On the one hand, I praise family: not exactly praise it, but praise the optimism of it.
On the other hand, the institution in no way deserves to be let off the hook. It's a prison from which there is no release but one's attitude toward it. For most of us, family is as much a burden as a bond: hopefully 49% burden/51% bond, but there's no guarantee of that. In dealing with them you feel hope for your life and dreams slipping away year by as they demand ever more of your autonomy until your will is just an extension of theirs and your hopes for your own life are utterly crushed and there is no getting back the lost decades: by that time, you're so demoralized that we don't have the mental presence of mind to lift ourselves to what we want out of life even an inch, and pretty soon thereafter, many of us become the oppressor rather than the oppressed.
Do they manipulate consciously? I don't know. Does it matter?
What's ultimately unfair about this is that for the vast majority of humanity, we know this from the time we're small children. By 7 or 8, you know exactly who the narcissists are. They're the people you're desperate to hang out with in spite of feeling miserable in their company, and they fundamentally dictate the terms of our lives from cradle to grave, even by running away from them, they still dictate our lives; and by the time we have the opportunity to live a life for ourselves, we don't have the morale to do better.
The ones who do have morale to do better are lucky enough to be born to circumstances that let them stretch their wings as far as they go: be it through a supportive environment or merciful heredity. But the most unfair part of existence is simply that success breeds success, failure breeds failure.
And what does it take to go from failure to success? Ironically, it takes an engine of utter selfishness, a family catalyst who is an utterly diagnosable narcissist and often wears their Selflessness with a capital S, cares not a bit for human feeling, and deliberately poisons the wells of immediate close relatives autonomy so that he or she may maintain their dominion over them: because so unsatisfied are they with their lives that if they have no one to dominate, they would collapse into a black hole. They love, but their love is a love of possessions.
Not all narcissists are terribly ambitious people, but I'd venture any amount of money that a VASTLY disproportionate number of ambitious people are narcissists.
We all know some versions of these people: come on. As I said, some statistics show that 7% of the world population is narcissists: and I utterly believe it. Some of us have known dozens upon dozens of them. Hopefully, some of them are kept up at night with the fear that this person is us. I suppose there's a small chance that exonerates some of us, but if there is no difference in actions between a person incapable of empathy and a person who acts out of emotional desperation, does it matter?
We all know them. And, ultimately, we all know who they are. Whether it's your parent, your child, your sibling, your spouse your friend or your lover, these people poison happiness because they have a compulsive need to dominate. And the domination does not stop when their objects of derision aren't there, these are the people who try to poison the people they dominate in the minds of others.
And yet, here is the paradox. So many of these people of toxicity and arrogance are the engine which lifts families out of failure to success. And the satisfied lives that their grandchildren often have are made possible because of the chronic campaigns of shame to which they subject their spouses and children. Ironically, it often DOES lead to better lives, but it does not lead to better lives for their children. What profit it a man to gain the world if he lose his soul? But these children, having lived lives of outward prosperity and interpersonal misery, swear on their lives to do better for the closest people in their lives, and they do it. So ultimately, there is some dimension in which these narcissists are a kind of hero.
In the Bible, this is the trajectory of the story from Abraham to Joseph, and this may ultimately be the trajectory of the Israeli people.
I lived in Israel for a year, and if naricissism is endemic in 7% of the world population, it must be at least twice as high in Israel: 14%? 40%? 140%?
Just as the success of New York and LA is powered by tornadoes of ambition, so then is Israel.
Israel is a bonded family of people who make each other utterly miserable.
And yet the new generation is the 2nd happiest people on Earth!
As happens from lifetime to lifetime, there is always a new founder's generation during which the world completely resets in a hail of instability: in the 1780s absolute monarchy was deposed, in the 1860s slavery was ended, in the 1940s a new middle class was made, and in the 2030s? Well, there's a whole world looking to interconnect, looking to lift themselves into Western prosperity, and far more united in their goals than we are.
And as World War II departs from living memory, so then does the entire ethos it set for the world. In America, the frugality of the depression, the passion for stability and norms, the belief in democracy, and the belief in individual rights, and, paradoxically, the simultaneous belief in the importance of community.
The truth exists out there, but we are so infinitesimally far from knowing it. Until then, the truth is not discovered but made :: built :: a peaceful order constructed from the chaos of conflict. What matters is not the ethos itself, but that the ethos is shared: that there are shared norms of how to determine the truth, what etiquette is, what is comforting and what is hurtful. Over the course of a lifetime, some countries gain that ability, and some countries lose it.
America was once polite because we had that shared consensus. In the Ages of Jackson and Grant, we were a deeply rude and vulgar people, but by the Ages of Roosevelt and Eisenhower, we were the nicest people on earth. Hypocrites? Perhaps; but we managed to convince ourselves we were happy. but over 80 years we have lost that consenseus and it will take at least a lifetime to get it back. In the meantime, we have become rude again.
Israel has always been the rudest country on earth in precisely the way people are that when they're desperately unhappy, but suddenly, everybody's happy! The elderly in Israel are (irony alert) #18 in happiness: that may seem high but it's a mildly low total relative to its per-capita prosperity. But now, young people are #2?
What changed was the variable that creates the deepest unity of all. More Israeli Jews are now people of color than white: more than 50% of Israel is now Jews of Middle Eastern/Northern African descent, not European. The secular revolution came barely more to them than it came to other Middle Eastern countries. Among Israelis over 65, 15% of Israelis are religious. Among Israelis under 30, 62% are religious!
These are easily verifiable claims and that total will only grow in the next few generations.
Even as Israel reaches a height of international contempt, a mixture of prosperity and religion puts it on a trajectory to be the most satisfied nation on earth.
But just as Pharaohs come who know not Joseph, the world's contempt is likely to eventually erode Israeli prosperity, and eventually erode Israeli happiness. In tough circumstances, the Jews of Israel are likely to turn ever more to God, and as their opportunities dwindle, what then would make them different than the Palestinians they subjugate?
What of Israel's neighbors? The World Happiness Index lists Palestine as the 103rd happiest country on earth. If you think that's low, Jordan: 125, Egypt: 127, Lebanon: 145, and Syria has no place in the index due to its long civil war.
What makes these countries so unhappy? Is it Israel? Maybe a little: there is, of course, that theory that the Middle East is the one part of the world that does not progress in political functionality because Israel snuffs out progress in its infancy by supporting sympathetic absolutist rulers and parties.
But before I hand the fanatics among you yet another bad theory about the Middle East you've never heard of, consider the damage they did on their own.
If the Israeli government is as practical as it seems, it has no interest in provoking and prolonging civil wars on their borders. It's the easiest thing in the world for civil conflict to spread. Lebanon: a 15 year civil war on Israel's northern border from '75 to '90 of which Israel had minimal interference until year 7: generally agreed upon death toll: about 150,000. Syria: a civil war on Israel's northwestern border from 2008 to 2023: generally agreed upon death toll: 625,000.
Egypt? 90% observant Muslim, but ruled for 80 years by a series of secularist Muslim dictators. Modern Egypt's had no civil war, but if the Arab Spring proved one thing, it is that relax the dictator's hold on Egypt, and Civil War would be as likely there as in Syria. Liberals thought it was a new day for Egypt, but polls show that only 5% of Egyptians want democracy. One third of Egyptian citizens support the Muslim Brotherhood--a banned political party agitating for an Islamic dictatorship. When Egypt had its one basically free election (who knows), 47% of legislative seats went to the Muslim brotherhood, and another 25% went to the still more fundamentalist al-Noor Islamic party. Meanwhile, 40% of Egyptians claim to support the dictatorship.
Some of these countries are unhappy because they mourn their lost loved ones, others are unhappy because they fear losing their loved ones, but the presence of civil conflict, either through loss or fear, is as poison for happiness as family conflict.
So it is my theory (for now, at least) that what ultimately causes unhappiness is division: the constant sense that you have to fight every day for what you believe and that every day is a constant struggle. Our lives attain purpose and meaning through struggle, but don't trust any leader who tells you you attain happiness through struggle.
Palestine? You may think the struggle unites them, but in their one election, Hamas attained power with barely more seats than the other party Fatah. Even after three years of Hamas leading a struggle, Hamas can only get 35% of people to say they approve of the job they're doing even as it could be death to criticize Hamas, and only 41% of Palestinians say they prefer Hamas to any alternative. 24% of Palestinians still go for Fatah, and 32% seem to hold both in contempt.
Even as the world hates Israel, the new generation of Israelis is more united than ever before. One killed person on October 7th didn't have anyone to mourn them, when that was broadcast, 20,000 Israelis came to the funeral. At the funeral of the Bibas kids, deliberately killed in captivity, so many tens of thousands showed up for the procession that the figure was literally uncountable.
On the Israeli rememberance day for soldiers who die in Israeli service, the entire country stops for as sirens blast like shofars. One minute the day of, two minutes after. It is a custom that Israelis in their cars literally stop in the middle of the road, open their doors and stand at attention.
This is a country where people literally speed up when encountering pedestrians and yell at you that you shouldn't be walking in the road.
