By Pete Anderheggen
Creativity + Social Change
University of Connecticut
“I don’t think of it as working for world peace, he said. I think of it as just trying to get along in a big strange family.”
-- Brian Andreas, Drawing, 2003
My metaphor of "community as family" derives from several sources, the most recent being the one above that accompanies one of Brian Andreas’s illustrated stories.
I have two other sources. The first comes from Museum of Modern Art’s 1955 exhibition of photographs collected by Edward Steichen, entitled "The Family of Man." Published as a book, the collections consists of 503 pictures from 68 countries. At the time, it was considered, and I still consider it, one of the greatest of photographic collections ever assembled. The second inspiration comes from Hillary Clinton’s book title,
It Takes a Village, suggesting that no person is raised in isolation from his or her community. The community is therefore, in a sense, the child’s family.
It seems to me that this metaphor of "community as family" gives us a powerful tool for positive caring and productivity. It brings the idea of love into the conversation. We are, after all, expected to love our families and admonished to love one another. Certainly not all, but equally certainly, there are many, many very successful family enterprises. We already begin with a proven tool. Family enterprises can be, and often are, very successful.
And the metaphor works in several ways. If we think of the members of our community as our family members, we are more inclined (in most instances) to "cut them some slack." If we think of them as family members, we are more likely to remember our obligation to love and maintain harmony. Consequently our community, no matter what our enterprise, has a much greater chance of success.
Now, of course, some might immediately want to impose certain structures and strictures on such a metaphor -- parent, child, obediance by children, authority of parents. But the concept of family is much larger than this. When we think of family in the larger sense, we immediately see that family does not even require immediate blood relatives. We have in-laws and we consider them family. We have grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins once, twice and thrice removed. And they are all family. Although I am suggesting family as a metaphor for community, it may be more fact than metaphor. I seem to recall that we have had some high-profile people in the government who have proven to be related.
In an article last September, the
Chicago Sun-Times laid out Obama’s ancestry – including the genealogical, if not spiritual, relationship between Obama and Vice President Dick Cheney. According to the newspaper, they are ninth cousins once removed, with their common ancestor being Mareen Duvall, a French Huguenot who settled in Maryland in the mid-1600s. In an Oct. 16
interview on MSNBC, Lynne Cheney confirmed the connection, based on extensive research she did for her latest book,
Blue Skies, No Fences. However, she calculates that Obama and Cheney are eighth cousins, one degree closer than the
Sun-Times has it (Wikipedia). Whether or not it is eighth or ninth cousin, they are still family. They might do well, and we might all benefit from, their remembering this.
What is it about families that make them special? In close families, there is familiarity -- whether it is positive or negative. And that familiarity allows some sense of ease in a strange and sometimes difficult world. With regard to families that are not geographically close (my mother’s brother’s children some whom I have never met and others whom I have not seen in 40 years), the very fact that we are related, that we are family, gives some motivation to make them special. I am willing to look for and appreciate our connections. If we could give some of that same appreciation and attention to people for whom we are not aware of connection, we would go a long way to developing harmonious community and all the benefits that flow from harmony.
So I suggest thinking of community as family. It has power and it is based in indesputable fact. Both maternal mtDNA and paternal Y-chromosome show that everyone carries genetic code of African origin. Humans’differing physical features – blonde or black hair, round or slanted eyes – are the effects of millennia of climactic influence and natural selection. We share a common genetic ancestry that far outweighs physical differences – 99.9 percent of all DNA is the same. Yet this does not prevent discrimination from infesting all corners of the world. To check discrimination’s advance, teachers could start by sharing with their students such scientific findings mentioned above. While knowledge alone cannot prevent prejudice, its spread can dampen the effect and show that we are interconnected not only through globalization, but also through ancestry. (Wikipedia)
