Family Gatherings

[Loki]

What I find so distasteful about them...

These people, my larger family, seem to want nothing to do with me one on one. None of them ever call me, they don't come visit me, they don't share my interests.

They only want me to join them in a crowd, never to actually face me as I am. At a family gathering, everything is superficial and on the surface, to the point where I don't really understand what the point of any of it is. Some of my cousins have gotten new jobs or are getting have gotten married, so they want to talk about that. But am I supposed to pretend that I find their jobs or marriage interesting or meaningful to me?

None of them have shown interest in maintaining an in depth relationship with me.

So why bother going to these events? Is it to pander to their egotism? That's what it seems like.

It's not like I really know these people, and they don't know me, and it seems there is no intention of anyone knowing anything. So why are we all getting together?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Good observations, Loki.

Your family, nearly any family really, values the togetherness in itself, the vocal chords being exchanged becoming as significant as the mooing of cows.. As a small 'superorganism' it strives to remain intact and when possible and not threatening to its cohesion: to expand. It's then assumed the values are shared and it's rare within a family that the ones not sharing the values are acknowledged, at least at a conscious level. Merely just tolerated, at best. Although in your case it's possible that the lack of members initiating contact with you expresses from their side some kind of gentle acknowledgment: Loki doesn't like that stuff so we leave him be, as long as he still shows up now and again.

Why bother going to these events? It's still part of some cultural instinct to feel like one should, otherwise you wouldn't be here asking the questions, developing your distaste. So you need to see how it's still part of you, this whole concern. It's not as easy as to put all the blame on egotism of an entity (family) which naturally desires to remain intact and to include its members somehow.

If a more personal interaction is what you'd like to see, the answer is to initiate this yourself and develop some sincere interest in their small, tiny concerns and affairs, beyond the casual remark as people do notice the intent. Or you could leave things as they are as reap the benefits of belonging to some group which might have advantages under certain circumstances. Or if it really means nothing anymore then just cancel the gatherings and let it be. Would they force you to come otherwise? Any repercussions you fear?

[Nick]

There is nothing "higher" or constructive about them (family gatherings). It's just about satisfying a desire to bond and connect with people on a superficial level in order to enter a kind of emotional/bio-chemical trance. Understanding and real thinking have no place there.

[Loki]

Good observations, Loki.

Your family, nearly any family really, values the togetherness in itself, the vocal chords being exchanged becoming as significant as the mooing of cows.

True to an extent, but unlike mooing, you just can't say anything. You have to be, at least in my family, rather specific in what you say. I guess my family is somewhat competitive, at least with the younger adults, so that makes it a bit more complicated. If you haven't built up the armor of career and love, socializing involves pretending you're happy for the other persons successes, or that you aren't secretly satisfied by their failure. It's not so different from socializing in the work place with non family, there are comfort zones and danger zones. You talk about what's positive in your life, and then you listen to the other person talk about what's positive, and sometimes you might share something a little negative, but you (at least try to) put it in a humorous context. You also try to filter out the fact that the person who is listening to you isn't really that interested or respectful of what you're enthusiastically telling them, and you likewise hide the fact that you don't really like what they're happily telling you about. Some of them will also talk bad about the weaker members of the family who are not present, this has happened before.


Why tolerate this falseness?

With me, I don't feel permitted to share my enthusiasm. I just can't, what good could result of it? They will shun me, for sure, which I could bear, but why bother? I have nothing good going on in my life that they could understand. And anything good going on in their life is of little interest to me. On top of that, I have little desire to share what I'm into, so why try to be something I'm not?

I'm not the only one who doesn't like it either, many of the males in my family do not seem comfortable at these events and I don't think they would go if it were not for their mothers and wives pushing them into it. All of the women seem happy to get together though. I don't want to make this a feminine bashing thread, this is just something that I noted: that it's the women who seem to orchestrate this stuff, and many of the men don't even want to go.

My point is that people who want to be together should just naturally get together, why organize and force people together?

It's then assumed the values are shared and it's rare within a family that the ones not sharing the values are acknowledged, at least at a conscious level. Merely just tolerated, at best.

That's how I feel. I feel that I am tolerated, and that while they would like to avoid me one on one, some of the more proud ones seem to delight in pulling me into the family crowd where they seem to know I have zero value to the group. I know humor and enthusiasm is important, but the things I find funny or interesting they generally would not understand.

Although in your case it's possible that the lack of members initiating contact with you expresses from their side some kind of gentle acknowledgment: Loki doesn't like that stuff so we leave him be, as long as he still shows up now and again.

I used to engage with some of the younger ones philosophically in the past, and most of them got upset or competitive, spreading rumors around to other family members that I was some kind of philosopher. They think I think I'm better than them, and they seem to want to put me in situations where values are celebrated that I don't value.

Why bother going to these events? It's still part of some cultural instinct to feel like one should, otherwise you wouldn't be here asking the questions, developing your distaste. So you need to see how it's still part of you, this whole concern. It's not as easy as to put all the blame on egotism of an entity (family) which naturally desires to remain intact and to include its members somehow.

If a more personal interaction is what you'd like to see, the answer is to initiate this yourself and develop some sincere interest in their small, tiny concerns and affairs, beyond the casual remark as people do notice the intent. Or you could leave things as they are as reap the benefits of belonging to some group which might have advantages under certain circumstances. Or if it really means nothing anymore then just cancel the gatherings and let it be. Would they force you to come otherwise? Any repercussions you fear?

No, they wouldn't force me to come. But some of them will pester me and call me anti-social, subtle mud slinging will result, and they will think I'm a coward.

[Tomas]

So why bother going to these events?

Just go and enjoy the ones you've always gotten along with. People grow in different ways. Stand up to the bullies and be who you really are or just ignore those assholes - as bullies never change (grow into normal humans with normal flaws).

Get your "favorites" email addys and let it be.


You are from four distinct genetic backgrounds:

Dad's dad side

Dad's mom side

Mom's dad side

Mom's mom side


If God made people to love and things to use, Why we use the people and love the things? - Bob Marley

.

[pierdog]

If your family are neurotic cultureless individualists, then family gatherings are toxic but if you and your family are well-adjusted traditional collectivists, then family gatherings are rejuvenating experiences. Most families are a mix of both types. The happiest ones have the latter type in higher proportion but don't be a bitter duchebag and dis an entire institution just bc you or your own family are toxic waste.

[Pye]

I like this topic. I've lived it over and over again. I even had a lover once give himself his own walking papers because, apparently, fucking someone means you must also attend their family functions as well, and I had thank-you-no'd him one too many times. The ex with whom I have lived off and on for 30 years is the only one to give up with cheerful grace, the only one to understand and support the degree of freedom I have always secured for myself. I have not attended anyone's Christmas, Thanksgiving, July 4th, birthday, or even just plain family party for nearly 20 years. All of those holidays are a discrete pleasure for me to spend in my own iconoclastic way. One loves solitude above all. I spend just such a (holi-)day here in america today; two invitations kindly declined.

My daily commerce with people is of the highest order and on the highest terms (school/philosophy), so in no way do I consider myself impoverished of human exchange. Quite the contrary, the human exchanges I have are the richest possible by my own design. I don't shoot-the-shit with anyone. My few close friends know this when they come to converse, and such visits are richly rare. Those who support such things will stay friends with you of their own accord; those for whom group-participation, clan membership, and the so-called 'health' of socializing stands above one's realized nature simply fade away. If they are particularly insulted that you don't avail yourself of their invitations/parties/company, you can become a point of ridicule for them, which was just the case with a teaching partner I once had whose wife loved giving big drinky gatherings. After the 3rd pleasant refusal, word spread around me that I was a 'hermit' with very weird ways. Of course, I heard those words in public where I am found transiting on innumerable occasions and in exchange with humans to the highest functional degree, nearly every day.

All of my nuclear family are dead, some for years; the rest of the maternal clan are spread out all over the globe. When they did gather in my younger years, I was not oppressed by any ignorance or wastrelism - many of these folks are highly educated, a few in universities, in some cases, of political note at a national level, in one case all the way to a U.S. presidential cabinet level though I wouldn't put myself (or them) at any liberty to say anything further. (You're just going to have to trust in some kind of consistent representation of myself here these 4 years). My point in illustrating the caliber of some of them, is that even with the fine attributes to [my] family that pierdog suggests - the stimulating intellectual competitions/games; the presence of culture at all times; the bonding and indiscriminate support - they were not void of the same clannishness that feels oppressive to me at any of these type gatherings, high or low. Such a sentiment (tribalism) has been, of course, most useful in creating the bonds of obligation that are necessary for groups of people to take care of each other. Once you know what you are about; once these needs for networked, sentimental, and indiscriminate support are in one's own hands, one doesn't have to return for repeated doses of it. I'll not have my motions, motives, and self-understanding remanded to an accident of genetic convergence. Being "related" to someone means for me now an entirely different thing.

I have 'turned off' innumerable people with critiques of the nuclear family configuration (and no, there were no significant abuses or dramas to 'damage' me) and the ways in which the institution serves as much to embed and reinforce neurosis as it does to 'help' people. The family is a socio-political expedient, a genetic passing, and clannishness is the concrete shoes of evolving consciousness. One either takes into account all or none. And in the best cases, both, and at the same time . . . .

Loki, I suspect you are [much] younger then myself, but I would like to show you that: if you are already disposed to solitude - and already suffering the familial rebukes of your anti-socializing - then simply fasten your seat belt and prepare for a lifetime of others' whining. In time, you might reach the place that I presently occupy: Those who understand stand by; incidences of whining and rebuke become fewer and fewer; and you shall become the master of your time - every minute of it spent to your tastes, and to your highest possible aspirations without being doomed to hermitism; without being void of the kind of company you do value. Someday, you will not be bothered to defend yourself, and the comments of others about it won't bother you anymore, either. You will know what you are about, and your own cheer within that will become infectious to [some] others. I see much of my younger self in your observations, struggles, and complaints, when I first tried standing against the clannish voices that were [falsely] united against any such independence. When you become stronger in your sense of self, your direction, and the rightness (for you) of your tastes, this will become less and less a problem. It is possible that not only will you be left alone to decide these things for yourself - you might even be respected for it, and it might become honored in you.

[pierdog]

Pye, you're misguided because Family doesn't serve to either create or prevent neurosis, it's just a biological necessity and whether it promotes or prevents neurosis depends on the genetic potential of the individuals that compose it, so the problem is absolutely not the institution itself, it takes a precise mind to see the nuances. EDIT - If positive people's clannishness/collectivism offends you, the problem is your own toxic individualism.

[Pye]

pierdog, I think you may have missed some of the nuance in the above to jump from it to "toxic individualism." Such a thing would not permit any commerce - much less rich commerce - with any one else at all. At the core of the critique of clannishness/tribalism are the same toxic issues of group-think; the abdication of the rigors of raising consciousness - which, last I looked, occurs in individual beings and goes about being raised in the same way. As Kierkegaard reminded, the crowd is untruth. With which head does this group, this family do its thinking?

One doesn't argue with the phenomenon of genetic grounding in familial configurations, so one doesn't have to put up for it a defense. What one does argue with is that such a grounding produces a group, rather than distinct individuals who may or may not share the same tendencies and characteristics. Belief in the superiority of certain bloodlines and their characteristics is both rationally ill-founded and concretely undemonstrable as a science of any kind. We carry within us, in the main, the whole of humanity whose multifarious individual configurations can make their appearance at any time.

[Anders Schlander]

Pye, you're misguided because Family doesn't serve to either create or prevent neurosis, it's just a biological necessity and whether it promotes or prevents neurosis depends on the genetic potential of the individuals that compose it, so the problem is absolutely not the institution itself, it takes a precise mind to see the nuances. EDIT - If positive people's clannishness/collectivism offends you, the problem is your own toxic individualism.

Let's be honest, on their own family means nothing except context, but in my contexts, a family is always one big neurosis, and that neurosis then lives on in whoever is born into that family. For somebody who recognizes this egotistical neurosis, sure, it doesn't have to offend 'you', but it can still look very ugly. So families DO serve to create neurosis, i think there's alot of evidence for it, and that is the fault of the people in that family.

Im curious what you mean by institution? you're not talking about marriage and all that are you?, i can imagine the 'family' instituion as being a group of individuals who's goal is to raise the best possible people, and ofcourse, this could be two males, or two females, that weren't married or sexually attracted. Why should the family have to bond up in family gatherings excluding everybody not-part, and paying special attention to those who are part? only people who get high knowing that they are being cared for, not even noticeing that it's every member's fear to be left out that forces everybody to group up, would make such special considerations.

Ideally, imo, a family is just a group of likeminded people with overlapping goals, where those goals are not not tinted with all the emotions that usually drag down everything to the level of silliness. There is no set in stone 'institution' in my view, but i'd like to hear yours.

[pierdog]

@ Anders - It depends on the proportion of well-adjusted individuals to neurotic ones but we may also have a semantic issue with the word 'neurosis' blocking consensus. I'll elaborate later on what family means to me and why it should be so for all. @ Pye -- Fuck your Jew commerce, I prefer Indo-European values that governed ancient India, Rome, Greece, medieval Europe & czarist Russia regarding commerce.

[Pye]

pierdog: @ Pye -- Fuck your Jew commerce, I prefer Indo-European values that governed ancient India, Rome, Greece, medieval Europe & czarist Russia regarding commerce.

:)

"Commerce" I used as a metaphor for human exchange and I'm not a Jew. Have we reached the limits of nuance to your precise mind? thanks, anyway.

[Kelly Jones]

Repulsion from big-herd can often go with tolerance of little-herd. Most people prefer a little select group of friends to act as a sharper foil for the ego, while the crowd is usually too bland.

Not iconoclastic behaviour, though creating one's own preferred type of family has a little more will and individuality than merely submitting (as many women do, happy to have ready-made foundations).

The ex with whom I have lived off and on for 30 years is the only one to give up with cheerful grace, the only one to understand and support the degree of freedom I have always secured for myself. .... One loves solitude above all.

For instance.


..

[pierdog]

Good points Kelly. Well balanced. @ Pye -- Bad & revealing metaphor. And I called commerce Jewish, not you. Having lived in a clan-based culture with minimal infrastructure & (economic) commerce, I can tell you that people mix quite well locally, relationships are stronger, more vices are persecuted and less people are neurotic and arrogant than in a modern urban setting.

[Loki]

Repulsion from big-herd can often go with tolerance of little-herd. Most people prefer a little select group of friends to act as a sharper foil for the ego, while the crowd is usually too bland.
..

Ok, Kelly, so what do you do when invited to family gatherings? Or what's your advice to me?

[Kelly Jones]

Repulsion from big-herd can often go with tolerance of little-herd. Most people prefer a little select group of friends to act as a sharper foil for the ego, while the crowd is usually too bland.

Ok, Kelly, so what do you do when invited to family gatherings? Or what's your advice to me?

Reply honestly and simply, with good will.

For instance, when told that my last surviving grandparent had died, I replied that she was a human like any other, and her death was no more significant than any other. I didn't go to the funeral. I probably won't go to any funerals, but I'll leave that decision til I come to it.

I don't get into a complicated discussion. It's just my view presented, and they can take it or leave it.

Things were full of strife and horror for a while. For instance, as a result of my choosing to become a sage, my parents separated, my father came under fire by almost all the other members of the family, there were some serious illnesses and accidents, and my elder brother closed himself off within his wife's family. I would be contacted to be told some of these events, because my family is dysfunctional and uses emotional manipulation to bind the members together. They would probably hope to excite feelings of guilt or pity. There's a tradition in my family of the spinster female looking after the parents or invalid members, and I had always been willing to help them previously. But gradually they have left off contacting me, as they see that I'm not upset by "the news".

One rather interesting development is a slow, terminal disease in the family, of the member who is most in contact with other relations and friends of the family. She has been in touch with me, because she wants to "settle issues" before she dies. I think she is consulting me somewhat in a thanatological role. She's exploring deeper questions (not that deeply, but deep enough for her), and I help to stimulate new ways to think about things. Without worry, or fear. So, her position relative to all the others, is as some kind of lightning rod, helping them to explore life a bit more thoughtfully and individualistically. It's not much, and they'll probably all forget.... So I don't give it too much significance.


..

[Anders Schlander]

@ Anders - It depends on the proportion of well-adjusted individuals to neurotic ones but we may also have a semantic issue with the word 'neurosis' blocking consensus. I'll elaborate later on what family means to me and why it should be so for all. @ Pye -- Fuck your Jew commerce, I prefer Indo-European values that governed ancient India, Rome, Greece, medieval Europe & czarist Russia regarding commerce.

Just to be brief pierdog, well, the neurosis I'm talking about is the foundation of desire, i.e. the ego. And it leads us into alot of bad stuff. Families suffer alot of problems because the humans that comprise it are insane to various degrees.

Before i write further, as im not sure where i'd go, i'd still like to hear about your idea of Family, and what kind of consensus you're talking about

[Talking Ass]

When one steps onto the ever-twisting path of knowledge, with the sparkle of Wisdom as the guiding beacon, and when one begins the lonely trod to the mountain top where the fierce winds rage, and the elements of nature are raw and constantly in battle, 'tis there on those peaks that one sometimes stares back into the Pit, the Abyss of Disease that is the human world. Take your seat under the edge of the crag, it is rough and sharp where you sit, but the fresh-scented pine needles provide a cushion against the ground, and now look down, down from your towering height and note the little people swarming on the plains of life. You knew when you began your lonely ascent that knowledge and wisdom would alter your vision perpetually, didn't you? That you'd no longer see 'relatives' and 'friends' and 'fellow beings' in humankind but, with the clarity offered by the Sacred Formula of A is A, you would see with Indo-European clarity through the haze and muck and emotionalism of centuries, indeed of all Time, to *see* only 'what is', and 'what is' is really nothing more than 'insects' (to quote one notable sage); or strange, misshapen furry little creatures with sharp incisors neurotically splintering logs in their spare time. Ah but then the darkest of dark clouds decend from the mountain top! everything becomes leaden! the world is utterly transfigured and you cast off, once again, all contrived connectedness to anything but the highest human aspirations, the call of emptiness. And as if in answer the Lonely Eagle with his fierce eye pierces the atmosphere with his shrill cry, a cry that causes you to shiver down to the bones, and one more layer of Falseness falls away and you shiver again in the immense cold, a cold that has become your one true Friend...

...but then with a start you snap back to reality and realize it's not the Soaring Eagle but Aunt Emma up from Carter Lake, Iowa, who's just asked you in her grating voice if you want ketchup or mustard---or both---on your hotdog.

The path to Wisdom is long, pilgrim....

[pierdog]

Anders, extended family represents the genetic IMMORTALITY of its founding ancestor especially IF he is remembered. Clan-based cultures retain immortality and blood-feuds fortify it. Neurosis/individualism/fear of death is transcended bc your personal death is not the end of you since you are your ancestor, your clan & your children. Moderns could incorporate most these elements too and live as non-ascetic sages.

[Anders Schlander]

Anders, extended family represents the genetic IMMORTALITY of its founding ancestor especially IF he is remembered. Clan-based cultures retain immortality and blood-feuds fortify it. Neurosis/individualism/fear of death is transcended bc your personal death is not the end of you since you are your ancestor, your clan & your children. Moderns could incorporate most these elements too and live as non-ascetic sages.

To me that's too narrow, if u base things on the founding ancestor, what founded the founding ancestor? etc. If people were aware of being children of god, then one wouldn't have to be violent in trying to gain a kind of immortality, so i think that's better to be, poetically, part of the family of god.

Rather be aware of the ultimate family, than trying to grasp onto existence in an attempt to keep your ego alive. Religions/People do the opposite, they fight over borders, and all such things. They grasp at any-thing they can get hold of, and cannot see that it is a task in vain. It's a stupid task trying to find the beginning and end of something, so in hope of preserving anything we become lost in the world.

Being the 'family' of god, doesn't prevent you from being a family, but stops false views about the families' existence, and thus no undue significance unto such a thing as a 'clan' or 'family' is held. Hence, no need of blood-feuds, and no need to search for immortality in a clan, and what would that help anyway? where is the beginning and end of such clan? is any clan real anyway?

To conclude, ideally a family is for practical purposes, because anything that the ego gains from a family to exist is not key for the existence of a group of likeminded conscious beings with overlapping values.

It does happen to be the case though, that the ego is involved in a groups dynamics, and that's why families are always disfunctional to some degree. That is from whence all those sitcoms are born. If there was no disfunction in any TV-show about families, would we find enjoyment? I think that the reason we love watching them is based on the disfunctional dynamics that are driven by the ego. The ego of our own has the TV-show reflected back unto itself, so when we see something we can relate to, we feel alive.

[pierdog]

Your entire interpretation and your analogy of what I described with 'ultimate family of god' is warped & banal for obvious reasons too tedious to list. I've lived both modern & traditional ways of life, so this is one of those moments in discourse when your credibility as a thinker rests on admitting that you're less credible than me to form the correct conclusion. Enjoy your cloister of childless Individualism as your 3rd World 'ultimate family' replace your culture/people, idiot.

[Conservationist]

None of them ever call me, they don't come visit me, they don't share my interests.

...

But am I supposed to pretend that I find their jobs or marriage interesting or meaningful to me?

Sounds like it's mutual, and if one side doesn't invest a whole lot in discovering these people (and is able to find something of interest), then you're best off viewing it as a formal social engagement like any other business transaction.

[Anders Schlander]

Your entire interpretation and your analogy of what I described with 'ultimate family of god' is warped & banal for obvious reasons too tedious to list. I've lived both modern & traditional ways of life, so this is one of those moments in discourse when your credibility as a thinker rests on admitting that you're less credible than me to form the correct conclusion. Enjoy your cloister of childless Individualism as your 3rd World 'ultimate family' replace your culture/people, idiot.

What analogy? the 'ultimate' family is no analogy. It is just a figure of speech. If you don't see beyond the boundaries of a country, family, or whatever, then you're not seeing the bigger picture. By all means use families and such, but I wouldn't wanna see somebody go on a murderous rampage when somebody accidently steps on someones toe, and that's the extreme case of deluded violence. Sure, an idiot might step on your toes, but it doesn't mean he is to blame for being dumb.

[Conservationist]

Sure, an idiot might step on your toes, but it doesn't mean he is to blame for being dumb.

Who cares who's to blame? Is blame even useful? Sounds like moral thinking, not pragmatic thought.

If he's dumb, usher him into the woodchipper and the species improves. Natural selection.

[Anders Schlander]

Well, u could throw him in a woodchipper, or put him in an institution if he hasn't got the will to actually care to pay attention and avoid being a fool, but wouldn't you waste your time with so many fools around? maybe you should try and get to the source of all these fools, since they seem to keep popping out of somewhere.

So in this case, rather than cut off the branches, pull out the root.