If what what sociologist Brigitte Berger calls the “family’s great educational mission.” Education is the daily drip, drip, drip of details that engender in young children the aspirations and the tools to make a better life for themselves in their pursuit of happiness" - as articulated by Suzanne Fields is true,  then we need a more cohesive agenda to improve our priorities in our nation.

We tend to look at life in little bits and pieces instead of a conceptual whole, and in doing so we miss the small opportunities to instill the important details we so obsess about. There are immediate needs, yes, but concentrating on the call of the urgent sometimes is a self-perpetuating cycle of urgency. Strengthening the state of marriage, giving full support to alternatives like homeschooling, these are building blocks that while seeming to be just part of society, actually serves to vitalize the whole of society. Whatever helps the family unit to be better able to provide those drips of social material to the children they are raising is elevating the calibre of our society in its entirety.

The way this works is like this:

The institution of marriage, kept to its traditional role of insuring a stable home for children, allows for more fruitful time spent in cultivating the Civitas in the larger community. It is the basic building block of the society in the formation of the coming generation of leaders and citizens. Marriages which are helped to stay intact through many types of social support will not suffer as many disruptions in the very important job of passing on not only the instruction in social contract, but emotional intelligence needed to help society function properly. If the teens who perpetrated Columbine had a home where the prestige of the parents pivoted more upon  how involved they were as a family rather than how much they accomplished as individuals ( or other like interests), and if the schools those boys attended had nurtured more sense of community and allowed for less competitive bullying, along with an open atmosphere in all parts of the community to build more of the spiritual currency of that which stirs the best in people.... how different history may have been?

If we truly believe that we can determine outcomes in society, then it is our business to look at what tools actually create greater happiness, generally, for humankind. I don't think family life of a dependable and stable type can be eliminated from the list. Yet, many of our social agendas encourage just that. Parents are discouraged from being involved in any meaningful way in their children's education...relegated to cheerleaders and troubleshooters for teachers who themeselves, are not held to any consistant form of standard. Welfare as disincentive to apply real effort in becoming productive. Penalizing the religious efforts in a community, while inflating the already ineffective and bungling goverment agencies in meeting the needs in both crisis and chronic situations. Instead of family helping family...it is the great impersonal Big Brother who is expected to come through. The trouble with such types of "Big Brothers" is that they are robotic institutional entities, and unable to perform something they are not properly programmed for.... but the ones who could best help, not only in the immediate material need but by example of a society's citizens, are left scattered and undermined.

And they still work better than government allocated agencies, for all that.

Because against all odds the family is meant to work. And it is surviving , no thanks to social engineers who have stripped it of its official relevance, hobbled it with burdensome laws and interfering agencies, taxed it to crippling proportions and denied it many of its best opportunities to shine.

The family isn't perfect, not in abstract or in individual reality, but it is vitally important that it be as good as it can be. And that is where we ought to put much of our social and legislative effort: strengthen and support the institution of the family unit.

The latest of the school killings is forefront in the news and topic of many conversations. Every one seems pretty confused about not just the senselessness of the violence and its brutality, but the difficulty of putting it into a perspective of society. What causes it, how to prevent more of it from happening, even school drills to minimize victimization.

Think about that last one for a moment: school drills in the event of a homicidal intruder. I remember drills in the event of nuclear attack, but now the enemy can appear from within as much as without. The sense of safety and an orderly society is in meltdown. We are long past bandaid measures, now, I think. So talk of the loss prayer in schools and abortion effects, these are simply outcomes... outcomes of something else that is gone very wrong in a big way in our entire society.

People like to reduce it to politics. Right..Left... But I think we are seeing, more often, that the problems are more fundamental and mere political solutions are not going to be enough for the pervasive problems. As fractional a percentage as these events are, they are striking deeply into the way people live, and I think some of the reason for that is the breakdown in trust that our society is able to get things right.

Get what things right?... and what fundamentally is going so wrong? As with the talk of school prayer, etc, lots of times we see it as just a generic loss of faith, of the sense of God, and at its deepest roots I suppose that is the truest way of expressing it, but not too helpful in understanding what has gone so wrong and what to do about it. Because, rationally, we can't just make people start to believe in God and respect His order for the universe. Which is why looking at matters piecemeal, such as attributing the proliferation of abortion to the lack of respect for life isn't really of much usefulness. It could be just as much the other way around in cause and effect: maybe it is the loss of respect for and understanding of life which has led to the horrendous abortion situation.

Unfortunately I think some of the tragic events such as the recent murder of those little girls in the Amish school are the reaping of the harvest long due in the widespread beliefs of relativistic morality that we have cultivated in this country. (Rather, Western society- Europe seems to lag a bit exhibiting the more dramatic examples of violence and societal breakdown-although they eventually do).  That has created a tolerance for, no, let me correct that... a veritable protection of and perverse adulation of all sorts of moral evils.

I realize the discussion on moral relativity is an old one, and merits a yawn, but that is why I think it is the more dangerous: we have become so inured to it, and so caught up with the various battlegrounds on specific issues that it is as though we were mired in quicksand of abysmal moral decay. Fighting the issues allows our greater society to slide ever more easily and ignored, while Left and Right duke it out on their preferred platforms. That isn't criticized for itself- it just isn't  the answer for what is happening  in the fabric of society.  We need to work in our system to  use the laws and the institutions to keep the civil order and peace, as much as possible, but laws don't mandate morality... it is rather the opposite. And that is where our work is to be done.

I think Americans in their love for and sense of individuality forget the power of the group, of peers in moderating behavior. I don't mean we don't know about it, or that there isn't common knowledge about this, but we tend to dismiss it. And close our eyes to the damage that the group does in allowing for so much emulation of evil in the guise of "toleration"... and as many point out- the erosion of the very real meaning of tolerance when in its name the most cruel persecution takes place to maintain the status quo of people quite comfortable with their immorality. Depending on your presumptions, you might think this to be a veiled diatribe against a specific type of wrong -it's not. That would be the "issues oriented" thinking casting its pall. This is about becoming answerable to each other in community- and Christians should take the front- instead of shamefully lagging behind their "minimums" and their excuses for "let the devil take the hindmost" attitudes. If we think our society needs more of God, and it does, then we should be the moderating force by the way we live and interact with each other and those in our communities. We have become so insulated by our modern society that we really believe we can still answer: Am I my brothers keeper? to the scream of the news events. We think we can "tsk tsk" and be done with it- when it is a greater demand for our involved ...and yes, sacrificial ... recognition of the impact we have upon each other in our daily lives. We need to take the personal responsibility for how our society is shaping up, for ourselves and for our children. We need to hold each other accountable. This is something very basic to the Church, and being so, that is where the example for it must start. There has to be a pattern for society to see and emulate.

To be sure, these school killings, and any number of tragic happenings throughout the nation are perpetrated by individuals- the mentally imbalanced, the criminal, etc, but these are within the context of the society and whether that society is producing larger numbers of them, or enabling the ones that exist to more freely wreck their havoc.

We have shrugged our shoulders too often, and thrown ourselves too much into the fighting ring of specific issues, using those to justify further mistreatment of others ... on the basis of the differences. Yet, we only fool ourselves in this, and God is not mocked (as the scriptures tell us).

Which is why I think we are seeing the very sad events that we are .

[updated to add links]

 'Yeah Right Whatever' had the idea of parking a space here for more serious posts. I thought that was a wonderful idea and thought I could do that, too; especially for politically pertinent or culturally interesting posts that could get more discussion here than in my humble blog. And the posts on Intellectuelle are limited to a group identity. 

It' s worth a try to see whether this is good venue for my type of blogging or not.