Theos-Talk Archives (March 2001 Message tt00140)

As part of an assignment, I was to analyze a number of songs.

All these songs concern themselves with intimate love 
relationships; and relate that with the traditional rules/norms of 
society that base marriage and family on sexual exclusivity between 
partners. All reject these traditional rules/norms over 
sexual/intimate behavior. 

The subject of this loosely constructed message, is to share my 
recent 
realization that a major consequence of the rules we abide by today 
concerning sexual exclusivity in marriage, is to uphold the system of 
property ownership: without which there could be no rich or poor.

An essential task every society must do, is raise the next 
generation. Institutions often form around fulfilling one of 
society's basic needs. However, even before organized society 
existed, nature had developed a way to continue the species and 
ensure the next generation. Note that the act by a caveperson to 
have and care for offspring did nothing to benefit his/her individual 
survival; but did everything to benefit the future survival of the 
species. Thus nature (or God) caused there to be a physical (bodily) 
attraction between male and female, so that individuals would do what 
otherwise didn't benefit them, -that otherwise was an expense in 
effort and resources. So that the essential societal need of 
producing the next generation already has a mechanism for being 
fulfilled, even without the institutions of marriage and family. -So 
that the 3rd, modern meaning of marriage (that is, for personal 
fulfilment of the body and mind provided by nature/God) is not really 
new, but is instead, ancient and existed prior to recorded history. 
As civilization developed more structure and organization, perhaps 
the institutions of family and marriage then took over the task of 
supplying society's need to produce the next generation. -As ways 
were found to slow the birth rate as run by nature, more resources 
were left for the adults; hence arranged marriages for the purpose of 
enhancing and preserving family property were the traditional way, 
and represent a more traditional meaning of marriage -that of 
pleasing society.
Since the authors of these songs are African Americans we must 
realize they've had their culture -a natural culture, that of a 
tribal community (reference 'survivor'), where the task of 
reproducing the next generation came from the natural way developed 
over pre history -that of bodily/physical attraction between the 
sexes; and where the burden of offspring was born by not only the 
couple bearing the children, but by the whole tribal community -
humans of prehistory developed as tribal communities, not as nuclear 
families, like gorilla primates. -Their tribal culture torn from them 
and western culture imposed on them as a result of their forcible 
removal to the US. As slaves, the institution of family and 
marriage, they were not allowed. So that for an extended period, all 
they had was the natural way. And then after being freed, having to 
endure the migration of their able bodied men to the North for 
industrial work, away from their women and children, thus disrupted 
families and extended families.
Instead of being ethnocentric and thinking that one way is 
better than another because it is our way and is what we're used to: 
Instead let us view the different ways objectively. In so doing we 
can gain insight into our own ways. Looking at the task of producing 
the future generation: since all of society is benefitted by its 
successful completion, its reasonable to expect all of society to 
bear the expense and burden of this task. However, the institution 
of family, ties completely, the burden/responsibility for offspring a 
couple bears, to that couple, and frees the rest of society from any 
responsibility whatever. And this burden becomes especially intense 
when the father steps out and leaves only the mother to bear the 
whole burden.
This doesn't represent parts of society cooperating and working 
together to accomplish a common important social task. Thus the 
institution of family is not a part of the structural-functionalist 
theory, at least not concerning the important (essential) social task 
of producing the next generation. Females have and raise kids for 
the benefit of society having a next generation, but the other parts 
of society give nothing in return for this. The act to divide the 
societal whole into parts, with each part assigned a task, doesn't 
represent cooperation between the parts, but represents a shoving the 
burden onto one group (which is exploitation); -when all parts should 
be helping with an important task, in order to be in cooperation. 
This represents a basic flaw in the structural-functionalist theory.
It is perhaps the foreignness of our culture's concept of focusing 
responsibility for children onto the nuclear family unit, as opposed 
to extended family, that these African American song writers are 
expressing and rebelling against. This Western way isn't even 
logical. 

Looking at the task of producing/rearing the future generation: 
those who must do this task are prevented from attending to the power 
struggles of the present generation. Because it is the women who 
grow an embryo to a fetus and bear the children and are semi disabled 
in being pregnant; because women have the equipment for feeding the 
children; and have a mothering instinct: it is women who do more of 
the task of producing the future generation than men. Over history, 
this has left men free to dominate their present generation (while 
the women are busy taking care of the kids). With men making the 
rules, they became the order givers and women the order takers. From 
this evolves a situation where one group (the men) enriches their 
life by shoving the burdens of life onto another group (the women). 
But it doesn't stop there. Half the population (the men) are still 
fair game to be put to work for one's enrichment. The situation 
where women are subordinate, just gave ambitious men a taste of what 
it was like to have someone do for them and how good that felt. They 
proceeded to subordinate as many as they could for their enrichment. 
But in order to be dominant over others in more than just a temporary 
way, the concept of property ownership must be established whereby 
one owns things-and-people for use by themselves, but that others 
aren't allowed to use. Without the concept of ownership; if people 
need something, they just take it and consume it, so that one is 
unable to store up great piles of wealth for themselves which may be 
use to control many others. The rules promoting sexual exclusivity 
allow for a nuclear family unit to be defined. With the burden of 
raising a specific child relegated to a specific nuclear family: a 
child would be prevented from expecting help from the society at 
large. With Children (the next generation) not being allowed to take 
what they needed from those who had, concepts of ownership could be 
enacted. Otherwise if children took what they needed from everyone 
and from those who had, then this would defeat the ability to be 
dominant or to amass great piles of wealth because the concept of 
ownership would be greatly violated. -(The expense of raising 
children is real. Just look how it holds single mothers down.) And 
the dominant cannot extract from children like they extract from the 
rest of us. A society cannot say to an infant "pull your own 
weight". A religion cannot say to an infant "if you don't work, you 
don't eat". If they did, they would in one generation, vanish, 
because they would have killed all their children and thus their next 
generation. So who decided it is the nuclear family who is solely 
responsible? It did not come from the natural method, as there in a 
tribal community, the whole tribe shared the burden. It is true that 
when women have kids, it places a burden on the whole society that 
that society may not wish to have placed upon it. But note that if 
that burden isn't placed upon it, that society won't survive -it is 
an essential to society. So, the norms of sexual exclusivity from 
which comes the institution of marriage; from which comes the 
institution of family: serve the purpose to allow the dominant few to 
maintain their place of dominance for more than just one generation. 
Note that these structures of property and norms in marriage are 
constructs of a symbolic interactionist type because they rely on 
meanings in our minds to make the whole thing work. The songs by 
these African Americans mostly do not share an adherence with these 
ways of mind. By not recognizing sexual exclusivity, they prevent 
themselves from being defined into nuclear families, but instead, 
pull together as extended families. As extended families, they are 
less subject to the specialization that has eroded much of modern 
society in the pursuit of human greed.


I was in disagreement with most of my group on this issue. My group 
mostly felt families who can't support themselves are not entitled to 
support (by others), but are instead entitled to only a job, or a 
limited time of support. My feelings centered around why are 
families put in the position of needing support in the first place, 
seeing that every family needs support by others because no family 
supports itself alone but only as part of a group and a system. (thus 
entitling needy families to a job). 
I recalled that being part of a reward system had an effect on this -
that having families experience situations of being unable to support 
themselves was useful in making them hungry: -that hunger being 
useful in getting them to accept a meager place in the reward 
system; -as the reward system always needs those who will generate 
the economic reward for others and thus won't have much left over for 
themselves. So that our social system doesn't allow us to say 'lets 
help needy people', because that acts contrary to the workings of our 
reward system. To not help needy families is destructive to their 
lives, thus our social system requires we be destructive to others. 
I see destructiveness as an evil and a folly, so my feelings are of 
rejection of it and rejection of systems to the degree that they 
require it. So yes, lets help people, especially those who need it; 
is what I feel, in opposition to an organized societal reward system.

Note that the sexual exclusivity interpretation of the Bible we have 
in the US today, has functioned to serve mammon (money), and has 
furthered the purposes of mammon at the expense of being able to help 
our neighbor especially a needy neighbor. We see the directives of 
love, a central tenant of the Bible and God, being trampled upon by 
the use of sexual exclusivity in an economic context as to who to 
stick the burden of children, which is aberrant even from the natural 
way of tribal care. The Bible says: you cannot serve both God and 
mammon. So, I suggest: cast one out.





In the writing below, I will show how the pursuit of human greed 
has caused much of our problems we face today.


In considering what is the problem concerning the issue of 
poverty, it makes a difference from who's perspective one is 
looking. To the poor person, the problem is: not having enough for 
basic survival needs. To the government, the ruling class, or the 
larger society; the problems with poverty may be quite different. To 
be blunt, poverty serves a purpose and has a function. One 
possibility of dividing up the economic goods we produce, is to 
divide them equally. However, in order to generate big rewards which 
are useful to motivate the masses to chase after them by doing the 
ruling class's bidding: one group must accept less than the equal 
share so another group can be enriched and receive a big reward. 
Those who must accept less, (that is the reward given for menial 
labor), are understandably displeased. But to get them to accept the 
menial reward in spite of this; a more dire alternative is shown 
them -that of abject poverty. Poverty serves the purpose of 
motivating those designated to receive the menial reward, to accept 
this their place, in spite of its lack of luster. So for the ruling 
class, the problem with poverty in the US today is that there isn't 
enough of it; as our current reward system depends on a certain 
amount of it to help it run. Hence poverty persists in the US, more 
than in other industrialized countries like Canada and Western Europe 
even though these countries are less wealthy than the US. 
When a person is unable to work, perhaps because they are 
disabled, sometimes a society will pay for their living expenses, 
although not every society may do this. And if a person is mentally 
unable to take care of their own needs, our society commits them to 
institutions which provide that care. And all expenses are paid by 
the state, where everyone who is able is taxed and they help pay for 
the benefit of someone else. (Just like the rich benefit from the 
labors of the rest of us.) All of us when we were young went through 
a period when we were infants. Infants are people. And these people 
are unable to work. Note that if a society did not have some 
mechanism whereby these infant people received the labor of others, 
then that society would cease to exist in one generation. In our 
society, the organized effort we extend to disabled people is not 
present for the infant people, and infant people are treated as a 
special case where the sole expense of caring for them is placed on 
the parents of infant persons. 
And if the male partner steps out, our societal norms then place the 
burden for the care of these infant people solely on the mother, 
freeing the rest of society from any responsibility whatever. This 
comes very close to a society refusing to help, at all, these infant 
people who can neither work nor survive without being spoon fed: 
which if were to occur, would result in the inhalation of this 
society in one generation. This lack of help, and lack of LOVE, 
shows an extensive erosion in this society's commitment to the 
Biblical directive, Jesus' directive, to LOVE.




The most traditional meaning of marriage is that it is an 
institution from God, and maintained by God. -that God has authority 
over all family matters, as administered by church officials; and 
that the wants and needs of the individual person are secondary to 
what God (as represented by church officials) wants.
The next traditional meaning of marriage is that it is an 
institution with norms and expectations to the social group -to 
society. Authority is rooted in one's kin group and overall 
community. Here the emphasis is on upholding a respectable image in 
society by conforming to the norms of one's specific community.
The most recent meaning of marriage is that its purpose is for 
personal fulfilment -that is, doing what feels good to one. 
Authority over the meaning of one's marriage resides in oneself and 
what one wants.
These all exist in our society today -a pluralist array of 
structures.
I would discuss that the institutional goal of family/marriage 
is procreation. -That procreation of humans is an essential to 
society -otherwise the society and its traditions would end in one 
generation. Whereas, sex isn't an absolute essential for the 
individual human as they don't die without it. In today's world 
where children have gone from being an asset (in farm labor) to being 
an expense: if a society is to survive, there must be some 
inducement, some reason to get a couple to have and raise kids, 
because procreation fulfills a deep need of society.
Some have taken a historical perspective, -looking at how the 
modern family doesn't fill the functions that families of old, or 
traditional families, did.

In earlier days in history, in traditional societies, needs were 
met by local and extended family people. Back then, people were born 
in the home, died in the home, cared for as children by extended 
family in the home. Now the supplier of all these functions have 
been replaced by bureaucratic organizations. 
Functions the family traditionally filled:
economic -today, the factory and office fills this function.
education -today, the school system and the day care facility fills 
this function. 
prestige and status -the family name doesn't mean that much today.
protection -police, firemen, hospitals, and other social programs 
fill this function today.
religion -professional clergy fill this function today.
recreation -TV, movies, and sports leagues today fill this function.
affection and procreation -today's family still fills this function, 
but competition from outside 'agencies' are close by: and if a 
government gets a cloning program into gear, then this function also 
may be lost. However, I would think most governments would prefer to 
continue receiving the free labor in this area they get from 
the 'birds and bees'.
In today's modern scene, we have the appearance of this 3rd 
meaning of marriage (that is, for personal fulfilment). In the past 
the purpose of marriage didn't include this meaning and was for the 
two previous traditional meanings. Some suggest that this newer 
meaning of marriage is a breakdown of morals and that it has been the 
cause of the disintegration of the family functions previously 
listed; and that we should go back to the traditional meanings of 
marriage as a way to restore the family to its traditional place and 
bring back the good life of old (the good old days), eliminating all 
the modern ills.
However, just because 2 events are correlate together, doesn't mean 
one caused the other -(that event 'A' caused event 'B' (often because 
event 'B' caused event'A', or neither caused each other)). Consider 
that it is because of the changing nature of work over this same 
period, from farm based to dual earner with requirement to put the 
children through college so they can find a decent job; which has 
changed the value of children from being an asset to being a large 
expense: which has brought about the changes in the meaning of 
marriage we see today. -Seeing that the unmistakable function of 
family and marriage is procreation of the next generation.

Before Moses: before Noah: before tradition: before recorded 
history: people existed. There had to be something to get people to 
procreate and keep the human line going -to get individuals to act 
for the good of the (future) community (in having / raising 
offspring) even before much of a community organization even 
existed. Some traditions have announced that sex is for procreation 
only and not for fun. However, the reason sex is fun is solely for 
the purpose of procreation. The reason animal genetics and biology 
have caused sex to be fun in individuals, was so that individuals 
before organized society existed, would act in the benefit not of the 
individual but in the benefit of the species (the whole group, as in 
its whole future); by procreating.
Because the procreation of a new generation is a benefit to all of 
society -in fact it is an absolute essential because all societies 
would be completely (but non-violently) anhialated within one 
generation without their women procreating. 
I submit that the cause of much of the specialization, 
fragmentation and disintegration of family function of our modern 
world today, is caused by human greed -by an economic system which 
desires to subject one group to the economic service of another.
When bureaucratic organizations can position themselves to replace 
what the family used to supply, they then have people over a barrel 
and can extract economic subservience in exchange for their services, 
according to how much they charge. And when they have the monopoly 
position of being the only source of what they provide, then they 
charge plenty.
Because the human animal, even the U.S. human animal, depends on 
producing certain essentials (that is, food, shelter, and clothing); 
the human animal can be coerced into all manner of economic servitude 
in exchange for these essentials. The story of giving a man a fish 
vs. giving him a fishing pole is so often used in speaking in 
capitalistic economic situations. It applies here as well. The way of 
producing ones survival reward by doing what a reward giver tells one 
to do in a job, is like giving a man a fish, because the person here 
never gets any closer to the actions which actually/directly supply 
ones survival reward. The other way of producing ones survival 
reward -which is doing the actual actions which directly supply one's 
survival reward, is the fishing pole in this story. But in order that 
many
people may remain under the control of, and dependent on, a 
privileged few; this way is made unavailable to most of us.

Concerning the economic function:
In the past, in traditional societies, families were 
economically self sufficient, and they followed their productions 
from beginning to end. A large part of work was agricultural plus 
there were from 20 to 30 major craft trades. Work was hard, but 
people had complete control over their day, and rarely saw a 
bureaucratic official.
In today's modern economy however, there are 20,000 different 
jobs (notice the specialization), and few produce their own food, 
houses or other things they consume, and everybody is very dependent
(interdependent) on each other. 
In traditional societies, people/families were economically self 
sufficient. Since the way of life of directly obtaining one's 
survival has been eliminated (traditional ways are no longer 
available), that leaves only the indirect way of doing what 
management wants as a way to produce one's survival. Because today's 
methods are much more efficient, this means there is more to go 
around; yet most of that extra is used to supply the rewards to the 
fat cats, leaving those selected to generate the reward of the reward 
system, little better off than they would be under a traditional 
society; and now they have lost control over the work they do.
One reason labor has been divided into component tasks and each 
person given a task, is because it is more efficient, as in the 
assembly line and mass production whereby large quantities of goods 
can be efficiently manufactured. 
Another reason the division of labor (ie specialization) has 
progressed to the furthest degree possible, I feel, is because it 
supports a means to control workers. The more one specializes in what 
they produce, the less useful that product is to anyone but the owner 
that puts all the parts together into a useful marketable product. 
Because of this and because each component part is so dependent (not 
self sufficient), the owner can dictate how hard people work and how 
they live their lives. 
Even entire countries can befall this set-up. When a third 
world country grows exclusively coffee to export, then they lack the 
established means to directly generate other needed items, and are 
thus dependent on others (multinational corporations) to provide 
these things, -at the multinational's price. -They are forced to 
accept the multinational's price paid for their specialized 
production which they use to buy other items, because all other 
traditional less specialized productions have been eliminated -
replaced by this dependent specialized way. 
When a car is put together from component parts coming from all 
different countries, then no country in itself has a product they can 
sell to the public, then they are all at the mercy of the 
multinational corporation in determining how hard they should work 
and how much they should be paid. 


Concerning the education function:

To describe education it helps to view it from an historical 
perspective. When people were self sufficient economically back in 
the traditional society of our past, there was little or no 
education. People started helping with chores or went into 
apprenticeship at an early age and soon learned the complete 
knowledge of their trade. But as people specialized more and more in 
their work, education became more prominent. For most of history, 
education was thought to be for self betterment, but only after WWII 
was it considered essential for career advancement. In the recent 
past, a high school diploma was enough to get a decent job, but now 
that requires a bachelors degree, and even that is often not enough. 
As there became a division of labor, and loss of self sufficiency, 
and as technology has increased, so has education and the need for 
education. If you think about it, education is an incomplete task. 
The work students do in school is never used in any production but 
only builds up a component part of what the student will use in their 
job. In recent times then, we educate ourselves for the benefit of 
our future employer. Aside from the basics, little of the stuff we 
learn is useful to us individually outside of the industrial, job, 
setting.
Intelligence then is one of those fragments of the division of 
labor that when put together with all the other components, creates 
products in today's free enterprise system. And discovering and 
developing intelligence, is the business of schools and education. 
But intelligence is itself the problem, because by itself it is 
worthless until it is combined with other component parts. It is 
today's definition of what education is using (only) intelligence, 
that is the problem. In the past, a person's educational achievement 
wasn't even formal but it was complete. It included not only 
abstract concepts of intelligence but also putting those concepts 
into practice in the physical world. There was a balance between the 
concrete real world and the abstract. 
So that today, even if you do well in school and build up a lot 
of the abstract thing called intelligence: if you don't get connected 
with the other parts of the division of labor owned by the employer, 
your intelligence is unusable. This is convenient for the capitalist 
reward system. If they decide not to use you, then they have wasted 
your time. You could have spent that time developing something to go 
into business for yourself, but instead you have nothing usable, so 
you don't give the system any trouble with any competition in the 
market place. Thus your achievement remains low and perpetuates the 
inequality and starvation that is supposed to make you hungry enough 
to accept the menial reward.

One can see that the functions filled traditionally by extended 
family have been replaced by bureaucratic organizations, all to 
uphold the power and place and economic servitude towards the rich; 
and that unless that is changed, extended family functions aren't 
coming back. -That the problem is far deeper than a claimed moral 
weakening in modern times; which itself is just a reaction to the 
intense specialization driven by human greed: -the desire to usurp 
the labor of others through subjecting them to economic subservience.