By Rev. Amari Magdalena
“It takes a village to raise a child;” a saying never
truer than its very need today. I’m
watching families around me succumb to the maladies of the 20th and
21st century’s vision of nuclear family. And, the concept is failing miserably. Every day we are exposed to media stories of
domestic violence, child abuse, and filicide.
I don’t know about you, but I’m wondering how on earth we got here?
What I see magnified here in my visit to Southern California
is clarifying my feelings. The nuclear
family is failing. I’ve previously
written about boxes and how they enclose.
Yet it's more than that. I feel our
concepts and beliefs around family are seriously skewed. Where did we get the idea that 2 adults with
any number of children would function well in an enclosed rectangular
structure? The very nature of the
squares and rectangles in most homes, large and small, is encapsulating. No one can feel a sense of freedom
therein. No matter how many glass
windows one has, the result of feeling captured is the same.
Add to the above, and both adults working for survival and
personal sense of achievement, and you begin to flesh out the problem. Who’s raising the children? Teachers, television, iPod's, computers, smart
phones, other unsupervised children, babysitters, daycare, shopping malls, and
the accumulation of an amazing cache of stuff! Children today spend much more
time away from family connection, in general, than with their tribe.
At one time in modern life, the nuclear family included more
adult occupants than two adults.
Generations often lived together, or whole families for newly immigrated
people. That, at least, gave relief to
the parents of full attention and responsibility for the children. Extended family nearby further enhanced the
picture. If grandma and grandpa lived a
block or two away, children had more access to possible nurturance. Yet even that scenario was not ideal as all
were still in boxes harboring their own dysfunction.
The inheritance then became behaviors that did not result in
functional adults. These adults
propagated and resulted in family trees with a slew of problems: alcoholism,
drug abuse, domestic violence, sex trafficking, depression, anxiety disorders,
and a plethora of yet to be diagnosed mental challenges etc. The number of
medications many young parents are on today is mind boggling. If you take time to graph out your family
tree, you may see my point. As an aside, I DO realize some of you had stellar
childhoods and may not be able to relate, yet it is important that you
understand the growing cancer of dysfunctional families among you.
I believe that if the human species is to survive, we must
return to the concept of tribes. Our
physical structures need serious re-design.
Our neighborhoods need to develop as tribal communities devoted to the
care and feeding of its inhabitants.
Huge cities need to end along with wall to wall freeways and endless
shopping malls. While technology
advances us in many positive ways, it needs to be moderated in use for toddlers,
children and young adults. Education
needs to return to human teaching and not depend on plasma, LED, and LCD
etc. We need to bring the human back
into the development of our species.
There are many Utopian thinkers in this world. It is time we culled their vision, listened
to them, quit trying to replicate unworkable Band-Aid solutions or old
unworkable moments in time like the 50’s, and envision a new world. Let’s be brave, if it is to be the home promised
is our national rhetoric.
What precipitated this tome was being immersed in a town
that has grown and more than doubled since I lived here. Everywhere there are
shopping malls. Everyone is walking
around with cell phones texting. Commutes
in traffic are normalizing at an hour or more. Smiles are few and far between
except with clerks in stores trained to be approachable and friendly, so we are
moved to purchase whether we need something or not. It’s all facade here. Beautiful though that may be with the
gleaming stores, sun and beach, it is not real.
I felt the same way almost 10 years go when I visited and was in Pacific
Palisades.
Now I’m not targeting California for those of you whose
feathers may be ruffled here. Any
populous state in the sunshine, tends to magnify what is not working. Florida was the same when I lived there.
Maybe cold and clouds mask some of it elsewhere; yet it is everywhere. Denial is a luxury we cannot afford.
It is beyond time that we move past the unworkable rhetoric
that most of our body politic is attempting to hypnotize us with. We need to
deal with the very serious problem of failed family. Mental, emotional and spiritual health is
every bit as important as physical well-being.
Everywhere we see evidence that needs addressing. To save the planet, we may want to think
about healing its occupants so that they give the proverbial damn. Whether you like Marianne Williamson’s bid
for the presidency or not, she IS talking about the essence of our
problem-Love! Let’s talk about this!
“In families you can find the source of every human
drama. It is interesting because the cell of a society, the cell of a country,
the cell of humanity – everything lies in the family.” Alejandro Gonzales
Inarritu
“The more dysfunctional, the more family members seek to
control the behavior of others.” David W. Earle
“To put the world right in order, we must first put the
nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order;
to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.” Confucius
