.
A Upadarian kinship group just using the 17 Protocols has the basic foundation upon which to build organic cohesiveness that is positive, beneficial, and empowering to each individual. Participants in such efforts will find that more and more of their lives are liberated from the top-down control of a corrupt political and corporate ruling class who lord it over an amorphous mass of atomized individuals.
