How Would You Begin to Destroy a Society?
"Putting down roots" is one of those phrases that is rarely used anymore and is pretty much lost to history. You will hear people use it occasionally, but the true meaning of it has perished. Graduating from college, accepting a job, getting married, starting a family, and buying a house somewhere is just the beginning of putting down roots. In my mind, to actually put down roots requires not only the above, but the conscious intent to establish roots in a specific place. Related to this is the concept of "the family home." There are places in the United States where you may hear people use that term, but often the "family home" is one generation away from being lost to the family’s history. Why? The first reason is that those who stand to inherit the "family home" have not been taught that having a multigenerational dwelling or land leads to a sense of identity for future generations. Knowing that when one passes on, they will be buried next to their great-grandfather on their family land is such a foreign concept to most Americans that they may imagine that it "only happens in movies" and thus consider it fiction.
The second reason the idea of the "family home" has been destroyed is that houses and land have become tied to material wealth. Sons, daughters, or grandchildren see their parents’ or grandparents’ homes or land as nothing other than their ticket to riches. In many cases, the "family home" was purchased or built many decades ago for a tenth, or even a fifth, of the current sale value. Often times, the home is paid off, so any sale is pure profit for the seller. Notice that I used the term seller, not progeny or loved one. When it gets to this point, any emotional or metaphysical family tie has been unraveled. If the family cemetery is located on the land being sold, the seller may still possess some familial feeling that might motivate them to negotiate that the cemetery remain in perpetuity. But let’s face it, if the buyer’s offer is high enough, what’s the issue with toppling a few headstones and putting "the past in the past" when you’re going to "be set for the rest of your life"?
Many may question how we’ve arrived at a point in time when the idea of generational symbols such as the family home and land has become unimportant to a society that used to cherish them. How have we gone from multiple generations living in the same home to family members living thousands of miles away from each other? In my opinion, a big factor in this is that we’ve been sold the idea that material wealth is what’s most important in this life. Big houses, multiple cars in the driveway, and living close to a metropolis signify that "you’ve made it." No longer are family, the ancestral home, and your name what define you. You are defined by the number of commas in your bank account and the zip code in which you live. If that means you have to be completely deracinated from your family and its history, that’s just the sacrifice that you make so that you can get paid!
Many people complain that in the United States we don’t have a cohesive culture and society. How can we accomplish those goals when a cohesive family is so rare?
We have two homes on our street that holds one giant family of indian immigrants. The kids run in and out of both homes. There is one man who seems to be the leader of the klan. I can't count how many families live in these two homes.
They converted their back yards to giant gardens where the older women and young girls can often be seen working together. At night, the men will sit on the deck smoking and talking as the children run around.
I resent my family for not living like this because it is so obviously better than what we americans consider to be the default way of living.
At one point my Great Grandfather owned almost half of a small town in West Virginia, there where entire streets where he owned every single building. Nnow no one owns any of it because no one felt the need to keep it or pass it down or to even stay in the area. The issue with all of this is if someone chooses to not continue the chain of heritage the next person in the line can't simply nullify it. It's broken, it's done, you need to start over. The story about the boomer german father who sold half his land and screwed over all future generations of his family comes to mind as the epitome of this. The bigger problem with starting over at least for Millennials is that because of immigration and the treating of property as an investment buying your own land and homes is prohibitively expensive now.