(Image credit Banyule City Council)
Me myself and I, home and family and where things should go in my opinion:
(Image credit stockbay)
To be honest I am an arrogant ass.
I perceive myself to be a lot more evolved than the average bear and smarter too. The first is of course dictated by my perception of things the second on cold hard IQ tests. But I am by no means perfect, definitely work in progress, always working on the things I do not like about myself and refining the things I do like. I have a few vices, my PTSD and depression have been a challenge as has the degenerative illness that fate threw in my path. I am just starting the dust off process after residing in a big all devouring black hole I moved into after my initial diagnosis and the three year fight for disability that caused me to lose the Mutanthouse Project. It must have been the longest down-slump in the history of me. But now I feel like I am slowly crawling out of the muck I let myself be buried in.
It is not easy illness and poverty suck, and while it is true that poverty is a mindset piling bills, minuscule funds and lack of most comforts can really get to you even if you generally are not prone to just give up. My life right now is not easy I live off of 700$ a month (previously 750 but now I have to pay taxes on my home ). I have no hot water my roof leaks I have gaping hole in my bathroom floor and no functional kitchen. I have 15 furpeople I am responsible for most of which came with me from the Mutanthouse Project, which was their permanent home. They need fed and vetted most of my money goes to providing that. While many will say it is my choice and they are luxury I will counter that for me the are family and when in good affluent times I swore to take care of them I made a vow to be their protector. You do not abandon clan or family when times get rough and things get uncomfortable only the weak do that and the self absorbed.
While Mutanthouse was a refuge for people and animals those who stayed with us were either to old or had issues which did not make them good candidates to be adopted out. In a country where animals are gassed in shelters by the millions abandoning my mostly senior dogs and cats would have been a death sentence for them, it was unacceptable. I know that in our modern society the bonds of family are mostly broken- we stuff our old people into old folks homes to die out of sight, and our disabled into group homes where they cannot bother us. And while I could be placed into the progressive box in most things, at my core I am deeply conservative when it comes to family and clan. This means that should my abusive mother who made my life a living hell ever become sick and unable to care for herself, which I really pray does not happen as it would be death on a stick for me, I would never allow her to go to an old home. It is my duty as her oldest to take her in and make sure she is comfortable. You take care of family human or non human abandonment is not an option if they are in need.
A friend of mine said to me a few days ago that children nowadays suffer because they are often not raised with a father and he felt they become warped by this. Wile I disagree on the “it has to be a man and a woman “ dynamic, to me there is a shadow of truth in there but it goes beyond missing a role model.
While for me It is irrelevant if you have a father or a mother, two mothers or two fathers, or a stand alone parent who are primarily raising you I believe children a need role models of both sexes as they need a clan to grow up healthy in. In our modern society most kids do not have that and it shows, we have no respect for ourselves or each other most of the time, our society is toxic and needs an overhaul.
My friend and I agree one one thing that society today has becomes to disconnected it misses the tribal element that forges bonds. Our approaches to the issue is in most parts different though. Wile he would like to roll back history and go back to the more simple and traditional, I personally see taking important elements of the traditional and forming it into something new as essential.
In the old days the old people would take over a great portion of the child care and some of logistics of the home, leaving the next generation time to plow the fields, go to war, work ect. They wold teach the young how to do things and pass on their knowledge and skills. These people had a purpose that old people today are robbed of. It is heart breaking and demoralising and I believe that it is partially to blame for so many people having Alzheimers and dementia today. It is scientifically proven that even a task such as helping to raise foster kittens improves cognitive function in Alzheimer patients. What do you think teaching children skills and traditions could do for them?
Sometimes we are not able to live with our families in a large multi generational household. Also it is pretty impossible to build a traditional tribal setting in an urban environment but I could see an evolved society moving to creating living complexes where people could create tribal bonds. Imagine if you will people bonding together into living micro communities, be it a housing complex, compound a block of houses where people commit to helping each other succeed and also share knowledge, resources help each other raise their kids and up each others life quality. The older people could help take care of the kids of working parents, teach them skills maybe even crate a community based school together with those of the community who would like to teach. And when they become infirm their community would care for them and make sure they still are valued and loved not throw away people like in our modern society today.
Imagine these children always having multiple solid role models to look up to and learn from, imagine those little home schools having digital bonds with other little home schools across the world to also give a sense of the wider world community. And for those who dislike children and who would not like to be around them there could be community without them where only adults form their own type of community and family according to their needs.These cells of communities could then sometimes work together on projects form larger wider communities in some cases. A society build on cells instead of fractured units would be stronger for it in my opinion.
Teenage delinquency has many factors but it is really seldom that real sociopathy is at play. Neglect, lack of opportunity and education are large factors. Children growing up in a large scale family or micro community would have much better chances at not going down that road. Secondly teenage exchange programs could do a world of wonder for adolescents.
A lot of the tensions between parents and teens, who are basically going through an emotional emancipation stage, could be avoided if they were sent off to other communities in exchange programs. Exchange programs are known to be beneficial to youth development and exchanges like this to other communities would provide them the safety of a community to stretch their wings and expand their skills as they transition from youth to adulthood.
I personally believe that such communities are the only way to a sane future with a world population as large as ours. Either that or evolution will take that choice from us and make a cull. Our world is ailing , out societies are corrupt and the people in them are miserable something is going to have to give.