[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Creation of the Unbonded Herd

[Bill Totten]

Clearly the family isn't what it used to be. But what is family?
Guardians? Protectors? The first and deepest teachers?

by Michael Mendizza   

Culture Change (July 25 2009)


Very, very few adults are independent, true individuals. Very, very few
march to the beat of their own heart, metered by deep insight and
personally generated values and conviction.

Most are domesticated, deeply conditioned to stand in line, obey
authority, do what they are told, work for others and pay the taxes
demanded by those giving the orders, in other words - do what ever is
necessary to be accepted by the group, the tribe, the club, faith or party.

Being born into a family, surrounded by at least one true individual is
very different than being born into a domesticated family.

Being domesticated means that one naturally, mindlessly and therefore
easily places one's children, one by one, on the conveyor belt that
domesticates. Domesticated adults generally reap what they sow,
domesticated children. To not do so, being dependent on party approval, is
suicidal.

Deeply the issue is - where do my feelings of belonging and acceptance
come from - intrinsic or extrinsic, inside or out? And this brings us back
to the core construction of our identity - bonded or not, and if so -
deeper still - bonded to what, acceptance or innate integrity?

By bonding I mean the free, safe, and playful interaction between self and
the model-environment appropriate to one's age and stage of development.
Very early that model-environment is mother's body. The nature and quality
of that bonded-inquiry-play determines if and how we reach beyond the
limitations and constraints, in a word transcend that matrix, explore and
become the next model-environment, the family. And that determines the
next, the neighborhood-culture, and that the next, the earth, universe and
spirit. Once safe-bonded-inquiry and corresponding inner-self-world view
becomes conditional - based on rewards-approval-acceptance and
punishments-rejection-abandonment - the expansive and transcendent nature
of our identity stumbles. We give our attention to acceptance-rejection
rather than deepening inquiry through play. And this provides the hook
culture needs to control our behavior and it does. At every stage the
truly bonded person is free. The unsafe-unbonded is not.

The truly bonded person understands fundamentally that we are the world,
that 'my father and I are, indeed, one'. The less or unbonded person
builds a self-world view based more or less on approval of others and
therefore becomes easily conditioned, controlled and domesticated by the
manipulation of that approval, belonging or rejection, rewards and
punishments.

Taking this simple principle from the personal to the transpersonal, its
meta, global, universal level, is becomes ever so clear that it is
beneficial from a cultural, social engendering perspective to breed a less
bonded than a deeply bonded population and the key to this is the alter
the basic experiences we call family.

Religious organizations, for example, being cultural counterfeits of true
development, used the family to recruit, induct and indoctrinate the next
generation of cadets or cease to exists as a dominate cultural force. As
the grip of ideology weakened, and it has taken thousands of years to do
so, the family lost its usefulness as a cultural surrogate and was
marginalized around the turn off the century.

The domestication of children shifted from the family to the
corporate-state (the true definition of fascism), via public schools. The
less meaning young people found at home, the less bonded, more insecure
they become. The deeper their need for extrinsic approval grows and the
more secure and controlling the culture becomes.

Fifty years down the conveyor belt (the marginalizing of family, planned
breaking of the family bond) came television and soon after women's
liberation each representing one-two punches to the authentic feeling,
experience and meaning of family, and therefore of one's self world view.
And the belt continues to herd most of us today - true to its design. It
is so simple.

With this in mind I would offer that the homeschool and deeper still the
unschooling community are the true revolutionaries of our day. If there is
any hope for the kind of insight and activism Culture Change imagines - it
will come from this growing community of flowering individuals. 

_____

Michael Mendizza is an author, educator, documentary filmmaker and founder
of Touch the Future , a nonprofit learning design center:
http://ttfuture.org/home/vision 

His book, Magical Parent-Magical Child, the Art of Joyful Parenting
(2004), was co-authored with Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Crack In The
Cosmic Egg (2002), a national best seller. Michael is based in Solvang,
California.

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=492&Itemid=1


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