Great essay. Here is a 2019 essay from Tablet with tables which makes your very point- pay particular attention to Mean In-Group Bias Score Among Whites. It's also why people on the Left are more unhappy and prone to mental health problems. One cannot cut oneself off from family and community without severe personal consequences.
It's also why the early post-cat video YouTube acted like a crude Hogwarts Sorting Hat. People with a pro-government, collectivist mindset searched out social issues, people who wanted to know why 2008 happened, with often dire consequences for their communities, families and friends, searched out economics.
"A culture exists to give meaning and structure to human life and to provide a setting and template for the raising of children. If a subculture is not a place for the raising of children then it is, in some sense, transitory and incomplete and probably pathological. I can think of no exceptions."
It says something about modern culture that upon reading this passage I had the following thoughts in rapid succession:
1. Obviously.
2. Actually, that's pretty deep. Why didn't I think of that?
3. Can I think of any exceptions? An order of celebate monks/nuns maybe?
4. Wait, that excludes nearly all of modern culture. Children are implicitly unwelcome in almost all public spaces these days and even those few spaces still set aside to children do not seem oriented toward "raising" them anymore. The entire idea of "raise up a child in the way that he should go" is out of vogue lately.
5. This seems obvious and necessary, yet just saying it is probably going to draw immediate offense from somebody for centering the traditional family as the cornerstone of society, a position that was indisputable and celebrated not that long ago.
I can think of exceptions. When the family is abusive and is a place where a child is not valued nor allowed to thrive and grow. Family is definitely a high value cultural construct - when it is healthy and balanced and loving. But, not all families embody these values. In these cases, the child must learn to exist/survive/thrive outside of the tribal protection of a family - often in the very subcultures enumerated above.
When a human being is told they are not worthy of being connected to, particularly a child, that person is going to seek connection wherever they can find it. The bars to entry for these subcultures are low and this easier access enables the child (or adult) to at least feel some connection (even if low value) to other humans. Feeling connected is so endemic to our survival that any pathology present in these subcultures is easily overlooked just to stay connected. This is also true for cults and other self-subsuming belief systems.
Perhaps if families were a bit more elastic in terms of accepting a broader range of self expression, they might act as a countervailing force to some of this. Homosexuality is a perfect example of a type of excommunication that drives individuals to seek out subcultures where they can find acceptance and validation. There is a reason most of these subcultures exist and the most likely reason is not that some humans want to be bad or heterodox. It is that the family is too rigid and unimaginative to accept anything outside of a narrowly prescribed "normal" behavior.
That said, of course there are limits to my argument above. Drug use, in particular, which drives self-destructive and criminal behavior can be very difficult to deal with and parents do have a right to set boundaries. The trick is finding the balance point between compassion and respect for boundaries.
Finally, immersion in ephemeral/pathological subcultures can be valuable in terms of wrestling with our shadows - from a psychological perspective. It is true that these subcultures can be dangerous/damaging as well. Sometimes damage must be sustained on the path to wisdom/enlightenment.
Great essay. Here is a 2019 essay from Tablet with tables which makes your very point- pay particular attention to Mean In-Group Bias Score Among Whites. It's also why people on the Left are more unhappy and prone to mental health problems. One cannot cut oneself off from family and community without severe personal consequences.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-white-saviors
It's also why the early post-cat video YouTube acted like a crude Hogwarts Sorting Hat. People with a pro-government, collectivist mindset searched out social issues, people who wanted to know why 2008 happened, with often dire consequences for their communities, families and friends, searched out economics.
"A culture exists to give meaning and structure to human life and to provide a setting and template for the raising of children. If a subculture is not a place for the raising of children then it is, in some sense, transitory and incomplete and probably pathological. I can think of no exceptions."
It says something about modern culture that upon reading this passage I had the following thoughts in rapid succession:
1. Obviously.
2. Actually, that's pretty deep. Why didn't I think of that?
3. Can I think of any exceptions? An order of celebate monks/nuns maybe?
4. Wait, that excludes nearly all of modern culture. Children are implicitly unwelcome in almost all public spaces these days and even those few spaces still set aside to children do not seem oriented toward "raising" them anymore. The entire idea of "raise up a child in the way that he should go" is out of vogue lately.
5. This seems obvious and necessary, yet just saying it is probably going to draw immediate offense from somebody for centering the traditional family as the cornerstone of society, a position that was indisputable and celebrated not that long ago.
I can think of exceptions. When the family is abusive and is a place where a child is not valued nor allowed to thrive and grow. Family is definitely a high value cultural construct - when it is healthy and balanced and loving. But, not all families embody these values. In these cases, the child must learn to exist/survive/thrive outside of the tribal protection of a family - often in the very subcultures enumerated above.
When a human being is told they are not worthy of being connected to, particularly a child, that person is going to seek connection wherever they can find it. The bars to entry for these subcultures are low and this easier access enables the child (or adult) to at least feel some connection (even if low value) to other humans. Feeling connected is so endemic to our survival that any pathology present in these subcultures is easily overlooked just to stay connected. This is also true for cults and other self-subsuming belief systems.
Perhaps if families were a bit more elastic in terms of accepting a broader range of self expression, they might act as a countervailing force to some of this. Homosexuality is a perfect example of a type of excommunication that drives individuals to seek out subcultures where they can find acceptance and validation. There is a reason most of these subcultures exist and the most likely reason is not that some humans want to be bad or heterodox. It is that the family is too rigid and unimaginative to accept anything outside of a narrowly prescribed "normal" behavior.
That said, of course there are limits to my argument above. Drug use, in particular, which drives self-destructive and criminal behavior can be very difficult to deal with and parents do have a right to set boundaries. The trick is finding the balance point between compassion and respect for boundaries.
Finally, immersion in ephemeral/pathological subcultures can be valuable in terms of wrestling with our shadows - from a psychological perspective. It is true that these subcultures can be dangerous/damaging as well. Sometimes damage must be sustained on the path to wisdom/enlightenment.