It is amazing to watch the scramble happening around the referendum decision in Britain to separate itself from the European Union. I listen to the BBC as Lisa and I wake most mornings and the accusations and fear-mongering from many directions on the question has finally been settled. I, for one, am excited to see any people declare themselves the masters of their own destinies and free to choose their own course! Hurray for the British people!
Some thirty years ago, I was revealed as a bit of a radical as a college student when I was "outed" as a liberty-minded person. Many of my "sisters" in the home economics department were preparing for careers in "human services", "social work", or "education", mostly the bastion of the high-minded who believe that most people are incompetent to run their own lives and must be "managed" by educated "experts". I rejected this idea and came up with my own ideal world-view. I garnered a lot of strange looks from my peers but was lucky to have interested and encouraging mentors and professors. My fellow students saw the world separated into two groups: the managed mass of people and those who manage the mass. Of course, we were all in college to qualify for the position of the manager of others. I was a bit odd for saying that people should be free to associate and act as they chose - basically, I preach that everyone should have the opportunity to be either unmanaged by others or choosing their own management.
Over the years, I formulated an idea that I call Family Sovereignty. I realized that "rugged individualism", one of the hallmarks of the American experience, was a bit of falsehood and saw that individual people cannot be truly independent - they need other people to get along well and be fully realized. I also saw that collecting people into homogenized "communities" or "societies" has become the road to dehumanization and a domineering few "lording over" a repressed many through legislated governance and social controls. People need other people, but how do we provide maximum liberty and minimum tyranny? The solution that I found and still promote these days is the Productive Family and the concept of Family Sovereignty.
My preaching on this subject is this:
It has been rightly said that the family is the basic unit of society. However, larger constructs (community, state, nation) and their institutions (corporations, schools, governments) have developed an attitude about the powerful social force that families can be: either bend the family to service outside forces (example: "full-day schools") or weaken the family so individual family members can be dominated by outside forces (example: promotion of gay/single lifestyles). Agencies that claim to "help" families often do the exact opposite by training them to run to social workers or other "experts" to solve internal family problems instead of discovering their own answers. If other interests can break potentially strong families into dis-unified and relatively weak individual people, those individuals will come running to corporations, schools, and governments to help them meet their needs, often only to become practical slaves to these institutions. The basic unit of society (family) needs to become the most important and central group in any individual's life!
Brexit is a wonderful example of a smaller group taking back sovereignty over their lives from a larger entity. I already see that Scotland and even beloved Shetland are considering afresh their independence and ability to chart their own course. The idea of managing yourself and choosing your own associations, rather than having someone else choose for you, is getting traction in a big way and that is exciting to a liberty-minded fellow like myself! Someday, I hope this attitude will rise to the point where families will realize their inherent strength and power, choose to stand up to domineering institutions, and chart a course that works best for their family and family members. Hail, Brexit!