Staying together
The costly mistakes of the heads of the families in making the family stay together
Archetype 5: A family stays together not by thinking alike, but by sharing common joys and sufferings, especially the latter. (Tweet this)
As a society, we organize families at various levels for various needs — a biological family, professional family (companies), political family (nations), etc. One of the major tasks of the head of the family is to make the family stay together. He addresses property conflicts between brothers, jealousy between colleagues, and civil wars between communities. And the family head resorts to various tactics in achieving this.
Firstly, he tries for homogenization. If everyone thinks and behaves alike, he believes there won’t be conflicts and people stay together. He establishes norms to seek this homogenization: he sets up family rituals and company policies; he asks everyone to speak the same language etc.
But these norms fail sooner or later. They are artificial, forceful, and thus unsustainable. Even if the norms are well-intentioned, they suit a few of the family members more than the others. And thereby coming to the accusations of partiality, favoritism, and communalism — all leading to the dissipation of the family.
If the head of the family is egoistic, he further tries to homogenize. The coterie of family members, employees, and communities that support his norms gather around him to validate his ego. He compromises on keeping the larger family together and focuses on keeping this coterie together. Unfortunately, he fails again as this coterie also disintegrates due to the same flaws. It’s a spiraling road to the bottom.
Sociologist FH Giddings wrote about “consciousness of kind” explaining how shared feelings of family, community, and nation come into existence. It’s a psychological process through which people feel the tie of kinship. Unfortunately, no norm can create this feeling. Singing the national anthem at theatres, mandating attendance in colleges and offices, mandatory weekly family calls — each norm becomes a burden and obstructs this psychological process.
A few heads of families succeeded in creating this consciousness of kind in the family members. Many open-source technologies have well-knit members, who work remotely but share a common mission and values. The Worldwide Web, one of the most impactful innovations of modern time, was the creation of a family of volunteers. These values are not established through norms. Not even money. But a shared experience of joys and sufferings, especially the sufferings.
We see this often. Any group of people, who have gone through a common set of sufferings become well-knit, despite their inherent differences. British colonialism was shared suffering that allowed the diverse communities of the sub-continent to march together as a family. The shared suffering of all the members of a middle-class family or a budding start-up becomes the source of the strong bond between them.
It is this ‘consciousness of kind’ that enables unity and keeps a family, company, or nation together. And we need conscious leaders who enable ‘consciousness of kind’ in the populace.