The Family Purse

Our money is family money… really. It is one big pot from which each takes as needed. This is radically different from the independent model upon which my parents raised me. I did chores for which I got a salary. I suppose the idea here is to prepare the me (their child) for the employer – employee relationship that would lie ahead.

That was not to be my model for raising my kids. Here, everyone in the family did / does ‘chores’, but not as some ‘job’, but rather as part of what needs doing as part of practical daily living. A shared life involves shared responsibility (which makes life feel more shared). Here, each takes on what they are most naturally capable of doing. ‘It happened to us naturally.’

Having nature as my model, along with experience, has taught me that turning over to kids as much responsibility as they can handle, regardless of their age, makes them feel more responsible, and thus, I reckon, makes life more meaningful. I know that was my parents aim; they just didn’t understand that their approach often hindered this. Having the opportunity to have responsibility is the most direct way to feel connected and participating with others.  Needless to say, this fosters core life satisfaction and mental health. Perhaps the failure of culture to offer this avenue to kids is what makes drugs an attractive escape.

Over the years I’ve noticed a common desire to not delegate responsibility, but rather maintain control. I guess this stems from an innate paternalistic and materialistic instincts to control the situation, i.e., ‘protect’ us from ourselves and the mistakes we might make. The fact is, however, the control and responsibility go together. Giving one more responsibility means giving them more control and the freedom to stumble.

This short video about a 78-year old blind man living with his 13 family members in India and how they share one bank account hints at something our culture abandoned in its obsessive pursuit of self reliance. Ironically, we seem to be even more inclined to not take individual responsibility, but instead point the finger and ’sue their pants off’. I’ve heard people refer to our country increasingly becoming a ‘nanny state’.

Of course to be fair, our country is not alone in that by any means. My point is that the virtue of  ‘independence’ is an illusion. We are a socially interdependent species, period. Pushing an essentially un-natural virtue of ‘independence’ onto a people will always backfire. As that old TV add use to say, its not nice to fool Mother Nature. Why do we do it? Somehow it ties in with modern society which is set up to meet the needs of a capitalist, consumer oriented, growth based civilization. All I can say is, this is something which is liable to rebound. I mean, global warming may be the least of our problems going forward. But no worries, Mother Nature will rebalance it in the long run.