What Makes a People

What makes a people?

If you are a dozen people singing songs around a bonfire, it might just be that what brings them together is that they went to the same school during highschool.

You can have 50 people into a church on Sunday and what brings them together is their faith.

One hundred people spend an evening inside a gymnasium to listen to a political candidate because they hold similar political beliefs.

It is what we have in common that brings us together.

The Dunbar number was a result of a social experiment that determined that humans can only maintain a social relationship with 150 people due to their cognitive limits. So how do you build a society biggest than your average Celtic tribe?

The thing is, people in a geographical region might not know each other, but they do share a lot of experiences. A very common scenario in a big city is that you do not know the name of your neighbours, but you live in the same city; you take the same subway; you see the same infra structure on a regular basis.

We have all had a similar experience to this: you were in a party and you start talking to a guy. It turns out he read the same book as you; he is very passionate of the same sport as you and just like you, he plays World of Warcraft. You end up talking and laughing all night about stuff you have in common.

So what is a people? It is a group of individuals who have a shared history together; who are able to communicate together (meaning they speak the same language); they share the same values and sometimes share the same faith.

This reminds me of a livestream my friend, Canadian Libertarian, did with 2 guys. One of the guy was called J. J is from Quebec. He believes that Quebec is retarded for not assimilating to the rest of North America. He believes that Quebeckers should abandon their way of life; their national identity and also speak English. 

Of course, J is wrong. He doesn’t realize that Quebecker’s maintaining their culture and way of life is the glue that keeps their society together. The people of Quebec want to live this way and speak French. This is pure voluntarism. 

J believes that everyone around him is wrong. But there is a common denominator to everyone’s of is interactions he dislikes: Him. He is living in the wrong place. Like he said: He would like for Quebeckers to adopt the way of life you can find anywhere else in North America. Well, instead of demanding that everyone changes to satisfy him, he should move to anywhere else than Quebec. There he can fuck off and live according to his values.

However, values are not always set in stone inside a society. You can see this easily when you try to define right and wrong. For example: in most societies, the overwhelming majority of people will agree that harming children is wrong. But in the very same societies, there isn’t a consensus if it is wrong to harm a man. In fact, in many Western societies, the suffering of men is something that is celebrated, both by the left and the right.

I had a conversation with one of my colleagues the other day. A topic that pops up too often is racial identity. This is not something most white people understand because white people identify according to nationality and not ethnicity (which is probably the reason why the Cultural Marxists have been associating nationalism to racism lately). Only people with no national origins will identify with ethnicity: for example, Jews who have suffered a diaspora for a thousand years or black people who were sold as slaves and have no clue which African country is their ancestral land.

I get called a ‘’race traitor’’ so often online, I’m starting to think it is a compliment because the people to spew this shit at me are so stupid, every time they disapprove it tells me I’m must be doing something right. 

This being said, let’s say you would associate me with someone from the Czech Republic. Even if we both have white skin, we have nothing in common. We can’t communicate; we have 2 totally different cultures and we don’t share any history.

Another example are the people of France. Most of my ancestors originate from the North of France. But I have never set foot in France. My ancestors colonized the new world over 400 years ago. In 400 years, France has changed radically and Quebec, being isolated, has created its own national identity.

I have more in common with a second generation Haitian migrant who lives in Montreal than with a distant cousin who lives in Normandy.

This leads into the next thing I wanted to talk about: When first generation migrants move to a region, it creates unease with the local population. People don’t like change. But after a few generations, the migrants and the locals have so much shared history and have grown together. They now form one people. The Irish migrants are a perfect example of this. When the Irish migrants arrived in America, they were treated like cockroaches. They were believed to be dumb, violent, to be criminals and leaches to society. 

Today, we have people with Irish ancestry in every level of society. We celebrate St. Patrick and we have soldiers with Irish ancestors who are willing to die to protect their homeland.

To come back to the original question: ‘’what makes a people?’’. To that I will answer: Look around you. Look at the people around you: your neighbours; your family; the people at your workplace; the people you cross on the sidewalk. Instead of seeing them as being annoying or people in your way, try to see all you have in common; the experiences you have in common; the values you share; all these things that bring you together. Then you will realize that you are not alone amongst a crowd of strangers. 

You are amongst your people.

Gato Villano