Hoosier Families

No man is an island.  The proposition that humans can be or should be truly autonomous and independent entities is intoxicating in its simplicity and internal consistency, but it is inconsistent with mankind's social nature, circumstances, limitations, and survival.  The libertarian logic of individualism is an erroneous abstraction and a dangerous distraction, one which robs us of our very humanity.

Families, communities, and nations aren't parasites upon the individual.  If anything the individual is a parasite upon them.  Our roles within these institutions aren't merely "social constructs" to be deconstructed; they're products of our natural roles, roles embedded in our spiritual, biological, psychological, and external circumstances.  Women are meant to be wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters.  Men are meant to be husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers.  To "liberate" yourself from your natural duty is to abdicate your responsibility - to betray your family.

When the institution of the family suffers, so too do the individuals within the family.  Additionally, the communities and nations which rely upon those families suffer.  All of them are interdependent.  The traditional gender roles, customs, and institutions are functional (if imperfect and fluid) systems which, contrary to cosmopolitan opinion, have a logic that is too subtle, organic, and complex for us to carelessly engineer without jeopardizing our very survival.

All of this is not to say that free will, autonomy, and individual dignity are to be discounted.  In fact, the Western traditions of independence and equality are themselves traditions, organic traditions with roots buried deep in our tribal European past.  Therein lies the apparent paradox.  If we replace the Anglo-American tradition of individualism with the individualist sophistry of ideological libertarians, Ayn Rand, and the global capitalists, then we'll replace an individualist tradition which has been proven to work for millennia with an individualist fantasy which corrodes and vilifies the national and traditional institutions upon which sustainable individualism has been attained.

Women in the West, and in America in particular, have received more autonomy, options, and dignity than they've received in any other society.  They were, however, bound by custom to fulfill their natural roles as mothers and wives.  Western men have had more freedom of speech, thought, and behavior than men elsewhere, but were also bound by custom to fulfill their natural roles as fathers and husbands.  These roles, roles that men and women are innately suited toward and typically most fulfilled within, are both natural and necessary roles.

Far too frequently, traditionalists blame women for pursuing careers, refusing to have an abundance of children, and behaving promiscuously.  While multicult indoctrination is certainly a factor, traditionalist males would do well to examine our own complicity.  Over the last few decades, males within our society have descended into a malaise of video games, booty calls, quickie marriages, quickie divorces, fraternal childishness, and masturbatory self-gratification.  The kind of man that a traditional woman can truly depend on is an endangered breed.

Our transition from a family-oriented society to a money-oriented society has relegated the role of nurturing a family to that of a burden - a burden which biology places more heavily on women than on men.  Nurturing a family has been displaced to the periphery of contemporary life, a phenomenon which is evidently corrosive and unsustainable.  A people who fail to breed, feed, and lead future generations will either go out with a whimper or a bang - but they can only go out.

New Harmony, along the bank of the Wabash River, hosts the ruins of the Harmony Society, a communal religious order organized by the charismatic evangelist George Rapp.  It's no mystery why their social experiment lies in ruins.  The members chose, for reasons of religious purity, to maintain their chastity.  If we continue down the course we've been led down, then future civilizations will find the ruins of our own civilization, a civilization which chose the equally unsustainable lifestyle of material excess.

Rather than blaming contemporary women for their feminism or contemporary men for their decadence, we need to start with ourselves as individuals.  Do we as men have the self-discipline and integrity to inspire obedience and fidelity in our wives?  Do you as a woman inspire and demand the best from your husband?  Are you truly putting your family first?  Have you called your mother?  Are you doing everything you can do for your grandmother?  Are you preparing your children to succeed as future husbands, fathers, wives, and mothers?

While many folks pay lip service to the importance of family, their choices frequently expose their true priorities.  Children who are raised by their own mother in a mobile home are more enriched than children raised in daycare so their mom can pursue her career and live in a McMansion.  Children whose fathers spend time teaching them how to repair their own cars and grow up to be independent men and women are more enriched than children raised by a distant and distracted father who pays for their college and buys them a late-model car on their sixteenth birthday.

If your brother's a drug addict, don't settle for the excuse that he's an independent adult.  Adult independence is a legal construct, not a moral construct.  Be your brother's keeper.  Get up in his personal business.  Intervene.  Sometimes there's only so much you can do, but don't rest until you've done exactly that much.  In the traditional America, family members, friends, and even perfect strangers within the community understood and acted on the necessity of mutual support.

We can only foster genuine and sustainable independence by fostering familial and community interdependence.  We won't need government welfare when our neighbors reach out to help.  We won't need a stable monetary system when we have the ingenuity and social networks to innovate our own trade and commerce.  With tight families and cohesive communities, we can become a truly sovereign state of truly free individuals.