Addendum to Self Importance as a Delusion

Addendum to Self Importance as a Delusion

Some have understandably questioned my attack on ‘family values’ as practiced today by many families. The question raised in various ways relates to “why should strong family relationships be dissed?” 

There is nothing inherent in my remarks which suggest strong family relationships be dissed or be shunned at all. Since ‘family values’ was not the subject matter, but self importance the topic in question, I did not elaborate much on family values. I will here, since the questions raised by others are not trivial. 

Parenting is one of the most challenging, demanding, and risky aspects of life. Every child is different,  every parent is different, and each environment is different. The whole process is ripe with uncontrollable variables. To be a parent comes with unquestionable responsibilities. Some are up to these responsibilities and others are not. Some children are easy to raise, others are not. Like with teaching, there is no single best way to raise children. Many parents realize this, that is to say they accept that different approaches often need to be taken with one child as opposed to another. Somehow a parent needs to find a way to successfully merge their own personality with that of a particular child in such a way the parenting becomes successful—-and successful meaning that strong positive bonding occurs between child and parent, and the strong bonds remain throughout life.  

To suggest that parenting is not a life long responsibility in no way implies that any strong bonds created between child and a parent need ever be broken. Naturally, given the nature of parenting, sometimes no such strong bonds will develop for various reasons. That risk is always there. Parenting is a responsibility that exists within the framework of the society in which the parenting occurs. But it also needs to be remembered that the welfare of society always trumps individual rights. That is why we cannot steal, murder, drive too fast, and so on. We may want to drive real fast, but that right is overridden by societal needs, in this case the welfare of others. That is why, when the planet suffers from human overpopulation the right of parents to have no limitation on reproduction is overridden by the welfare of the whole earth society. 

In the same vein, it is not in the best interests of any society to allow too much of it’s wealth be held by a small percentage of genetic cabals. Inheriting wealth is an injustice committed to the general society. The American way is for each person, as an adult, to earn their own ‘pot of gold’. That material wealth is invariably a pot of gold is by no means even a given truth. When a child is not yet grown, parents have the primary responsibility for raising the child successfully. Sometimes they will succeed and sometimes they will not. Once adulthood is achieved the primary responsibility for governing that adult is society in general. Some adults need no help and are very successful, to varying degrees, and that is good for the society. Other adults, for varied reasons, need assistance or punishment, or rewards, and that is the responsibility of everyone in society. This is where ethics kicks in big time. The most fortunate members of a society have an ethical responsibility, as adults, to help the less fortunate. That is why we need graduated income taxes, and steep inheritance taxes. There is nothing wrong with expecting young adults to earn their own ‘pot of gold’. And clearly it is not necessary for every young adult to earn a ‘pot of gold’ for them to achieve contentment. Some of the most contented people are those who are satisfied with little, and some of the most discontented people are those for whom enough is never enough.

Parenting, by definition, is raising a child to adulthood properly. When a child becomes an adult, the responsibility for ‘parenting’ that adult becomes the responsibility of everyone in society. If there are pressing medical needs, society should be there for any adult, not expect parents to foot the bill. If an adult needs career opportunities, that is the responsibility of the society in general.  And so it goes, as adults the Golden Rule is the basis for ethics.

None of the above in any way alters the bonding between offspring and parents. What the above does imply is, that if the bonding between parent and offspring is dependent on inheriting money or financial help all their lives, then the existence of such a bond is unhealthy for both parent and offspring. If we are fortunate enough to acquire a good amount of wealth on our own in life, we are really obligated to return this wealth to the society from which we extracted it, so that others upon reaching adulthood have the same chance to do the same (acquiring wealth) themselves. When 2-5% of citizens own 90% of the wealth in our country, this is disastrous, and has always been in history.  There are no exceptions. Wealthy nations have always imploded from foreign empires too expensive to maintain, or too much wealth accumulating in the hands of too few domestically, and usually both.

For our society to continue to flourish, we have to find the willpower to curtail the cost of foreign ‘empires’, and stop genetic cabals from amassing too much of our wealth. We did just that back in the days of Teddy Roosevelt, when we enacted steep graduated inheritance laws and steep graduated income taxes. Wealthy people didn’t disappear, just the genetic cabals busted up to more manageable size, and what followed was one of the most robust economic periods in our history, a period where every economic bracket did well, and individuals on their own, could amass their own pot of gold. 

To put it bluntly, if the only reason an offspring maintains a close relationship with a parent is to acquire the parent’s wealth on the parent’s death——well, we all know the relationship is a fraud. 

This is not a healthy relationship, and it is not a rewarding relationship. If society is doing it’s ethical job, then no parent has to worry that if one of their offspring has needs as an adult, the financial burden will fall on the parents of the offspring. Of course it shouldn’t, as adults in a societal setting are ethically obligated to provide justice for all, mercy for all, and responsibility for all—irregardless of who the parents are. That is the Golden Rule, that is reasoned out ethics, and that is the only way to achieve a just and protective society for all. It really has nothing to do with how strong the parental-offspring bonds are. In other words, family values, employed properly are perfectly valid, while the umbrella of protection afforded all citizens is by collective ethics, each toward others, which creates the desired atmosphere for society in general, and the rewards are peace and prosperity. Family values, as being too oft employed by too many, create conflict, and economic disparity to the extreme. Not good, not ethical, and not going to last much longer. 

Shifting welfare responsibility from parents to society as a whole after parenting (offspring reaching adult status) carries with it substantial benefits:

It eliminates the kind of family carnage which is often created when offspring battle over inheritance matters. More siblings end up hostile to each other over inheritance matters than most any other reason. Dependency on parents past the formative years often stifles the kind of effort and creativity needed for a particular person to reach their own potential. Parental independence forces every young adult to plan their life more carefully when they realize they are on their own with no parental bail-out waiting in the wings. Some offspring, for varied reasons, many reasons which have nothing to do with parental failure, will end up among the less fortunate in society. They then become a societal problem, not a parental responsibility. When the Golden Rule is the basis of ethics, in any society, all adults and children are given the best and most appropriate help. There would be an end to lousy schools for the poor, poor health care for the poor, mentally disturbed persons wandering around the public with their mental demons, unreasonable minimum wages which are not adjusted each year as the cost of living goes up or down, just like for the elderly on social security, and parents would no longer be faced with the problem of dead beat offspring still being their personal burden. The bonds between parent and offspring, if strong, have no reason to end. But adult welfare, of any ilk, is the collective responsibility of the entire society. And most importantly, the amount of wealth squirreled away into genetic cabals would be limited. As T.O. would say, “Fair is fair”. Each young adult needs to build their own success on as level a playing field as possible, with sensible safety nets for those struggling, fair punishments for transgressions against society, and proper assistance for those with handicaps of most any sort. 

In the long term analysis, there is no choice. No society can long afford to let wealth accumulate in genetic cabals. Today we have managed to create a situation in which it is increasingly easier for the already wealthy to become more wealthy, and since the wealth they accumulate has to come from somewhere it ends up coming from the middle class, which drives more of the middle class into poverty. The additional wealth for the already wealthy can’t come from the poor, they have nothing left to give. Today 47% of Americans pay no taxes. While some may be wealthy smart alecks, almost all are just too poor to be taxed. Trickle down hasn’t worked since it’s conception 50 years ago. Given the availability of modern communication devices, if these 40+% erupt in violence, the scene will not be pretty, especially in a society saturated with guns.  In these kind of societal uprisings, throughout history, those with much to protect will lose to those with nothing to lose. We need to reconstruct a society in which parents do the best they can, and then society does the best it can to ensure the maximum number of our citizens achieve enough of their potential to achieve reasonable success and contentment. Circling the wagons around family or any other kind of cabals, is not going to protect either the ones intended to protect, our society at large, humankind at large, or planetary life as we have known it on earth for so long. We are the first species with enough intelligence to prevent an evolutionary harsh evolutionary correction. But we cannot do it with the illusion that ourselves or our own cabals are important and special. Only when the Golden Rule is adopted universally as our ethical mantra, can humans collectively be important and make a difference for the near future. That is just the way it is. 

Let’s angle it this way. Of course we value our personal achievements and successes, such as financial security, good health, athletic achievements, scholastic achievements, social achievements, and of course, strong relations with offspring till death. These things help us achieve contentment in life. However, like every other person, we are all unimportant to the grand scheme of evolution. Anything that we don’t do, which will contribute to the evolutionary process, someone else will. That is the way the evolutionary process was designed. What the near term future holds for our offspring in any society depends on the extent to which everyone, as adults, follows the Golden Rule. If we do not, collectively, assume responsibility for everyone else in our society, society will collapse and our offspring will pay the price. We can pretend ourselves or our offspring or any other self serving cabal is more important, but this is an illusion regarding the big picture.  We are now a global community in every sense of the word. It is how everyone in the world relates to everyone else in the world, and what kind of efforts and responsibility we take collectively to ensure everyone has the best chance to reach their potential, which determine the future for all offspring. If we fail to progress along these lines, then it doesn’t make any difference how special we make our offspring or how much money we pass on to our offspring, for when the shit hits the fan, everyone pays. So if we want to really pass on a future for our offspring we better engage the Golden Rule across the board, to everyone in our society, and our society today is the entire human population. Old fashion imperialism is now inoperative—Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, and so on illustrate the limitations of military power. Without Golden Rule power, Mother Nature will surely, as she has in the past, generate another evolutionary correction, and these kind of catastrophic setbacks can last for hundreds of thousand of years, even millions of years. That is just the way it is, and always has been. Real evolutionary progress does not operate on human time.