It seems that to become more worldly, in regards to one's capacity to function in the world at large, is to reject the virtue of worldliness, in the sense that it represents a broad base of knowledge and wisdom.
Is it better to appease everybody and utilize their good favor to shape the world around you, or to be a staunch and unyielding advocate of your values and use what power you as an individual may have to change things?
Family has been the basic unit of economy for millenia. It seems to me that it's never been about love, but a strictly utilitarian relationship in which people's needs are met. Of course, "needs" include both physical necessities as well as psychological well-being and growth. Empathy would of course be the best, most direct route to maximizing human happiness, but it's a communistic approach that seeks to redistribute happiness for the good of the whole. Instead, hierarchies were formed. Dominance becomes the means of attaining happiness; submission, the means of avoiding pain.
Blood relations, the basis of kin, are seen as a naturally endowed source of both: from whence one came, one must respect, if only for that reason. Power is inherited and passed down, so submission is maintained as long as that power is withheld. Decency, respect, what has eventually been called "love", can only be secured once the power relationship is established and continually upheld. It's a luxury to many.
Now, the economic basis of the family unit has been deemphasized, and for many, once children are past 18--and certainly when divorce is involved--it disappears completely. Socalled "nontraditional" families do not even share the consanguinal connection that has served as the justification for the family unit.
What are we left with? Relics, obligations, social mores and norms that have been ingrained into the foundation of society for thousands of years. There may be some deep-set primal feelings from our distant evolutionary past, but they likely function the same as they do in other animals: to propagate the species, nothing more.
It is true that the familial emotional bond is likely stronger now than it has been historically. No more killing one's children, or casting them out, or disregarding their human rights, or viewing them as commodities whose numbers should be maximized. To be sure, these things still happen, but in our society that protects and honors childhood as a sacred, vulnerable period in a person's life, laws are in place to prevent such things from occurring, most of which circle around the magic, arbitrary age of 18.
At this point in the argument, I find myself in a chicken-egg dilemma. What is the order: did the fall of the economic nature of family result in norms emphasizing its emotional quality that eventually became law; or did losing the economics of family threaten to completely destabilize human relations as we know it--a crisis requiring legislation--so consequently emotion rose up to serve as a means to justify adherence to those laws?
Most importantly: are people aware of the distinction? Do they know why family is important? Is family important? What of adopted children? What of childless marriages? What of poverty-stricken families that cannot be self-sufficient? What of love? What of money? Can the two coexist?
More information is needed, but I find myself at a crossroads that is best exemplified by the previous problem: is it better to adhere to certain components of society for the sake of convenience so one can focus one's time on one's truest interests, or is it better to strive to see one's interests reflected in every aspect of one's life, even if that means fighting strong social forces?
My values regarding gender, sex, sexuality, economics, cooperation, individualism, self-expression, obligation, morality...many of them cut strong against the grain. I still don't know what family is. I don't know why I feel the way I do. Socalled "unconditional love" is a bizarre concept to me. The way we partner with each other, the way we relate to our fellow people, it's all too fucked up to salvage. When love, emotion, feeling, whatever you care to call it, is mixed with sterile objective social reality, the immiscibility of the two becomes readily obvious. Most people don't see it. Social ills are part of society; one must take the good with the bad.
But I don't buy that. I believe in utopia, conceptually speaking. More importantly, I believe that to strive to realize utopia on earth is the loftiest of human goals; to care only of attaining personal wealth is selfishness at its finest, the ultimate source of society's ills.
Utopia, being perfection, is of course unattainable. But it is an ideal. It is an ideal that will require a hugely broad base of knowledge to pursue, hence the plight of being a Renaissancian. Society has evolved to value hyperspecialization. People used to be able to support themselves and each other entirely within one family unit. Adults were expected to know how to get food from the soil, to get information from one another, to function largely autonomously if the situation warranted.
Now, one can spend decades studying a single organ of the body, become world renowned, wildly successful, extremely affluent, and yet suffer from such a crippling lack of general knowledge and wisdom that meaningful interactions with peers isn't feasible and providing for one's self outside of a capitalistic framework is impossible. And yet such behavior, such one-trackedness is rewarded handsomely with cold, hard cash. Which, contrary to wisdom, many believe can buy happiness, or at least its simplest substitute, satiety.
So what does one who wants to know everything, who needs to know everything in order to accomplish one's goals, do? And especially when those goals include restructuring society as we know it?
A recursion occurs, and the only way to stop it is a direct interference with the cycle. It can occur at many places.
1) Specialization: Attain a degree, work a narrow field, and do your best to learn what must be learned without any monetary incentive.
2) Adherence to norms: Obey the laws. Respect your parents. Start a family. Form a strong base to fall back on when the pursuit of multifacetedness ultimately fails due to economic concerns.
3) Selling out: Change your expectations. Lower them. Focus them. Diminish them. Change the very nature of happiness and the pursuit thereof as you have come to know it. Change it to what you've been taught your whole life: that while ambition and hard work can be their own reward, the money certainly doesn't hurt. Work work work to earn your leisure; suffer to be happy. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. In death, we live in our just rewards. You can't take it with you, but we sure as heck won't try to stop you from thinking otherwise!
Living in a society that has a vested interest in squashing budding utopias makes living utopian ideals impossible. But there is one last vestment of hope. It's that tricky option D, and it's "none of the above."
D) Turn on, tune in, drop out, and keep it to your damn self. Retreat. Implode. Fall off the map, become the background, avoid notice. Reject society's ills by rejecting society. Use what you need, discard the chaff. Find your personal definition of happiness, fulfill it, and die. Selfishness at its finest.
This is not an option for me. Call me an idealist, but happiness cannot be kept silent, no matter how hard one tries. The bedrock of my path to happiness is that I cannot keep it to myself, nor can I expect to find it without the input of others. Tone it down? Maybe that's what I need to do. Stop tearing myself wide open for anybody who wants to peep; learn to build trust before sharing.
Is this a slippery slope, though? Isn't this exactly what prevents happiness from spreading? That people work so hard to finally find it, and they feel they deserve it, they want to keep it to themselves, damn those others who didn't have to work for it, it's not being given up that easily, not without a price. Visions of Gollum now dance through my head.
Moderation, moderation. Virtue ethics. Must remember.
The plight of the modern Renaissancian? To be self-aware; to feel empowered to change, innovate, and improve; to find every intersection of every train of thought and knowledge...and realize that the problems of our world are infinitely numerous. The final nail in the coffin? Specialization, a Renaissancian's nightmare, may be the only path to see hir ideas come to fruition.
It's a catch-22 of a double edged sword of an ethical crisis, wrapped up in an oily cardboard box of scarce goods and a ticking biological clock. But if I can't have it any other way, I'll don my optimism and say "and yet, I wouldn't have it any other way."
Bring it on.
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