You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing. Walker Percy
As time goes by some people start to take an interest in the history of their origins. Some delve into the genealogical sciences more than others, but I think underlying this interest is a more fundamental desire to know who one is. It is as if one's identity now can be better defined by who one's family, one's tribe, even one's nation was then. Perhaps this is so. It seems to me that those who have never been severed from their roots (traditions, family rituals, sense of being a people) suffer little of that modern malaise Walker Percy was able to capture so well in his novels and writing. Here, people understand that they are living within a continuity, a fidelity to a way of life, a set of values shared by one's family and people before them. One's role in that continuity is more or less clearly defined. Yes there are always issues, always conflicts of various kinds, but the identity issue is not one of them. Conflict is settled from the solid ground of knowing "this is who I am". Issues are worked out with the sense of maintaining fidelity to this continuity, and those within the community all agree to this basic common ground. This holds true from small jungle communities in West Africa to the Amish, Mennonites, and other Anabaptist communities all around the world. I am not idealizing these communities, but I am calling attention to a powerful truth embedded in their way of life.
Can all this be recreated artificially? Should it? How successfully? Theories abound.
To be continued...
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