Posted on 09/10/2019 4:19:13 PM PDT by tbw2
Who am I? is a universal human question. It becomes harder to answer if other basic questions are problematic or out of reach. Who is my brother? Who is my father? Where, if anywhere, are my cousins, grandparents, nieces, nephews and the rest of the organic connections through which humanity up until now channeled everyday existence? Every one of the assumptions that our forebears could take for granted is now negotiable.
The panic over identity, in short, is being driven by the fact that the human animal has been selected for familial forms of socialization that for many people no longer exist. Let’s test this theory, here dubbed the “Great Scattering,” via some evidence from social science, anthropology and pop culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at quillette.com ...
‘The Great Scattering’: How Identity Panic Took Root in the Void Once Occupied by Family Life
https://quillette.com/2019/08/27/the-great-scattering-how-identity-panic-took-root-in-the-void-once-occupied-by-family-life/
Pretty good article. She does a lot of correlating and less establishment of causation, though.
A pastor at our church wrote a book called “The Facebook Generation”. Back in Jesus’ time people knew who they were because they were surrounded by family with little to no outside influence. So the kids were adults at the age of 12 or whatever.
1400’s or whenever - more people in cities with more influences. Adult age crept up a bit as it was a bit more difficult for to figure out “who they were”. Of course most people in the town would have the same religion and moral beliefs. But maybe they could be a butcher instead of a farmer?
With the age of the internet there are SO many outside influences that disrupt the family sphere. Even when we were raising our kids we almost always had dinner together, talked about school (and where the school was wrong in many cases), helped with homework, etc. Family outings with no phones, etc.
But society (with the internet playing a huge part imho) still has influenced our kids for the worse in some cases.
All by design: Study the Frankfurt School. Read the Communist Agenda.
Christopher Lasch a liberal when that meant something besides the insane anti Americanism of today’s Left included this concept in his Culture of Narcissism and Revolt of the Elites. More recently Marc Dunkelmann, a liberal who sometimes appears with The Federalist also touched on this topic in The Vanishing Neighbor.
I agree that the modern world has so much turmoil that its easy for people to feel completely adrift. And don’t get me started on the internet’s effects on one’s children!
However, I still don’t think the author made a real case for “identity politics,” specifically, as a direct result of family breakdown. For one thing, the concept is strongest in universities, especially elite universities, where the students are most likely to come from intact families.
Maybe she goes into it more successfully in the book, which isn’t in my local library yet: I keep checking the catalog!
I’ve read some of Christopher Lasch’s books. I’ll look up the other writer, too.
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