Theos-Talk Archives (April 2001 Message tt00021)

Hi Unknown, Maybe you left out Karma? An individual appearing in a said
'family' might respond differently to circumstances for all the members,
and not feel put upon. Marriage was the obvious reaction to disease in
early times, those that held to a monogamous practice had a better chance
of survival. If a young mind is exposed to learning of various
disciplines, even ones that are not completely the person's forte' it
exercises that part of the mind that is musical, and thus broadens the
scope of his education. Much like an athlete that will exercise muscles
that do not directly pertain to his sport. Respectfully, ak

On Wed, 04 Apr 2001 18:21:43 -0000 fork34lift@yahoo.com writes:
> What does it matter how a society is? One theme in sociology is the 
> idea that how a society is, just reflects the whims of the present 
> leaders plus the cultural influences of past leaders. -That it is 
> possible for any type of society to exist, and, the specific way a 
> society is, doesn't make a difference overall in the larger scheme 
> of 
> things. -so that it is in the individual's best interest to conform 
> 
> to the ways of whatever their society is, as it is only individuals 
> who care if they are rewarded or punished for obedience or 
> disobedience; and that whether they are rewarded or punished or 
> obedient or disobedient makes no difference overall. However, this 
> is actually somewhat incorrect. And the evidence for this 
> incorrectness is found in the existence of the social structure 
> called 'family'.
> Societal institutions are how essential societal tasks get 
> carried out in an organized fashion. Producing the next generation 
> is an essential task. But dealing with sexual activity and plus the 
> 
> birth and care of children from sexual activity, are the essential 
> societal tasks carried out by family or kinship institutions. 
> Closely related is the institution of marriage. Here in the US and 
> much of the world, we can come out and say that marriage is a 
> socially legitimate sexual union with the price that the partners 
> limit their sexual activity to only each other. i.e., a monogamous 
> relationship. Thus the offspring produced can be tied to that 
> couple, and then that group of people are considered a family.
> Even without the institution of family, nature, through pre 
> history, has provided a means for social reproduction where the next 
> 
> generation is produced, through the innate male and female physical 
> attraction, and a tribal community to raise the offspring produced 
> (unlike gorilla primates which live in nuclear family units). If a 
> society tied the burden of raising offspring solely to the couple 
> who 
> bore them, then this would discourage childbearing (to a degree) -
> (compared to a tribal society where all members helped with the 
> burdens of child rearing). With less offspring produced, this would 
> 
> free up resources to make better the lives of the existing 
> offspring, 
> as well as everybody else. So that tribes who adopted the concept 
> of 'family' would achieve an improving standard of living, which 
> would allow them to dominate tribes with the natural tribal form. 
> And so, this is perhaps, (I would suggest) why most modern societies 
> 
> have the concept of 'family' (where the burden of raising the 
> children is laid solely on the couple who bore them): and that 
> perhaps this has contributed to our higher standard of living 
> especially in developed countries. Yet, what has all this wealth 
> gotten us; when today, those who have, use hunger and deprivation to 
> 
> manipulate the rest of us? What difference has (family) made?
> Not all things make a difference, but depending on how 
> friendly, 
> nurturing and kind a society is to its members, does make a 
> difference. One reason is, is because the human infant is so 
> helpless. 
> In a very nurturing society, an infant can survive and thrive simply 
> 
> by being a member. But in a harsher and colder society, infants 
> couldn't survive just being part of that society. In order for 
> harsher colder cultures to survive beyond one generation, a more 
> nurturing but limited environment must be provided to that society's 
> 
> infants. -hence a mother or couple can be designated to care for and 
> 
> use their resources to provide a small nurturing enriched 
> environment 
> for their infant; allowing the rest of society to continue on in its 
> 
> cold negative ways. -otherwise harsh societies would cease to exist. 
> -
> hence the institution of family can be a crutch by which harsh 
> unkind 
> negative societies continue to exist.
> The institution of the family has been given the domain of 
> socialization of the children as part of the essential societal task 
> 
> it performs. When the human mind is young as in an infant or child, 
> 
> it has special learning abilities. For example, at a certain young 
> age, a human easily learns languages; whereas when older, an adult 
> has great difficulty learning a new language. It is well agreed 
> among sociologists that the early socialization of humans during 
> young childhood, has a marked effect in determining who they will be 
> 
> and how they will act (as out of their culture) later in life. In 
> my 
> family when I was growing up, I went through this process where my 
> brain had a special ability to learn and be formed (programmed) that 
> 
> as an adult I no longer have. Of course the innate biological 
> ability to learn, by itself, is insufficient to cause socialization: 
> 
> also present must be interactions with society. 
> The trouble is, with children, a special artificial world is 
> created around them (the whole school curriculum, parental 
> activities 
> geared to children), while the adult world is hidden away from them. 
> -
> So that they become socialized to the artificial world and not to 
> the 
> harsher adult world because it is hidden away. My parents would 
> have 
> chores for me to do or encourage me to do my school work or send me 
> to camp or to music lessons (which I never was any good at). So 
> that as I was being socialized to this artificial world contrived 
> for 
> children, the harsher world of adults remained hidden away and I was 
> 
> not socialized to it. Of course my parents were just trying to give 
> 
> me a happy childhood, but because of it, I missed out on being 
> socialized to the nasty ways of adult society. -thus the special 
> ability my young brain had to learn culture and be programmed, 
> passed 
> without me learning the ropes of adult culture.
> What marriage and family meant to me as a child, although I 
> didn't realize it at the time, was that I exist in a society with a 
> fairly high standard of living, but that wasn't necessarily very 
> warm 
> or nurturing but could instead be cold and harsh, that wasn't going 
> to allow me a leg up on it by letting my childhood mind have a crack 
> 
> at it. And also that I am still alive at all, because without my 
> family, I probably wouldn't be one of the skillful few who survived 
> socialization into a harsh society as it was self destructing. (In 
> order to cause negative and harsh societies to expire naturally 
> while 
> maintaining the nurturing ones: disband the family. -something that 
> seems to be happening already as a response to the new pressures of 
> specialization and globalization. I suppose that wouldn't be the 
> end 
> of it as some cloning program would be attempted.) 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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