Culture and Family

What is a family anyway?  I suppose I'm probably arguing vs. late-20th Century family values rhetoric on this one, but I have a feeling that argument isn't quite dead yet.  It's funny, now that I think of it, that good ol' family values definitely got less play over the last decade, what with GW focused on torturing our way to security with a quick stop to trample on the Constitution.

Anyways, what is the root of the family?  I don't have much faith in evolutionary sociology, but I would argue that family is one of those basic human elements that have been passed down to us via our DNA in order to help us (and therefore our DNA) survive.  Basically, we are hard-wired for social structures, and family is the society at its most basic.  So, family is society and it is the basic means for social reproduction.

Identity is also largely a family affair.  The fad, or hobby, or whatever, that is genealogical research confirms this; and don't forget the desire that adopted children have to know their "real" (by which they mean "biological") parents.  Somehow, we think we do not know ourselves without knowing our DNA - as if we were trapped in bodies and minds that we can't make sense of without knowing the people that made them.  We are our family; our family is us.

And family might be the most conservative of social forces - the ultimate root that keeps us from the revolution.  The family is us, not them.  The family is the most basic social structure and it is the one place where we put our trust - or want to.  The dysfunctional family is dysfunctional because trust is impossible.  For the families we are born into, or the families that we create the most dangerous aspect is that we would be willing to do anything - including kill and torture - in order to keep our families safe.

So, as human beings we are ultimately afraid - on some level, we are still in Hobbes' state of nature.  But we must trust in each other, so we draw lines - who's in?  who's out?  The revolution, in my eyes, is when we draw the line in the broadest, most inclusive way.