Today, even within the same generation, the nature of business evolves, and so does the nature of the values around which family is established. In addition, ownership changes as well; businesses are more and more integrated in the market; they become public entities; their shares are traded with no regard to the object those shares represent. The consequence is what we perceive as lack of family continuity and bonding. The new nature of the family contract is such that its basis of affection is eroded. Sequentiality of work is replaced by cycles of parallel activity during which generations compete as adversaries. This is why the family contract is shifted more and more to the market, depersonalized, indexed like one among many commodities. This contract is no longer literacy-bound, but rooted in circumstances of distributed activities of intense competition and networking. Once demythified, family relations are reassessed; continuity is severed. The market acknowledges the segmentation of family-no longer an economic entity in its own right-and in turn accentuates it. The baby business, the infant market, teenagers, and so on to the senior market are well focused on their respective segments as these embody not just age groups, but foremostly expectations and desires that can be met at the level of each individual.
How advanced the past; how primitive the future
No matter how intense the desire to maintain a neutral discourse and to report facts without attaching teleological conclusions to them, it turns out that the language of family, probably more than the language of science, machines, or even art, religion, sports, and nourishment, involves our very existence. Where should somebody place himself in order to maintain some degree of objectivity? Probably at the level of the structural analysis. Here, everything affecting the status of family and the condition of morality appears as a network of changing interrelations among people involved in the practical experiences of defining what a human being is. It seems, at times, that we relive experiences of the primitive past: the child knew only his or her mother; women started giving birth at an early age (almost right after menarche); children were on their own as soon as they could minimally take care of themselves. But we also build an ideal image of the family based on recollections of the less distant past: permanent marriages ("until death"), respect for parents, mother cooking meals for which the whole family sits down, father bringing wood for the family hearth, children learning by participating, assuming responsibilities as their maturity permitted. This idealized image is also the bearer of prejudices: women's subservient role, the authoritarian model passed from one generation to another, frustration, unfulfilled talents.
So the paradox we experience is that of a primitive future: more animality (or, if you want a milder term, naturalness) in comparison to a civilized (or at least idealized) past. There is no cause for worry, especially in view of the realization that despite our success in labeling the world (for scientific and non-scientific purposes), the majority of human behavior is determined (as already pointed out) independent of labels. Taking into account that the notion of permanency is related to relatively stable frames of reference makes it easier to explain why the high mobility of our age results in changes, both physical and psychological, that undermine previous expectations. Losing the discipline of the natural cycle that affected human work for centuries, human beings freed themselves from a condition of subservience, while at the same time generating new constraints reflected in the nature of their reciprocal relations. What does it mean to become used to something-environment, family, acquaintances-when this something is changing fast, and with it, we ourselves?
The Industrial Revolution brought about the experience of labor-saving machinery, but also of many new dependencies. In Henri Steele Commanger's words, "Every time-saving machine required another to fill the time that had been saved." One might not agree with this description. But it would be hard to contradict its spirit by taking only a cursory look at all the contraptions of illiteracy filling the inventory of the modern household: radio, photo camera, TV set, video recorder, video cassette player, WalkmanT, CD player, electronic and digital games, laser disc player, CD-ROM, telephone, computer, modem. The one-directional communication supported by some of these machines affected patterns of interaction and resulted in audiences, but not necessarily in families, at least not in the sense acknowledged in practical experiences of family life. With the two-directional communication, supported by digital networks, human interaction takes on a new dimension. Choices increase. So do risks.
Once the substance of one's experience is substituted by mediations, even the rationale for communication changes, never mind the form. Families separated by virtue of assignments (war, business) at remote locations, or in pursuit of various interests (sport, entertainment, tourism), exchange videotapes instead of writing to each other, or focus on telephone conversations meant to signal a point of reference, but not a shared universe of existence and concerns. They discover e-mail and rationalize messages to a minimum. Or they become a Web page, available to whoever will surf by. All these changes-probably more can be acknowledged-took place concomitant with changes in our expectations and accepted values. With the increased gamut of choice, attachment to value decreases. When all emotions come from soap operas, and all identity from the latest fashion trend, it becomes difficult to defend notions such as sensitivity and personality. When love is as short as the random encounter, and faith as convincing as reading a person's palm or tarot cards, it is impossible to ascertain a notion of reciprocal responsibility or the moral expectation of faithfulness. On the other hand, when the need to achieve levels of efficiency dictated by a scale of humankind never experienced before and by expectations and desires in continuous expansion is as critical as we make it, something is given up-or, to put it the other way around, somebody has to pay for it. With the sense of globality-of resources, actions, plans- comes the pressure of integration of everybody into the global market, and the expectations of consumption attached to it. Many-to-many communication is not just a matter of bandwidth on digital networks, but of self-definition, also.
The family used to reflect the perceived infinity of the universe of existence., despite the family's finite and determined internal structure. With the awareness of limited resources, in particular those of the natural support system, comes the realization that alternative practical experiences of life and cooperation become necessary in order to generate new pragmatic frameworks for increased efficiency and enhanced dynamism. The indefinite expansion of what people want and the progressive incorporation of higher numbers of human beings into the market through which affluence, as much as misery, can be achieved, results in the devaluation of life, love, of values such as self-sacrifice, faithfulness, fairness. The moral literate philosophers of the 19th century-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, William James-thought that the answer lay in our recognition that the world is not only for enjoyment. One can imagine a TV debate (interrupted by commercials, of course) between them and the romantic proponents of the ideology of progress-John Maynard Keynes, Adam Smith, David Hume. It's safe to wager that the audience would zap over their literate debate, while they would enjoy the illiterate 30-second spots. None of the philosophers would establish a Web site, as none would be terribly excited about the discussion forums on the Internet-not a place for intellectual debate. Who would read their elegant prose? To say more at this point would almost preempt the argument: The family in the civilization of illiteracy ascertains new forms of human interaction. It departs from the expectation of conformity for a model that acknowledges many ways to live together and, even more important, how we transcend our own nature in this process. We might, after all, be much more than we know, or trust that we could become.
A God for Each of Us
On the Memetic Algorithms Web page on the Internet, H. Keith Henson illustrates the lifelike quality of memes by recounting an episode from his time as a student (University of Arizona, 1960). Having to fill out a form on which religious affiliation was to be disclosed, he chose the denomination Druid, after having initially tried MYOB (the acronym for Mind Your Own Business). As he stated, "It was far too good a prank to keep it to myself." Replication mechanisms, in addition to a healthy dose of social criticism, soon had the university record almost 20% of the student body as Reform Druids, Orthodox Druids, Southern Druids, Members of the Church of the nth Druid, Zen Druids, Latter-Day Druids, and probably a number of other variations. Once the question regarding religious affiliation was removed from the entry form, the chain of replication and variation was interrupted.
There are many aspects of the relation between religion and language embedded in the anecdote. In some of the themes to be discussed in the coming pages, the humorous aspects will resonate probably less than questions on how religious experiences extend from early forms of human awareness to the current day.