"Why shouldn't I betray my kith and kin?

“Why shouldn’t I betray my kith and kin?” asked the young barbarian to his grandfather.

The older man, scarred head to toe from decades of battle and hard wilderness living, stretched his huge sinewy arms wide, arched his broad back, stood up, took a deep breath, and said, “Walk with me, son.”.

“You are a link in an invisible chain that stretches back into the mists of time to your first ancestor; it passes through you forward to your descendants and out to the stars.”

“A chain breaks at its weakest link. It is your duty to yourself and your kin—past, present, and future—to be a strong link and to keep the chain growing.”

As they passed by a great oak tree, the grandfather stopped and instructed his grandson to look at the tree.

“You and your ancestors are one family. You and your descendants are one branch of that family. You and your kin are one people, many branches of the same trunk. Product of the same soil.”

“To be loyal to your kin is to be loyal to yourself. The health of your people is your health. Together, we are strong like the mighty oak. Separate from your kin, you are like a branch plucked from a tree who only serves to be used by men as a tool or thrown into the fire to provide a brief moment of warmth, leaving nothing but ash.”

“If you betray Kith and Kin, you kill what gave you life. You impose a cost on your own lineage. Betrayal turns you into a nithing, an animal outside the law, hunted, and despised by all. That is the natural law of reciprocity for betrayal.”

This is a rough draft of a chapter from my next book:

“Why shouldn’t I just kill you and take all your stuff?” A Barbarian’s Guide to Ethics