Het Verloren Lidmaatschap – Lost membership
I wrote a book in Dutch, see the title above. If you want to know what the book is about, read the article below that summarises the thoughts that developed. Mind you, it is not a summary.
For more information mail rob@robknoppert.nl
Rob Knoppert

The lost membership
an attempt to rewrite history.

The first steam train ran from Stockton to Darlington in England in 1825. This event is important because for the first time in history ordinary people were able to travel quickly over land without much difficulty. Let’s choose this event as the beginning of the most important revolution that mankind underwent. It is a revolution in which technology and science play the leading role, a technological revolution that is still underway, a revolution with an unknown outcome. An incredible explosion of inventions changed everyone’s lives in two centuries. The revolution provided sewage, water, gas and electricity for every home, machines that made physical labor unnecessary, automation, antibiotics and other medicines, new materials, the car, the plane, television, computer, internet and much more. The revolution spread through the process of globalization from Europe and North America to the rest of the world. Man was d freed from hunger and misery, became richer and healthier, his lifespan increased. Since 1850, the world’s population has increased sixfold to almost 8 billion people. The process of globalization is still ongoing. For example, most adults in North America and Europe own a car, in a few decades it may be everywhere.

In addition to all these changes, there was a global social revolution. Man was liberated from the sometimes stifling family ties and from prescribed conduct. He discovered his individuality. The need for religion as a means of gaining a better life disappeared. The new technology necessitated specialization and led to many new professions. Cheap and fast transport of people and goods made collaboration easier. People moved to where there was work. It was at the expense of the good sides of the family ties. The family, the oldest social structure, was of great importance to every person until the mid-nineteenth century. Harari writes in Sapiens: The family served (…) as a social security provider, health insurance company, education system, contractor, union, pension fund, insurance company, radio, television, newspaper, bank and even police. If someone got sick, the family took care of him. When a person grew old, the family supported him, and his children were his pension fund. When someone died, the family took care of the orphans. If someone wanted to build a hut, the family came to help. If someone wanted to start a business, the family raised the necessary money. If someone wanted to get married, the family chose a partner, or at least checked it.
The numbers show how quickly this process of family breakup took place. A century and a half ago, about 8 people per housing unit lived in the Netherlands, according to Richard Paping in his study on urbanization. In 1961 the average size of a household was 3.5 people, currently 2.1 according to the Dutch statistical bureau CBS. This process of family reduction is happening everywhere. The inhabitant of an African slum refers to “my village” upcountry, where his family lives. Millions of Chinese workers travel from coastal industrial cities to their families inland for the New Year celebrations.

Man is a group animal like the elephant, the sardines and the crane birds. The natural group of man is the group known from the hunter-gatherers, a family group. Membership of the group was a matter of preserving life. In order to remain a member of the group, man, like an elephant in a herd, had to abide by the rules of the extended family. These rules are reflected in our morals. The most striking rule: sharing property in the cohabiting family, just like in (most?) cohabiting remnants of families now. The children learn this rule and many others from the elders. But this rule only applies in the family group. The family is the seat of the most important emotions a person experiences: love, sorrow, mourning, consolation, anger. There is mourning at the death of relatives, there is love that leads to the creation of a new offshoot of the family. In prehistoric times, relatives were the only people anyone knew well.

Since the switch to agriculture, the family stayed in a permanent place, in a house in a village where everyone knew everybody. Many wars, epidemics, famines and other inconveniences did little to change these structures. The family living together was the place where culture was passed on, where morals were learned, where the rules of empathy, cooperation and sharing applied. The psychologist Tomasello uses the term we-ness, the we-feeling. No, not constant bliss, but unconditionality. We have the genes to pass the time in such a group. In the village, the family was surrounded by relatives and acquaintances. And there was the church, the mosque or the temple to invoke happiness.
Auke van der Woud writes in The landscape, the people : [We] can assume that around 1900 the Dutch countryside consisted of thousands of small communities, which since ancient times were accustomed to doing their own thing as much as possible. This world did not change until science and technology created another, until the technological revolution started. Man discovered that he could manage his own well-being and that he could cooperate with strangers. Millions of individual decisions were made to stop relying on family and God to seek own well-being. This ushered in a period of creativity and wealth. The economy grew even faster than the population. In the past seventy years, the worldwide Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased tenfold.

Modern man continues to search for memberships and is a member of an endless number of modern groups, from soccer club to political party, from Hells Angels to Greenpeace. The most important groups for him are the work place and the state. These structures provide more revenue and security than in the past. The work place also provides connections with others to a greater or lesser extent. But those ties do not have the quality of unconditionalaty of family ties. In countries with a modern democracy, the state creates a structure of security and comfort for all inhabitants. But this membership does not provide emotional connections with others.

At the same time, the family where children are being brought up gets smaller and smaller. The modern child hardly experiences the unconditional ties with family. The child is used to dealing with relatively strange adults and it experiences the we-ness to a much lesser extent. The disappearing of old structures that provide upbringing in such a short period cannot be without consequences. What are the consequences of this process? Is there anything to say about that? For this we cannot rely on our personal feelings because these processes of disappearing take place over several generations. Even the oldest among us have not experienced this living together with nearly exclusively the family.

We can try to learn from the existing social relationships what the consequences are of this disintegration process. I consider social notions like freedom, individualization, loneliness, materialism and the pursuit of self-interest. Freedom is celebrated with great emphasis in our society. Freedom gives us the opportunity to make individual choices. Yet that freedom can be a source of misery. Individualization means that every person can and must make his own choices in order to optimize his own happiness. If he does not succeed, it is his own fault. A burden that is too great. Loneliness, especially among the elderly, was a hallmark of modern times long before the Covid-19 epidemic broke out. In the meantime, computers and telephones are being used as means to overcome this. We look for connections with others through social media. They provide some comfort but these connections do not have the intensity of the ties with the family. Materialism, the desire for more and better, even with great prosperity, seems to be a characteristic that has been developed precisely in modern times. Is it to create a sense of security or is it to assure popularity with others?

Perhaps the most important feature of the modern age is the pursuit of self-interest. The pursuit of self-interest used to be called selfishness but today it is very respectable. No, the morality of modern man is not inferior to that of his ancestors. Modern man is surrounded by relative strangers. The downstairs neighbors, the feoow worker, the manager, the supplier, the customer, a child’s in-laws, and the classmate are all relative strangers. Modern man is kind to others if they are too. Sometimes a friendship arises with few obligations, not intimate enough to evoke the feeling of we-ness. We share too few interests with these relative strangers. As a consequence we can rely on our own strength only.

Halfway the last century, the marvellously functioning economic system was further refined, a system in which the enterprise, facilitated by the state, spoiled people. Neo-liberalism made everyone richer. But in the West we have long passed the point of becoming happier and happier. More than in previous generations, I think, man struggles with loneliness and fear.

Now another problem has arisen. The economic system is so powerful that the Earth, rather the wafer-thin biosphere around this globe, cannot support it. A tidal wave of problems from climate change to zoonosis, from insect extinction to plastic pollution has reached us. If that wave has to be stopped, it can only be done by solving another problem. There is the basic desire for close connection. Only by fullfilling that desire we are able to put aside our materialism and self-interest gratification.

Now another problem came about. The economic system is so powerful that the Earth, rather the wafer-thin biosphere around this globe, cannot bear it. A tidal wave of problems from climate change to zoonosis, from insect extinction to plastic pollution has reached us. If that wave has to be stopped, it can be done by solving another problem only. There is the basic need for intimate connection. Only by fulfilling this need we are able to put aside our materialism and selfishness. That requires new social structures that offer people interconnectednes, structures with the same qualities as those of traditional membership including the appropriate morality.