I think the natural drive we have for reproduction brings about interesting possibilities. One is that having a family means you're forced to be less egoistic by focusing on people outside of you. The other is that precisely for the same reason you can develop a new form of selfishness, just you extend the boundaries of your ego to other people.
Martha Nussbaum, I think quoting a Greek writer, spoke of concentric circles when thinking of nationalism: the smallest sphere is the self, then the family, then the community, then the state, then the world. Cosmopolitanism, she says, realizes that it's all about the biggest sphere, and we're all the same, minus a few negligible differences.
Family is forced consideration of this set of concentric circles. You have the real chance, by nature of your very biology, to extend love from self exclusively to family around you. But here we know very well all the people who do anything for a mortgage, i.e., their family. It's seductively easy to hide behind supporting your family as if it's a truly selfless act when in fact this exclusive support is the very behavior which, if other people were to follow it, would mean very bad things for our society, and ultimately tribalism. If you understand the state as an extension of the family (and nationalism as sealing the deal with this idea), you can see it more clearly: a state that lives for itself at the exclusion of others has a much higher risk of directly or indirectly instrumentalizing the others, either by occupation, stealing resources, or just leaving them in the cold.
So family is another rose whose thorns can choke out its petals. One thing I love so much about Christianity is this horrible-sounding verse:
"Hate" is the operative word here, and in the times in which Jesus lived "hate" was a dysphemism for "love less". The idea here is that if you want to be a disciple of Jesus, you have to give up this preferential treatment inherent to the inclinations of having a family. You have to "hate" your mother to the point to where she's a sister in Christ or child of God just like everyone else, not someone you love above someone else. You also have to do this, perhaps most importantly, to yourself, your "own life." Which is a very hard saying, but gets out of the problem of what would happen if everyone loves their mother to the exclusion of other people: other people are loved less.
Martha Nussbaum, I think quoting a Greek writer, spoke of concentric circles when thinking of nationalism: the smallest sphere is the self, then the family, then the community, then the state, then the world. Cosmopolitanism, she says, realizes that it's all about the biggest sphere, and we're all the same, minus a few negligible differences.
Family is forced consideration of this set of concentric circles. You have the real chance, by nature of your very biology, to extend love from self exclusively to family around you. But here we know very well all the people who do anything for a mortgage, i.e., their family. It's seductively easy to hide behind supporting your family as if it's a truly selfless act when in fact this exclusive support is the very behavior which, if other people were to follow it, would mean very bad things for our society, and ultimately tribalism. If you understand the state as an extension of the family (and nationalism as sealing the deal with this idea), you can see it more clearly: a state that lives for itself at the exclusion of others has a much higher risk of directly or indirectly instrumentalizing the others, either by occupation, stealing resources, or just leaving them in the cold.
So family is another rose whose thorns can choke out its petals. One thing I love so much about Christianity is this horrible-sounding verse:
"Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple'." (Luke 14:25-6, ESV)
"Hate" is the operative word here, and in the times in which Jesus lived "hate" was a dysphemism for "love less". The idea here is that if you want to be a disciple of Jesus, you have to give up this preferential treatment inherent to the inclinations of having a family. You have to "hate" your mother to the point to where she's a sister in Christ or child of God just like everyone else, not someone you love above someone else. You also have to do this, perhaps most importantly, to yourself, your "own life." Which is a very hard saying, but gets out of the problem of what would happen if everyone loves their mother to the exclusion of other people: other people are loved less.
