Traditionalism and Ethnocentrism: A Frisian Perspective

Friesland is today a province of the Netherlands, yet it predates the Netherlands by more than a thousand years. The greater Friesland, or Magna Frisia, at the height of its existence, spanned from what is now Belgium all the way to what is today Denmark. The Frisians were renowned for their fierce spirit of independence. This spirit was so strong that the Frisians kept the commonplace European system of feudalism out of their bounds for hundreds of years. The Frisians were agricultural people that were also expert seafarers. This afforded them to be proficient traders. Their forays into the territory of other cultures instilled in the Frisians a certain internationalism, yet they remained grounded in their culture and homeland, demonstrated by the fact that Friesland and the Frisian language still persist. Still today, Frisians can be found all over the world, but wherever they end up, it seems common that they remain acutely aware of their Frisian roots. Today many a Frisian-owned farm or company anywhere in the world will have the Frisian flag waving next to the national flag of the nation they reside in.

The deep and ancient ancestry of the Frisian people still resounds as a faded echo in the present. Many Frisians today are totally unaware of the proud spirit of independence that animated their ancestors, so the last remaining vestiges of the rich Frisian heritage are mainly some superficial customs and the common use of the language, both of which are under pressure by the yolk of modernity. It is the great amorphous nothing of modernity that is swallowing up all precious traditions and cultures in the Western world. In a localized attempt at rekindling the flame of tradition in my people, I started a movement called Skaai, which is Frisian for kind, species, type, race, or family. It is an attempt to find a common ground on which to unite our loose and incoherent people. Disjointed people motivated solely by their individual interests will be unable to offer much of a counter-offensive to the ongoing anti-white, anti-European onslaught of hatred that is growing stronger day by day. A remedy is dearly needed, and Skaai seeks to provide this. And since all cultural change seems to be affected by the ideas of leading thinkers, Skaai must submit ideas and a philosophy of its own.

We need not reinvent the wheel since we “stand on the shoulders of giants.” The ideas and philosophies of many thinkers formed the fertile soil from where the philosophy of Skaai sprouted. The ideas are not new or novel, but the distinction lies in the fact that I try to make the philosophies of old “fit” the Frisian people, for even though their spirit of independence has been tempered, their spirit of strong-headedness has not. It is somewhat of a Herculean task to attempt to affect change among them. Yet the very philosophy that came to me through the magnificent writings of past thinkers expressly dictates that I have a duty towards my people, even if they are unwilling to accept the ideas of Skaai. We must persevere or perish.

Skaai is a movement based on a philosophy that adheres strictly to the laws of nature. To eliminate all discussion about distracting matters, like who is really in control of the world, what is in the Covid vaccines, or the alleged satanic practices of elites, Skaai seeks to reduce all reasoning about the just course of human life and behavior to first principles based on the natural order that emerges from a Holist view of the world. As a remedy to the pathological individualization of modernity, we must approach the quest for a solution from a distinctly Holist perspective. Holism was first posited by Jan van der Smuts. Skaai does not follow all of the aspects of Holism as posited by van der Smuts, but the quintessential notion that the sum of the whole gives rise to properties that the separate constituents do not possess is quintessential to the ideas of the Skaai philosophy.

Electrons, neutrons, and nuclei together form atoms. Atoms give rise to matter. Matter organized in the right way gives rise to biological cells. Cells form bodies. Human beings together give rise to family, family to folk, and folk to humanity. This natural order provides the structure for the orientation of duty. As opposed to modernity, where the individual need not doubt his self-interest-driven direction in life, in Holism the individual need not doubt his place among his folk, for all his obligations and duties flow from the natural order. Holism is, therefore, fundamentally hierarchical as opposed to the monarchy of the individual in modernity.

If the Holist approach to reality is valid, then it stands to reason that following Holism through to its consequences must lead to ultimate reality; that is what Skaai calls Creation. Modern science is quibbling about the nature of the universe or reality as emerging from pure determinacy or from pure randomness. If it is purely determined, everything that has ever happened and everything that is going to happen had to be created at the moment of the big bang. The beginning of time and its end had to come into existence at once. There is no room for free will in this model since it reduces man to a simple automaton that can only react to predeterminate inputs.

If the universe is purely random, then the past is totally disconnected from the present and the future. There can be no evolution of anything coherent in such a model, and here we find once more that free will is impossible, for the very framework man uses to organize his experiences, namely the context that arises out of time and space, is non-existent. The human mind cannot function without time or space, so this is also not a valid model.

Chris Langan provides an elegant solution to this problem. He states that Creation is ultimate reality and that it basically is the raw substrate whereupon perceivable reality is built. This is done through the participatory process between perceiver and perceived. What is necessary for Langan’s model is that the substrate (unbound telesis) consists of tiny information processors (syntactic operators).

These processors do not simply respond deterministically to input but make an intelligible decision about how to process the input. This means that the processors must be conscious. In fact, Langan makes a compelling case for intelligence, by virtue of this mechanism, being a universally distributed quality of reality. And so, in a nutshell, we find again the principle of Holism, for the sum of all the conscious operators make up ultimate reality. The very fabric of reality is Holist, and any and all attempts at formulating a philosophy for the resurgence of the noble spirit of the Frisians, and Europeans in general, must have Holism as its foundational principle.

The natural order that flows from nature dictates that the individual has duties and obligations towards his folk, and the folk has duties and responsibilities to its members. All shall live with the notion that, in the grand scheme of the natural order, the folk is to be considered the keeper of the culture. Humanity can only flourish if and when all distinct peoples have their own territory and ability to live life according to their culture and ideals. It is pointless to expect a folk to accept a subservient position towards humanity, as long as the whole of humanity does not share a common spirituality and learns to adhere to the natural order and prefers asceticism above materialism. Such a spiritual awakening can, for now, only be achieved by local initiatives like Skaai. Skaai seeks no influence beyond the Frisians and their territory. It aims to achieve a spinoff effect through inspiration. If Skaai is successful in igniting the traditional flame, then it might inspire more indigenous Europeans.

Skaai is, therefore, an ethnocentric philosophy, but ethnocentrism defined as acting to promote the highest interest of the folk, not defined as the biased and colored view of the world one has by virtue of belonging to one’s culture. For Skaai, ethnocentrism is being aware that the indigenous people of Friesland are white people. And that, for Frisians to remain extant, the demographic makeup of the folk should remain white.

Ethnocentrism is demanding the space in Frisian public discourse that there is a distinct preference for Frisian children to grow up with other Frisian children and eventually marry Frisian partners. The preference of Frisians for their own should be reflected in as much of public life as possible. Skaai is therefore, by means of its ethnocentrism, a philosophy with a very distinct orientation towards the local. When material goods are needed, one should first look at the local artisanry to provide such needs. Food should ideally be grown in close proximity to the local community. No cheap labor shall be imported and put to work for low wages, for this is beneath a moral people and against the interest of the folk.

Skaai argues that the primary language in public schools should be Frisian instead of being a secondary language as it is now. There must be inculcated in the Frisian youth the notion that the language is one of their culture’s primary means of shaping their identity and therefore of the utmost importance. All of this should not be done by attempting some foolish mandate or legal obligation, but by culturing a deep love for the indigenous Frisian culture. This love will then spawn the desire to pass on the culture to the next generations. It will become second nature.

Traditionalism, for Skaai, is reverence for the natural order as it is the source of the intransient and immutable values that should guide man towards the just orientation of his loyalties and duties if he is cognizant of this order. For it is modernity that clouds our view and obscures man’s obligation to nature and the natural order. Traditional man must free himself from the constraints of materialism. This shall not be accomplished in this generation. Skaai is, therefore, by necessity a philosophy geared towards the future. We fight so that future generations shall be the bearers of a priceless gift. They will inherit, if we are successful, a strong culture, morality, identity, and tradition. Something our modern forebears failed to pass on, distracted as they were by the shiny trinkets of modernity.

Like many a thinker formulated before I do here, Creation is Holist, and the implicate order that flows from it cannot be invented or discovered, but only found by the persistent and the traditional. The salvation of the Frisian people is not to be found in the Dutch government or any other external influence or factor. The just path leads inward in acknowledging the implicate order and the song it sings within the hearts of all that find it in themselves and the world. Man is inseparable from the order, and I hope the old blood of the Frisians still holds enough of the will to be free of all that seeks to bind them but the order of Creation and submit to living their lives in accordance with it. For we are “Men standing among ruins,” and rebuilding takes strong people that shall take as their ideal for rebuilding the world the impeccable order and splendor of Creation.

In closing, I should like to state what I often tell the people of Skaai: a life not spent in the pursuit of transcendent ideals and order is a life wasted.