Family values
Damien Perrotin, The View from Brittany
Every debate has its blind spots and the one about community in peak oil circles is no exception. It is fascinating to see how little discussion there is about what is, after all, the most basic community in all human society : family. There are, of course, good reasons for that. Few among us have any sympathy for the family values crowd, a species unfortunately every bit as widespread and nefarious on this side of the Atlantic as on the other one and we certainly don't want to be put in the same basket as they. This is however unfortunate, for, no matter how polluted it is by religious non-issues, the family question and its evolution is of the foremost importance if we want to make sense of the post-peak world.
(original)
As I said in this post, liberals who promote relocalization and defend the family as the basic unit of society will do so in their moral framework and sanction all sort of organizations, citing various examples taken from all over the world to back up their stance. Here we see Mr. Perrotin using the example of the Mosuo -- he does claim that it is an example of a functional matriarchal society, but he's wrong. But don't let facts get in the way of promoting radical egalitarianism. Still, since he is in France I don't have to worry about forming a sort of alliance with him -- the French agrarian traddies do. He is just one spokesman; how much influence would he have in a deindustrialized society?
If resources are limited and one part of a community perceives that it is sharing an unjust burden in order to placate the other part's demands for just treatment how long can such a community last? (I am thinking of claims by "alternate" families for government support and so on.) Even if decentralization does take place, liberals may still demand the complete suppression of Christianity and traditional Western morality. Will Christians remain the passive sheep that they've become? Or will they resist?
No comments:
Post a Comment