Please Note : Changed Filial relations to Family relations in the topic title
So I was wondering this thing about filial relations like “mother” or “brother”
Just as a country doesn’t exist in actuality so does a family not exist in actuality - both may feel like some sort of a “physical volume” of which I am a part of…like those mathematical “Sets” shapes that are drawn with the individual members inside it…I know for a fact that there is no such physical volume that actually exists, hence neither a country nor a family actually exists
But here is where it has me confused - I have physically come out of my biological mother’s womb and I also share the physical DNA with my biological family ( aka parents and siblings), so something about a mother or a brother etc seems to be actually present…unlike say a country which is a complete fiction. I know that they are of the same specie and in this sense they are individual fellow human beings, but having this actual biological connection(DNA etc) makes me think there is something that is actual about a “mother” or a “brother”…
So whats the fiction when it comes to filial relations like “mother” or “brother”…like how a “country” is a total fiction ?
on the most basic, bodily level: you share slightly more DNA with them than with most. biologically, this means very little (it probably means you will not feel inclined to have sex with any of them, but that’s about it)
what do you mean by “actual”? you actually came from your mother’s womb, and your brother actually did as well. you were raised together, that’s real. you likely have much familiarity with each other as a result.
anything that is not the fact of your biology and raising is a story. this includes all values around family and any meaning you attach to family bonds beyond the simple facts stated above
Thanks @scout … I think I’m finally getting to something deeper now…
There is an actual flesh n blood body for both mother and son where the DNA is shared but thats not where the interaction is happening in reality.
In the real world, it’s one fictional role interacting with another fictional role…these roles rest upon fictional rules laid by the society such as “mother should do this” … “son should do that” … the society itself is a fiction so the rules are just human rules and thereby also a fiction…and consequently the roles created are also complete fictions.
So the identity which is this role such as “mother” or “son” are all complete fictions…underneath that are actual flesh n blood bodies where there are no roles such as “mother” or “son”
I remember exploring something similar a while ago and I can kinda summarise it by - there is no ‘hard boundaries’ in actuality.
As in family, gender, nationality and other identifications are felt to be some ‘hard boundary’ that ultimately demarcates one from another, it is felt to be something of substance, some ultimate divider.
The funny thing I observe with the current madness of identifying as whatever you please is that it seems the current generation instead of demolishing the boundaries themselves, they have just split them into infinite new numbers. So now ‘I’ can identify as a million things and apparently they all have some ‘hard boundary’ between each other.
So I might be missing a leg and now I am part of the ‘disabled group’. But at the same time I might have blonde hair and for some reason I don’t end up identifying as the ‘blonde group’.
Ultimately this is all just arbitary, there are human beings that share similar characteristics, this is a fact. But then there is this extra thing that ‘I’ do where I begin to draw this ‘hard boundary’ with those who share this particular characteristic.
In actuality yes it is a fact that I will share more DNA with my brother but that’s it, I also share more DNA with a monkey vs a banana.
I guess this habit of creating these ‘hard boundaries’ is the expression of the herding instinct in humans. It’s the projection of ‘self’ vs ‘other’ into ‘my group’ vs ‘others’.
Which is also why inevitably conflict arises between the groups, they are the projection of ‘my’ boundaries which ‘I’ am driven to passionately defend.
On the grand scale this ends up with ‘humanity’ that is just as separated from the ‘empty universe’ as ‘I’ am fundamentally separated.
Then the only other way this can grow further lol is by us now looking for alien life, the last chance for ‘humanity’ to belong with something else out there haha. It’s crazy how Richard was able to pin this stuff so damn well.
There was this thing about filial identity that I knew was lurking underneath from a long time…like something I never had the sincerity n courage to look at squarely…but once we had those recent discussions on love, where I was talking about having demolished large parts of national identity etc merely by seeing them as fictions, I thought maybe I can see something similarly about filial relationships from the same fictional angle…
