Tragedies

 What ever happened to planning as one; dreaming as one--scheming as one: You and me against the world: "Whatever hurts you baby, hurts me too."  I know there's been a lot of wounds; As there's plenty of wounded sisters, absentee fathers, fatherless children, deadbeat dads, directionless brothers and plenty of avalanches; But beyond all this, is a standard to uphold and maintain: One that went beyond slogans and mottos.  Values that were passed down from generation to generation until they've become tradition.  There was a standard unit to maintain and it goes by the name of “family.”

   You can't have "h-e-r" without having "h-e"--or no she without he.  You can't have "double-u" without having "u" (you).  Family is the basic unit for a nation.  There's no "me" without "you."  If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound; And if so--how do you know? 
   The idea is, there must be somebody or something to relate to the event; in order for the event to be some significance or relevant:  In order for any proper relationship to work, you must care.  If you don't care, things will never be relevant.  For example, if women are just a chance to "wet willie," then, believe it or not, the conversation is all about sex; an event which is not to be confused with love.  If having man is all about getting a flesh tube to satisfy your lust, then the man might as well be a "dildo" with a good looking face.  Sex beyond these dimensions is rather obvious because "spit don't make babies," and the other types don't make children--in as much as they make trouble and distortions; dysfunctions beyond our heterosexual parameters.  To each his own.
   The problem is, this type of "dildo" has life giving fluid. . .and things can get serious quick.  The problem is past the moment of being 'tribalistically' horny, you don't have plans for the future.  The issue is, whether he or she, if there isn't real care here; things can be careless as going around a tight turn at 120 miles per hour; where a momentary 'romp in the hay' becomes a responsible with irresponsible people.  You have a unit but you are not unified.  You did not plan it, but now your plans includes a responsibility for a third, that you are now blaming each other for.  No precautions were taken, or lust led overtop of reason; but now the fun begins and 'taking responsibility for your actions' gets replaced with bitterness towards other and the offspring gets caught in the crossfire.  

   A nation of people is nothing without family units.  Without family units, all you have is a bunch of single people living in the same location with no designated role to play relative to each other; because for that, you need a sense of relations which spawn from caring enough about each other to form a family--which meant the getting together became something beyond using him or her for sex.  Not only did you have to establish trust; but you had to have things in common and your thinking had to be how WE can achieve things.  True families are formed through the sense of belonging to something greater than the two people involved.
   When children are born in circumstances like situations 'resembling an accident'--there's no real security to belonging to the group aforementioned.  Oh, a person may say, "I love my mom"--or they may see their pop during a perfunctory period of time (even though he may try to cram all the significance he can muster during that visitation) and each may both provide for their children; taking them out to events occasionally; But there's no real sense of belonging to a family relationship or real services each member (father, mother children) provides in behave of such a relation: No sacrifices being made on behalf of the family; no prioritizing group needs as a family, before the needs of each single person within the family relationship; everyone sort of goes their own way (working out things on their own and keeping their ideas to themselves): In a broader sense, family concerns and humanity over "individualism" or ego-centered activity is practically non-existent for the most part; The inmates are biding their time before release--like the Caribbean couple who no longer love each other but stay together just long enough for the children to grow up.  Well, at least in that case, the concern is to make family moves and group decisions together--until their children can make way on their own.  At least every one walks away with a consolation prize after the 'favor has worn out of the gum'--as opposed to everyone in the family thinking about each other--"Thanks for Funking-up my life."
   There is strength in numbers when the number are on the same page; believe in the same footnotes and contribute along the lines of their station; great things can be achieved under these auspices; For then, as the character "Spock" of "Star Trek" is quoted as saying, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

   The death of the family is happening, in front of our eyes, and most people today are not shedding a tear.  The children are angry at the arrangement, the parents are dysfunctional and most households function like single parent fiefdoms--but no one sees the full tragedy.  No ones crying because, as time has gone by recently, there are fewer young people using the accumulative wisdom gained over years experience passed down by family members to pass through life; particularly family tradition.  The sad part is, they simply do not see anything wrong with not doing things the way their grandparents taught to get by: They simply do not feel that what is happening today, is as a result of their philosophy and values (or lack thereof).  In other words, the way that the youth are behaving, indicates they have "no strong family ties"--yet they do not believe it is their values or philosophy which causes this dilemma.  
   Compare this to the 1950s in this country, where there was "Family Time Television Shows" aired on every station.  Each role within a family line was well-defined, and each parent and the children had a responsibility to maintain; as well as a peer-group pressure to maintain it (and most shows like "Leave It To Beaver" demonstrated the society's particular spin on things):  Mainstream society then, called children born out of wed-lock "illegitmate."


  Don't get me wrong; right or wrong--the American society at that time, showed a concern about how each child was being raised in this world; They had a standard to uphold.  There was etiquette; there was social graces--there were charm schools and social clubs.  Today, that type of standard is literally non-existent; there is no prevalent values existent among today's generations, other than every person for themselves:  A common chant is, "Let me make my own mistake and find out for myself" (aka don't tell me nothing).  This trend is individualized; customized (mind your own business), and irreverent to society's views for the most part; it is sort of a "deaf to all warnings."

   I hope you appreciate today, among generations, "Parents and grandparents" and even "great-great parents," are (for the most part) honorary titles, with no oomph or distinction behind them.  They have become place markers with no evaluation of how they've got so far: The ancestor's savvy secrets are dying with them.  
Prevalent among Generation Y is a total disassociation with anything old: This is because they couldn't care less about what you think concerning their particular angles on things.  They don't care about their lack of experience being supplemented by an older person's intelligence, shrewdness, past experience or acumen gained from the experience of having gone through it your self several times, or the accumulated sagacity developed by your family members on a certain subject over a period of time (like farming techniques--for example): They are hell-bent on finding out things based upon their own experience.
  Well, to be fair, most of us were a little strong-willed like that ourselves; But we kept our parent's understanding in our "rear-view mirrors" (just in case) and spoke to our parents whenever quizzed (or suffer the consequences).  Imagine what Crack or the Aids epidemic would like look like, had we not shared the collective data that we gathered as others went through those experiences. . . 

   When I think of tradition, I think of ancestors.  When anthropologist trace families, they trace parents who belong to "family lines"  down to a place where there's two pairs of common ancestors.  When you do that, you have family lines--concepts and objectives, or values assigned to those families (or the lack thereof) and most of the time family ties are often related to such values; bonds.      

   There has to be some order to family lines;  Roles that each must play in order to keep dignity and integrity to such units; So when I hear that most children no longer honor what elders say--that they are making it up as they go along; That all that you went through as a parent, matter little to most children today; it saddens me. 
   God is a group reality seen through the eyes of a single entity.  If God is not concerned about the family--how can God be the father of all civilization?  What are the children seeing in us, in terms of organization?  What examples are we setting and how are these examples being received?

   If we had to go to war right now; it would be a half hearted effort: Captains and lieutenants would be meaningless for structures for organization (for our youth)--melees would be easy to encourage and though they may avoid court-marshal, inwardly, there would still be defiance.  With such attitudes, it would be easy for battles to disintegrate into skirmishes; because there would be no common cause amongst people: Hell! What does being Black mean to our people these days?   If we cannot look at things as a collective body, how can we be advocated for one common cause?  I'm watching things happen around this country and seeing how hard it is to get people galvanized to rally around anything.  Hopefully, through this article, we may get younger people to learn to gather information objectively and weigh them against the happenings.

  The way I see it, these attitudes were initiated by the group of Baby-Boomers who felt that their parents were too stern; that the lines were too rigidly defined between adults and parents: Many of them wanted to be hip-parents; They wanted to be their children's "friend."  Historically or chronologically, this had not been done.  These parents were the pioneers.   There were also females among the rebellion who refused to approach marriage relationships the way their mother, grandmother and great grandmother did.  They could not see forsaking their personal desires for the sake of maintaining the family.  They challenged the male leadership role.

   There are two things wrong with the above premise; it suffers from the lack of proper guidance that responsible parents are to provide for their children (as they grow up)--and that their teenage outlook was manipulated by social movements at the time [The birth of the Feminist Movement/the Sexual Revolution of the sixties/various freedom movements] at a time when their critical decision-making skills had not yet matured.  For those Baby Boomers who went along with family tradition, they were assured of a certain outcome--because the wisdom was developed by observing the many years of experience; and therefore provided such an outcome.  With the rebellious Baby Boomers, they would not know what their would yield, because there was no prior experience or guidance in their premise--only a belief and a 'wait and see' attitude [because they were experiencing it for the first time].  Well, fast forward this premise and we see the chaos we have today--coupled with advice from folks who never planned to be in heterosexual relationships to begin with.

   I'm sure, if the Baby-Boomers who favored such an approach in the past would consider such things presently (aka the mess you made), you'll come up with a similar conclusion to what is presented here.  And should you reach the same conclusion; I would think you'd have one last candid conversation; One in which you'd admit your experimentation and it's unfavorable outcome--and caution your young adults against narcissism which will have them ultimately living alone--destroying the good family relationships they hoped to create.

  Children are not your friends; you are supossed to be their guardians.  You may be friendly and sociable to them, but ultimately you have to stand firm on principle.  When your son or daughter becomes of consenting age, even though you may know they are having sex; you can't openly condone it in your household--unless you want to make yourself partially liable for the child that may occur further down the road.  Your maturity as parents is there to interject responsible ideas into your children's arena.  When you try to be your child's friend (or be that-hip), you subject yourself to being your child's peers; and unfortunately, ipso-facto, they may not like your style: They may not like your relationship you have with the other parent, they may think you're too soft, or they may have other ideas that you may be afraid to be firmly against--or you may have never been there in the first place (because unlike your predecessors you weren't that responsible).  You may have been too arrogant and self-centered.

   However you slice it, our generation were ones who had these children.  Our Generation are the ones who finally created roughed individualism in our children to match our White counterparts.  And we better take steps to  change this way soon or we will lose all the progress we made as a people.

Thank you for all your considerations,

(I do appreciate all of you greatly). . .

C. Be'er la Hai-roi Myers 

Peace