Once Blind

Capital as Everything; Everything as Capital

To learn, one must first experience, and to experience one must act. However, not all are granted such an opportunity. In modern times, most children are born into urbanized societies, removed from nature and by extension an independent lifestyle. Thus, Aurelia seeks to create an education program which re-embeds children into the scene and setting of their local communities, empowering students with hands-on experience with resource and agricultural management.

To What We Wake

From Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option:

“I am a college-educated American. In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil. I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages.

“The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution…My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment. Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting.

Nobody did this on purpose…But nobody felt any obligation to present it to me and my generation in an orderly, coherent fashion. Ideas have consequences - and so does their lack.”

Our Night, Defined

  • Industrialization

    The scientific revolution deconstructed Europe’s transparent feudal system rooted in faith and land and built in its place opaque bureaucracies rooted in technology and wealth. States which decentralized power as private oligarchies came to rule the world.

  • Globalization

    Industrialists mobilized civilians in revolution and war against traditional authorities, promising equity and wealth through democracy while centralizing influence on a global scale. Developing markets liberalized in order to integrate into the international framework.

  • Multi-Culturalism

    Fabion-inspired strategies of social nudging allowed the U.S. version of liberalism to out-compete the Soviet’s post-WWII. Its international institutions offered Western civil rights and finance to integrate the globe under managerial classes divorced from local preferences.

  • Multi-Polarity

    Historically independent states were enticed to compete for leadership of this international framework, providing the appearance of competition between distinct states while ensuring homogeneity of thought as technology and migration eliminates local identity.

Timeline of Our Dispossession

  • 1: Subjective Morality

    Death of a unifying moral vision of the Sacred;
    Birth of subjective morality and materialism

    Protestant revolutions deconstruct the solidarity provided by Medieval Catholicism for the benefit of newly rising regional powers

  • 2: Self-Rule

    Death of transparent rule and accountability;
    Birth of opaque bureaucracy and lobbying

    Suffrage politicizes the citizenry, increasing local reliance on centralized governments as voters vie for federal aid in ethnic enclaves

  • 3: Managerial Revolution

    Death of overt class and social obligation;
    Birth of managerialism and social engineering

    A disunited, distracted, and uneducated public loses control of democratic institutions to institutional managers in un-elected positions

  • 4: Multi-Culturalism

    Death of independent thought and innovation;
    Birth of mass culture and controlled opposition

    Cultures are pitted against one another through massaging the Managerial control uses education, media, and commerce to ensure conformity in thought and provide acceptable outlets for frustration

  • 5: Hedonist Spectacle

    Death of personal discipline and technical skill; Birth of instant gratification as raison d'être

    Removed from traditional values and institutions, citizens are atomized and made vulnerable to manipulation via material desires

  • 6: De-Industrialization

    Death of local industry and ethnic sovereignty;
    Birth of debt-based growth and global oligarchy

    Unaccountable leaders with no connection to local peoples or traditions are incentivized to pit nations against each other to extract profit

  • 6: De-Population

    Death of familial bonds and societal legacy;
    Birth of progressive eugenics and mass migration

    Restrictions of public expression in art, industry, politics, and religion leads to a decline in fertility and unwillingness to defend local heritage

  • 8: Techno-Feudalism

    Death of real community and access to nature;
    Birth of digital imitation and mass surveillance

    As debts rise, populations collapse, and competency declines, digitization curbs public resistance and limits political alternatives

Life after Night

Education as Everything; Everything as Education

To learn, one must first experience, and to experience one must act. However, not all are granted such an opportunity. In modern times, most children are born into urbanized societies, removed from nature and by extension an independent lifestyle. Thus, Aurelia seeks to create an education program which re-embeds children into the scene and setting of their local communities, empowering students with hands-on experience with resource and agricultural management.

Cultural [Re]Birth

Ethnopoiesis within Post-Modernity

On the surface there are two types of civilization: those rooted in Man and those rooted in Principle. In reality, all men worship something, whether they recognize it or not. These are called assumptions. Priorities. Biases. Morality.

Holistic education involves not only learning of one’s past through academic courses, nor even a trade through networks of students in a rooted in real-life experience, and thus real-life results as well.

Aurelia, Defined

  • Our Name

    Aurelia is a derivation of the Latin word meaning “golden,” referring to the belief that a more equitable era will emerge after our Dark Night of materialistic inequality. Thus, its mantra: per noctem, ad auroram; or, “through night, unto dawn.”

  • Our Symbol

    Aurelia takes as its symbol all Western origins: a Catholic Cross, wreathed by Greek laurels, supported by prongs of the Trifunctional Hypothesis, whose three social classes unite to represent the necessity for individuals to sacrifice for society’s future.

  • Our Vision

    Aurelia is inspired by Catholic social teachings, and thus seeks a future tied to land, family, and God through a change in the guiding principle of society, from “do as thou wilt” to salus populi suprema lex; or, “the health of the people is the supreme law”.

Our Guiding Principles

  • Catholic Mysticism

    Esoteric pursuit at the base of the material Church; the walk with Christ towards Union with God, through the rite of one’s Dark Night of the Soul

  • Re-Territorialization

    Act of re-embedding the Self into one’s natural context; to be again a part of the world from which we have so alienated ourselves via Technics

  • Formalized Influence

    Clarification of the natural and social hierarchies in every society; the accountability and unifying ethic born from Noblesse Oblige

  • Communal Sovereignty

    A People’s ability to identify themselves as distinct from all others; the right to protect an unbroken chain of faith, family, art, and war

  • Holistic Vitality

    Intersection of all that makes one human; the physical, spiritual, familial, cultural, and ethnic health born from a living heritage - i.e., thumos

  • Aesthetic Beauty

    Rebirth of standard in every aspect of life; the restoration of skill and poise via education and judgment so to restore a High Culture for all

Our Social Values

  • Class I: Warrior

    Those embodying Aurelia’s Principles of Holistic Vitality and Transparent Influence, who deal with death to protect a society’s health: soldiers and police officers; firefighters and EMTs; doctors, trainers, body guards, and military spies.

  • Class II: Yeoman

    Those embodying Aurelia’s Principles of Re-Territorialization and Communal Sovereignty, who use their hands to build and maintain a society’s home: farmers and miners; carpenters and plumbers; accountants, seamstresses, coders, and engineers.

  • Class III: Priest

    Those embodying Aurelia’s Principles of Catholic Mysticism and Aesthetic Beauty, who explore the unknown to guide a society both culturally and morally: priests and poets; authors and artists; teachers, mystics, painters, and philosophers.

Our Program’s Goals

  • Objective I: Health

    A successful holistic education will manifest as health in heart, mind, body and soul for the student who authentically reaches for that kind of wellness the ancient Greeks referred to as eudaemonia.

  • Objective II: Home

    A successful holistic education will manifest the sense of home, in both the individual and communal sense, for the student who authentically reaches for that which the ancient Greeks called oikos.

  • Objective III: Heritage

    A successful holistic education will manifest as a cultural heritage in art, blood, and soul for the student who authentically reaches for the fulfillment of potential that ancient Greeks named arete.

Our Program’s Benchmarks

  • Renewal of Local Aesthetic

    To fulfill Aurelia’s Third Pillar of Heritage,

  • Restoration of Local Physique

    To fulfill Aurelia’s Second Pillar, Health, the physical exertion, dietary nutrition, and local ecology of local populations must be maintained to ensure

  • Re-Establishment of Local Custom

    To fulfill Aurelia’s First Pillar, Home, regional arts, faiths, dialects, and customs must be renewed and maintained to define the physical and cultural boundaries required for a place to be called Home

  • Revitalization of Local Industry

    To fulfill Aurelia’s First Pillar, Home, local access to food, energy, and gainful employment must be revitalized to provide the autonomy and sense of belonging required for locals to feel at Home

  • Re-Establishment of Local Obligations

    To fulfill Aurelia’s Second Pillar of Health,

  • Restructuring of Local Education

    To fulfill Aurelia’s Third Pillar of Heritage,

Our Program’s Structure