This is a very important line of thought and research which underlies this short article: The Ties That Bind: Grandparents and Their Grandchildren. Knowing that research in traditional societies in the undeveloped world had shown that children’s health and longevity were improved greatly when they were under the care or supplemental care of grandparents — typically, as I recall from reading about some of this research years ago, the improvement occurred only with blood relationships — some researchers looked for and found similar advantages to grandparent involvement in caring for the children in industrialized communities as well.
Health and longevity are easier to test than the somewhat related moral traits which can be nurtured in children by constant contact with grandparents who can tell them stories of their own grandparents back in Hungary or Denmark and can give those youngsters a sense of connectedness to concrete human traditions. Those concrete, blood-based traditions are necessary as a foundation even to Christians who are called to love, in some way, human beings they’ve never even met. Without a firm connection to concrete traditions, even the most openhearted of evangelists or the most dedicated of medical missionaries, even the most curious of scholars or the most adventurous of businessmen, will find their minds opening so that their brains fall out and their hearts melting down to a puddle containing emotions more self-righteously destructive and self-destructive than truly charitable.
Grandparents are older, yes, and that means that some of the fire inside their bodies has burned out. Yet, that doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom. There are certainly many 60 year-olds who have failed to live 60 years, instead choosing to live their favorite five or so years a multiple of times up to their 60 years on Earth. Yet, many have matured in a true way and can pass on much wisdom to their grandchildren. This is wisdom the parents might not yet have unless they took in their grandparents’ stories and lessons in a way that is beyond most of us — a certain amount of experience is needed before we truly take to heart even the most obvious of moral truths, including those which seem to deal with quite mundane aspects of a well-ordered life. There is a time and a rhythm in the life of a grandmother or grandfather of proper priorities, a time and a rhythm which allows them to pass on the wisdom they might possess in some measure. Even if they aren’t wise, or knowing in a more exact sense, they can pass on stories, memories, feelings, many of the bricks in the foundations of a well-ordered way of life.
Not all ways of life are worth continuing but I can recall with warmth the way of life in a small-town in Western Massachusetts when I was young. Some of my fondest memories concern relationships, some in which I took a part and some I merely observed in the way of a young boy, and many of those relationships were those of extended families. The extended families were dissipating because of the loss of the dependencies which hold all human communities together. The parents sent their children off to be formed in public schools and then to see the world as marines and soldiers and sailors. Those parents breathed a sigh of relief as Grandma and Grandpa were able to move into government-subsidized housing when they had to give up their own house. More sighs of relief came as the old folks were able to “maintain their independence” with the help of Social Security and Medicare.
It’s difficult to believe our politicians and bankers and corporate executives could have planned all they carried out, yet they’ve acted in a consistent manner as if planning to replace local dependencies with dependencies of individuals and local political communities upon the Federal government which was seemingly thought to be independent of all the rest of Creation. In a similar way, we’re dependent for food and clothing and other goods upon giant corporations rather than upon a more rational mix of mom-and-pop stores and regional or national department stores, local manufacturers and transnational car companies, local farms and giant agri-businesses in Iowa or Southern California, local hospitals with good nursing care and big-city hospitals with fancy technology. Rather than that sort of a balance, we inhabitants of the modern West, not citizens of the West in a true sense, allowed ourselves to be convinced by the politicians and bureaucrats, the bankers and corporate executives, that they had the universe under good control. They stood upon the true bedrock of existence and could guarantee our safety and security so long as we were willing to do no more than accept their gifts, no more than to become dependent upon them.
While scientists were looking in the wrong places, Americans had discovered that all created being rested solidly upon the landfill of Washington, DC or maybe the granite bedrock of Wall St. or whatever the hell London City rests upon. It hardly matters at this point where these various criminal conspiracies and conspiracies of sheer stupidity were truly controlled from. What matters is that we’ve accepted those offers of the politicians and bureaucrats, the bankers and corporate executives. Certain they were that they were now Masters of Reality, they themselves were overwhelmed by hubris and the gods laughed at these morally and cognitively insane play-things and all the many foolish human beings who had turned their property and their food production systems and industrial productions systems and their governments — even their children and grandchildren — over to these lunatics. Starting with pioneer lunatics such as Teddy Roosevelt, we eventually reached George W. Bush and his thugs who thought they could create reality with enough firepower and then we’ve managed to descend further to Barack Obama who seems to think he creates a better reality by merely giving a feel-good speech. But the firepower is still deployed to kill many and destroy much, even if there is increasing doubt as to whether anyone has a clue what might be the goals of our lunatic masters.
Yes, we’re dependent upon the various departments and agencies of the Federal government and have freed ourselves of dependencies upon parents and children and grandchildren and cousins and neighbors and fellow-worshipers. By allowing ourselves to become dependent upon the largesse of central governments and their allied banks, largesse actually funded by money taken from us, we’ve forged our own chains. Yet, there is hope in our bodies. We’ve corrupted ourselves, adopting thoughts and many behaviors of slaves dependent upon the central powers of our nation-states. Our minds, our souls, are corrupted to the needs of those who care for us only when we’re useful to them but our bodies, though softened and stripped of many vertebrae, retain some of the instincts that lead many parents and grandparents to sacrifice themselves for their children, for the current benefit of those children and so that those children might have good futures. If only we can remember that our own futures would be more secure if we could integrate those children and grandchildren into viable human communities which we’re part of, communities which we’re willing to be dependent upon.