The End of the Family

All societies and States, are reflections of the family structure: Does this imply that a truly revolutionary process could only take place after we have re-structured, or transcended, the family form?

But how could any total restructuring of the family ever take place? Certainly, we have different kinds of families operating between the extended and nuclear forms, but in order to find anything radically different we would have to examine cultures which are less developed from a technological point-of-view.

For example, if we look at the traditional family structures of the hunter and gatherer tribes of Australian aborigines, we come across societies that seem incredibly complex from the perspective of our own WEIRD civilisation. On the surface this presents us with an irony: the less developed a culture is technologically, the more complex is its concept of kinship. And vice-versa: the complexity that advanced technologies impart on societies demands a simplification of family structures and responsibilities.

If this is so, could we conclude that the next socio-cultural leap our technological-society evolution will provoke will be a further simplification of the family and that eventually – in a not-so-distant future – the idea of the family will completely disappear opening the cultural field for the first time into the realm of authentic humanism.