On Blood
Introduction
Today I want to talk about blood. It’s importance, why the fact it’s meaningless today is the cause of many woes of modern society, why it must become sacred anew.
Today the word “family” has lost almost all meaning. Your family isn’t your blood, it isn’t your relatives, your immediate ancestors and descendants, or siblings, it need not have both parents, or could have more. It might have two fathers or two mothers, hell, for some family is synonymous with friendship. This vision of the family is perfectly portrayed by the aptly named show “Modern Family”, featuring remarriage with large age gaps, and a gay couple with an adopted daughter. Thus family today seems to be defined as “a loose affiliation of entities, tied by love”. Notice the term entities, and not human beings, as many today consider their pets part of their family, some go as far as to call their pets their “kids”.
You might be inclined to ask, why is this view of family problematic? Isn’t it great that people have let go of defining family based on immutable characteristics which are nothing but the result of fate (i.e. your blood relations) and have come to a more simple definition, one based on love? After all, strictly blood based families can fail in the love department, be abusive, absent, or even dead. If one has a brother, in the literal sense, but doesn’t know him well, has never really talked to him due to a large age gap, and has only lad negative experiences with him, chief of which being his brother’s apathy regarding him. Why, might one ask, should this warrant the name of “brother” which points usually to love, and cherishment, whilst the childhood best friend, who has always been there through hardships, you love like a brother should be loved, and whom you spent all your life with, isn’t he a better candidate for brother? The answer is, that blood relations are important not in spite of the fact that they are unchosen, but in fact because of it.
You see, if we let love become the glue with which our societies are built, love will fail us. Love is not strong enough, love fades, hurts ensue, difficulties arise and hearts are broken. Love isn’t strong enough to hold a family together, let alone a country. Sure, you say, but, granting my point, why should we still value relationships wherein there is no more love? What is the point?
The point is this: The bums on the street, those who commit suicide alone in their apartments, only found days later due to the smell, those who are abusers of substances, those who have no one there for them, who have no relationships. There is only a single relationship they cannot not have: blood. However far away, everyone has a relative, orphans can be in the difficult predicament of not knowing these people, but for most it isn’t difficult to find a relative.
In a society where family is valued, and blood is sacred, dishonor falls upon he whom doesn’t come to the aid of his blood. It is a categorical imperative imposed by society to help these people, whether you know them, whether you love them or not. This means that in turn you know that no matter what happens, no matter how hard things become, no matter how many friends you lose, you cannot lose relatives, but to death.
I may hear an objection for blood relations, when it comes to marriage. For this is a relationship which is chosen, and yet is still considered a blood relation. The marital institution actually exists solely for this purpose, i.e. making a relationship that is chosen elevated to the rank of blood. If love were enough for relationships, being lovers would have sufficed in human societies, and yet, the institution of marriage is quasi-universal in human societies. So they clearly saw a need for it.
The divorce rates rising is often said to be because people choose badly. And while this is no doubt a factor, another is that marriage has lost it’s sacrality. Because, how is it then that in the modern day where people choose has higher divorce rates than the past where people were often in arranged marriages. People also take longer to make the choice, living for a while before finally finding “the one”. Of course one could state this has to do with the fact that divorce has become legal, and religious stigma against it is no longer a powerful motivator to stay in a problematic relationship. However, this would be true only for christian society. Indeed the 1.8 billion Muslims living today have always had divorce allowed, and favored to bad relations since the prophet Muhammad PBUH 1400 years ago. And yet their divorce rates, whether in Muslim majority countries, or in christian countries, is extremely low.
If marriage is simply seen as a title to assert one’s love for their spouse, then surely, since love fades, or hardships come and the loved one can be the cause of said hardships, or one comes to find comfort elsewhere than in the relationship, than the entire raison-d’être of the marriage is gone. Might as well divorce and remarry. When marriage is however seen as a union of bloods. A sacred ritual witnessed by God, to join two bloodlines together, (which is why marriage has had extremely large political significance in the past) which is only actualized once children are brought into the world (and therefore that is a key goal of marriage, i.e. reproduction) it links the destinies of these two bloodlines. They are through their children: mixed, become one. Marriage is then of course not the final step of a relationship, but the beginning, for to have a link as strong as brotherhood with someone you share no blood with, you have to make a vow to let this union never falter, till death do you part, regardless of the difficulties, exactly like a blood relation. This beginning of a relationship starts before living together, before children, and before intimacy, which makes the act of bringing new blood into the world a sacred act, this is why it must be restrained to the marriage, for sex is not an exchange of two bodies pleasuring each other. That’s a byproduct. Sex, is a miraculous act, capable of bringing a fully thinking, feeling, and free-willed human being into existence. One to whom you will be linked by blood. Thus once children are brought into the world, it seals the marriage truly, as your bloodlines have finally become one. When faced with the question of staying and helping their spouse regardless of the difficulties, one is then bound by their vows (The fact we even make vows is a sign of the importance such a relationship must have. But since people break vows all the time, marriage becomes meaningless.) to do it.
On the topic of adoption, one may wonder whether such relationships are akin then, to the relationships with your blood-children. The answer is, that you can love these kids as much as you want, give them everything parents would, have pride in their achievements, and watch them grow, you still are not their parent. They are not your kids. When parents die and kids come to live under the guardianship of their aunt or uncle, grandparents, or other relatives, they do not ask the children to now be called mom and dad. And yet that does not prevent them from giving to their nieces and nephews as mush as they would give to their own children.
There are many horrors and pains in the life of adopted children. The first being learning that they are adopted. An incredibly painful news to hear, that they have called mom and dad, only caretakers, but not their true parents. The second pain is not being able to meet their birth parents. It’s also the incomprehension of their adoptive parents of this biological need to meet your parents, the fact they tout “ we are your parents, please forget about them”. The third and final pain is when and if they learn that they have any other family, be it uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, all people whom they will often be forbidden from meeting until they reach maturity, in an effort to preserve the integrity of an adoptive family, to protect these parents from having “their” child go away to his birth parents, we prevent these kids from finding their true family.
Conclusion
Some will probably read my imposing tone, my maxim-like phrases, and question me on the existence of exceptions to my claims. Of course their are exceptions, but it is a mistake commonly made today to equate the regular case and the exception, whilst it is more just and more correct to see the exception as confirming the rule for all the other cases. For an exception is as it is named: exceptional, it comes from abnormal circumstances, and thus one can make generalisations, if they suppose general conditions.
Firstly, whilst one should sacralise blood, and favor blood relations, and help family regardless of love, this of course is subject to justice. Do not help your brother in committing crimes, or hiding crimes from the law, do not lie for his sake in court. On the other hand do not feel obligated to help he who puts you or your family in danger. Similarly, while a marriage should stay together no matter how hard the situation becomes, and they must make all their efforts to stay together; if love turns to hatred, resentment, anguish, or if one spouse is abusive, or if infidelity occurs, and you can no longer trust your spouse to be loyal to this union, then you are entirely within your right to divorce.
So with these disclaimers out of the way, I call upon you to rekindle lost relations with your relatives. Make blood important anew, realise marriage is sacred and why it is, and if blood becomes important to everyone, then it will bring immense aid to our society.
Originally published at https://neosapien.xyz on September 8, 2022.