#Family Life and #Children #Behavior

Some one hundred years ago began an always growing impoverishment of family life interactions undeniably related to an explosive mass media pervasion of all aspects of human societies. That has come to aggravate a very ominous trend, already detectable since the beginnings of the industrial revolution, some 250 years ago. 

Such a dreadful situation sprang in the 19th century as a consequence of excessively prolonged workdays, then a common abusive situation. Thereafter, the advent of the 20th century totalitarian states brought a smashing of individual rights, whatever was the ideological speech of the ruling chiefs. Surely, that just enhanced the emptying of familial relations.

Family life, which has always had a privileged role in personality formation, something which surely includes the ethical, social values groundings, has been seriously disrupted by the media overwhelming invasion, leading to an unavoidable weakening of culture transmission between different generations.Those evening meetings with parents, grandparents, relatives and neighbors talking, telling jokes, and kidding with their children seem now to belong to a tragically lost, distant, forgotten past. 

Nowadays, family members often remain  seated for hours on a sofa while staring at the weird, overmighty TV screen in a same, passive uncritical eye. Or, perhaps much worse, each individual looks at a private screen of his or her own only.

Actually, television watching requires a minimal level of intellectual effort, a characteristic which lead people to a too passive acceptance of avalanches of cultural garbage without even becoming aware of it. 

To worsen things, chosen contents for a TV schedule are mostly shaped in a Machiavellian way whose hidden aim is to induce mass behaviors, unethically yielding huge monetary and/or political profits.

Wim Wenders's movie "One Million Dollar Hotel", depicts a billionaire, owner of a global net of TV broadcasters, who in a  private talk reveals the lifeblood of his business:

"Factual reality is reframed according to my global network's interpretation and interests, in such a way that only thereafter, on TV screens will mankind become aware of any 'facts'".

Nietzsche once said against positivism  we should object plainly:

'No, there are no facts at all, but only interpretations'. ['Will to Power', free translation from German]

No, I do not think Nietzsche would support people's manipulation by the media, nor by any means. Nor do I think that this TV owner had any kind of interest in Philosophy, being interested just in highest profits. 

Nonetheless, distorting Nietzsche's thought an ideologist may mention that aphorism out of context whatever his aim.

The  TV big businessman's statement reveals something deep and rotten about our present civilization and the role played by mighty networks in shaping news in  order to make "facts" always favorable to some unspeakable interest, whatever it is. 

Here in São Paulo, Brazil,  after seventy years since the beginning of the first TV channel, it is easy to realize how strongly the imposed outside values have shattered  what still remained of the inside families transmission of culture, values, and worldviews. 

Independently of any comparative value attribution to so many different traditions, whether old fashioned, too repressive, coherent with the best ethical norms, or quite the contrary of all this,  it is undeniable that families have for millennia grounded the building blocks upon which individual personalities have grown.

"Familial"* relations seem now relegated to nothing but a legal, formal bindings framework, within which affective interactions father-mother-children-uncles-grandparents-neighbors increasingly lose consistency, becoming devoid of any capacity to educate the future citizens to be increasingly aware of their rights and duties. 

These days, the already too loose interpersonal relations keep on disintegrating even more quickly amid an  information blinding deluge brought on by the internet, in such a way that interpersonal contacts seem growingly detached from deep personal feelings. 

The already scattered home interactions, as all others, are disintegrating, liquefying as  Z. Bauman pointed out. Will they finally evaporate?

Most parents, mothers and fathers, devote today only a tiny fraction of their time to exclusive, close attention to their own children. 

Consequently, there's a terrible, cruel parental void, just in a place and at a time where the most solid incorporation of social rules should be tightly grounded. 

Children learn how to respect these rules when feeling unconditionally loved, thus trusting those ones who care for their well being, and identifying with those caregivers. 

Children learn how to respect these rules when feeling unconditionally loved, thus trusting those ones who care for their well being, and identifying with those caregivers. In such optimal situation, for feeling safe newcomers to life become able to follow orders, even when still unable to understand the reasons behind parental commands. 

Thus, whether someday a boastfully "wonderful, beneficial" technological revolution puts robots to teach social limits to children, the only foreseeable result will actually be disastrous. The tiny people just arrived on Earth will definitely be incapable to learn whatsoever from them, feeling instead just tortured amid such a stupid  world dominated by terrifying machines. Perhaps they will be able to escape from such a hellish place, even if the only way be through choosing a quick death. 

The so-called "lack of limits" which alledgedly is now worsening among children must be regarded as an unavoidable consequence of heavy disruptions of the human affective relationships, be at a familial, social or global level.

Facing such a context, the option to a tightening of behavior rules, together with a rigid strengthening of obedience demanding, as even some mental health professionals have nonsensically defended, however maintaining the current global simulacrum of a family might only generate future unhappy and servile adults, turning life into a dreary factory of meek slaves.

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NOTE*: 

Attention please, readers, this essay does not intend to support any specific set of values, not even to ponder about it, something which would pose a huge task, much more complex and out of this essay goals. Rather, this is just a warning against the breaking down of the familial basis of human personality formation, which has prevailed all over the world for at least tens of millennia.  Whatever worldview prevails on a serious analysis, it seems impossible to honestly deny this is a dangerous, ominous trend for our species.