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III. Home, Hearth, and Family
The white picket fence nuclear family doesn’t work and isn’t natural. Neither are most of the ‘alternative families’ that so seem to predominate these days. We are communal beings and have been so since the Dawn of Time. We were born into extended family and close-knit community, and that provided the bedrock upon which we built our lives. We knew all of our neighbors. We were never alone. We worked one job for life and died within walking distance of where we were born, surrounded by those who loved us. That was our world. That was our way.
Nowadays, we’re each locked up in our own little apartment, vehicle, or cubicle, plugged into a cellphone, iPod, or ‘puter. We use technology to cut ourselves off from the very people we are in physical contact with, the very people who used to be our existence. Throughout most of our history, seeing a stranger was a rare occurrence. Today we spend our lives living next door to them, working in a cubicle beside them, and receiving change from them at the 7-11.
We are about one generation away from losing all touch with our communal past. Not That Long Ago our kids actually went outside and played with other kids. …like all the kids before them. Our parents died in their own beds. …like all the parents before them. Games, meals, and school were things we shared with others. We worked in crews, gangs, and teams. We built things with our hands rather than just pushing numbers around on a screen. Our heroes were people we knew.
These days we live in fear and isolation, bombarded daily with new boogeymen. Since fear is a product of the unknown, the more walls we build between ourselves and our fellow man, the more fearful we will become: As individuals, as a people, as a species. That doesn’t make for a very promising future.
Old ways and new ways are clashing. Just as America’s focus has shifted from inward to outward, so too has the family’s. Our work, our entertainments, our commutes, and even many of our meals are now solitary endeavors. Dad doesn’t pass on his profession to Junior. Mom is no longer there. We don’t sing together, read together, or play together. We no longer live within Sunday Dinner distance of each other.
For all the shiny new technology at our disposal, we seem to have less time for our kids than our parents had for us. They spend more time text messaging their friends than talking to their family. We’d like to spend more time with them but we’re too busy buying them Air Jordans and keeping the cable bill paid. Priorities.
With Mom in the workforce, that place we call ‘home’ sits empty and lifeless most of the day. There are no kitchen smells or friendly greetings when we open the door, so we turn on the TV.
We no longer know what to do with our kids, nor our Elders. Without the safety net of extended family and community, the poor, the sick, the young, the old, and the insane become society’s burden. The dissolution of the extended family has had a catastrophic effect on society as a whole. The average American worker can no longer afford to educate his kids, care for his parents, nor feel secure in his retirement, even if he stays healthy. If he dares to get sick, the math becomes ridiculous.
Things can never go back to the way they so recently were. We’ve seen beyond the horizon and we can’t erase the fundamental change that has brought about in all of us. But we need to find a way of making all this shiny new knowledge conform to our way of life, rather than the other way around. We are communal beings. We are lions being turned into tigers. We are human beings living a nightmare version of the movie The Matrix. Nothing is real anymore.
The speed and complexities of the Information Age have grossly distorted the institutions of family and community. Just a lifetime ago sons were still following in their fathers’ footsteps. Daughters were still learning life at their mothers’ elbows. Getting done what needed done still required the family working together as a unit. The kids we went to school with were the ones we entered the mills with, and the ones who were present at our funerals. Family and community were everything. Family and community were our life. One lifetime ago…
Humanity is on a path to virtual reality helmets, IV drips, and diapers. That pretty much sums up the business world already, not to mention the lives our kids lead locked up as they are in their rooms. It gives us a too easy answer as to what to do with the kids and old people we no longer have time for.
We need to find a way of using all these new technologies communally, rather than individually, if we are to retain any of our humanity whatsoever. We need to get to know our neighbors again. We need to feel human again. We need to belong to something worth belonging to again.
Humanity needs strong communities as the basic building block around which we build our lives. We need to demand that that is where the tax dollars start getting spent. We need to settle down and establish some roots again. We need the time to raise our kids and care for our parents. We need to unplug and get to know our fellow man again.
America has spent fifty years laying asphalt, building sub-divisions, and stringing cable. We’ve used our wealth to lock out our neighbors so we live paycheck-to-paycheck behind our walls, hedges, and mortgages. Had we spent our wealth wisely and evolved communally, we could all be living in a scaled down version of the Biltmore Estate by now. Do the math: Ten sub-division mortgages gets you a mansion. A hundred get you Versailles.
Were we able to do away with the nuclear ideal and re-define the family unit as something extended and stable, our standard of living would grow in leaps and bounds. Many, many social issues would disappear virtually overnight. Unfortunately, these are the kinds of changes which hit awfully close to home and are difficult to even talk about, much less change.
Making this change even more impossible is the fact that it isn’t in the best interests of Big Government, nor Big Business. They want us divided as voters and targeted as consumers. It is easier to manipulate us that way. They can sell us more TVs that way. We can’t throw another ‘60’s on them that way.
But let’s face it. What we’re doing isn’t working. Two parents aren’t enough to raise a kid in the Information Age, or any other for that matter. We drive off in our separate directions, to different worlds, every morning then act surprised when we have nothing in common with each other as evening rolls around. We can’t afford our kids’ educations. We can’t afford our parents’ medical bills. Our jobs aren’t secure. Neither are our homes. It isn’t working.
We need to put down the earbuds and take a good, hard look at the world around us. Is this what we want? Are we headed where we want to go? What will our grandkids’ world look like? How ‘human’ will our grandkids even be?
Only the oldest among us even remember the days before technology dominated our lives. Only the oldest among us even remember when everything involved other people. Only the oldest among us even remember the communal ways that have been with us since the dawn of time. That ought to terrify us more than Bird Flu, Al Qaeda, Climate Change, and Glenn Beck combined.
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