Reporter Volume 25, No.21 March 17, 1994

Dealing with the demise of family values
Editor:

In a March 3 article you interviewed Dr. John Wodarski who has
recently been appointed Research Professor in the School of Social
Work. I am not familiar with Dr. Wodarski's research outside of what I
read in the article, but there were some quotes attributed to him
which I cannot let pass without comment. He states that his work has
been mainly in research "on all the social problems of society" with a
focus on children and adolescents. He recounts the catastrophic
descent of our culture and emphasizes its terrible effect upon the
young. I agree with that analysis, but I disagree strongly with the
obvious and inevitable conclusions we must draw from two further
statements. First he says that "My research is basically
interventiveQit may not be productive to analyze why some people
behave the way they do... .We have to teach them to live in this
society." And a little further on: "I don't think the family is ever
going to be the same. I don't think we're going back."
	These views are clearly linked, and represent a widespread
counsel of desperation and bewilderment against which I must protest.
No amount of effort expended on the treatment of symptoms can ever of
itself reach the profoundly difficult and complex causes of this
terrible disease which Dr. Wodarski so eloquently describes. I must
also say that if we are to reach a collective decision to abandon the
family and its principal functionsQif we are to take this institution
from our children and grandchildrenQwe are obligated to show what we
shall give them in its place. What could it be, that has not already
been tried and found totally inadequate, or worse, actually
destructive of the most basic human values? I have no idea. But I do
know it would be far better to devote our energy to discover the
aetiology of the disease which afflicts the family and its youngest
members so grievously, and to try to effect a regeneration or
restoration of the family as the central institution of our
civilization. What we see before us, so maimed and disfigured, is our
future. We can either accept its crushing verdict upon us, or we can
try by all the powers we possess and all the creative responsibility
we can muster, to do something about it.
	Dr. Wodarski describes the symptoms very wellQterrific
self-absorption combined with self-esteem at a very low ebb; the
sickness of addictive and irresponsible behavior; the orgasmic
metaphor and all of its surrogates ruling in a world without past or
future, where the most intense and instantaneous pleasure becomes, in
a landscape of the eternal present, the highest criterion of judgment
and action. "Dr. Wodarski, when I killed that guy, it was the highest
rush."
	Of course, the trouble is that the family, or indeed any
institution which has as its intention the drawing together of past
and future, becomes meaningless and functionless in a society without
any past or future, which exists only within an imploded present. It
seems obvious that unless we can restore a real and vital sense of our
position both as the culmination of an ancient process of growth and
development, and at the same time as the starting point for the future
of humanity, we shall never be able to escape the kingdom of the
eternal present, and the meaninglessness and helplessness of its
subjects.
	This strongly implies that there exists an educational
imperative to restore for ourselves and our students an awareness of
how our past works through us, of our traditions in the largest sense,
and of our capacity to transform and transmit them to the future. This
is the beginning of a process by which we extend the dimensions of our
experience and creativity deeply into the past and deeply into the
future, so that by our deliberate intention and our work, we can
summon that future into our presence. It seems obvious to me that for
the prisoners of a timeless present, our rediscovery of both the past
and the future is essential for our reconstruction of a society with
lasting values; a society consisting of adults who can express their
highest creative responsibility as parents of the future.
	It also seems just as obvious that the only way to displace
the orgasmic metaphor as our judge and master is to create for
ourselves a joy that is greater and built from time: durable,
enduring, increasing, unselfish, generating the future. It can be
done. The models are everywhere. But we must first want to do this,
and to move beyond mere crisis response and damage control.

Thomas Barry
Classics