The Fourteeen United States Marine Corps Leadership Traits
Justice, Judgment, Dependability, Initiative, Decisiveness, Tact. Integrity, Enthusiasm, Bearing, Unselfishness, Courage, Knowledge, Loyalty, Endurance
Now for the Nine Norse Virtues.
Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Self-Reliance, Industriousness, Perseverance
This is going to be the first in a series. I am not going in order. I probably will not write every day. I may well write entries on other subjects in between. I will, however, tag them all with 14USMC.
I’m going to start off with the hardest one out of the group.
Self-reliance.
Self-reliance to me isn’t the hardest just because you have more to lose. It’s the hardest to map to the 14 USMC Leadership Traits.
In self-reliance, a man has to understand and make his own morality. Ours is a religion with homework. There is no convenient priest to say “Thou shalt not” or “Thou must”. An Asatruar must read the word him- or her- self and understand the word. Some of it is as readily understandable as the Havamal. Some is not. Some of it, you need to look to the examples, both good and bad, that have been set before you.
One concept in the US military that’s very important is that of Lawful Orders. Any idiot can follow every order given to them. That’s not the point. The responsibility is on each Marine to not only follow orders, but to be sure the orders they are following are lawful ones.
Self-reliance also means not needing to look to others to tell you what to do. The Christian Church actually worked to ensure anyone not of the priesthood was not able to read it’s most holy text. To do so, especially as an Asatruar, is going to make worship and living up to responsibilities quite difficult, at best. How can you possibly adequately address morality if you don’t know for yourself what the Gods want? You can take the word of someone more educated than you, but how can you KNOW what you’re being told is true?
Self-reliance also means not being a burden on those around you. It appears to me that one of the higher concepts of Heathenry is that of community. How can you contribute to your community if you take more than you give.
Now to be clear I’m not talking solely about money. You can make a ton of money and still be sucktastic at contributing to your community. Alternatively, you might not be heavy in your purse, but you can still contribute.
For me and my life, it comes down to a simple question. “Do you ask of others more than you give?” The idea of someone who is rich of purse, but throws a decent amount of money into local charities is an easy one. But what about those who don’t make much money? Maybe you put your children’s out-grown clothes into the Goodwill bin so they can be made available to people without much income. Maybe you don’t ask much of anyone, but you buy from the local Farmer’s market. Maybe you don’t have a lot of money to give, but you’re making sure your children aren’t a drain on those around them. Maybe all you can manage is to pick up the garbage you find on your walk to the grocery store. You don’t have to expend a great deal of coin to give to the community.
Another point to consider; how much hospitality can you offer if you can’t even be self-reliant? If you’re barely making ends meet because you’re depending on the kindness of others, are you really in a position to offer shelter to someone who needs it?
He hath need of fire, who now is come,
numbed with cold to the knee;
food and clothing the wanderer craves
who has fared o’er the rimy fell.Havamal 3
If you have no wood for the fire, how can you welcome the traveler who needs it? Now, a lesser person might think, “Hey..that’s ok. If I need something I’ll just borrow it”. That’s fine in theory.
What do you do when you go to your neighbor and ask to borrow wood for the fire and they say, “Hey…I was just on my way to ask you the same thing”? Who has the fire then? How will both be warmed in the depths of Fimbulwinter?
Lastly, I’ll write about freedom. Freedom and self-reliance go hand in hand. Thomas Jefferson said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” If you have to go to someone else for your very existence, who owns you? Who can call you thrall?
Oh, they don’t use words like that anymore, but that’s what it means. Thrall. Serf. Slave. “Toe the line, or we’ll take away our largess.” Japanese society is partially built on the idea of who owes whom. If you owe someone, be it money or a debt of honor or even a small bit of physical goods, you cannot speak against that person.
So, all those words and where are we in comparison to the 14USMC? I mapped out Self-reliance to: Initiative, because the greatest of ideas matter naught if you don’t get them off the ground, and the world isn’t likely to prod you. Bearing, because sometimes it’s difficult to ignore a “free” handout. Endurance, because sometimes your lot in life sucks and you just need to endure until things are easier, rather than take the quick and costly way out of borrowing from someone who is self-reliant. Knowledge. If you must rely on others to tell you what is and is not right, if you must rely on others to tell you which way to go, you are not at all self-reliant.
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