Family: Indirect Involuntary Exposure to Ideas Good and Bad
Belonging to a family means having indirect involuntary exposure to ideas good and bad:
- Your uncle might be a dogecoin degen.
- Your (distant) relatives are asking your parents for money--they are always "starting a business" or asking them to fund their next idea
- An entire branch of your family are full of accomplished engineers and artists
One could make a graph. It would be bidirectional:
- edges are weighted
- positive influences are positive numbers
- negative influences are negative numbers
- multiplying force by how much time each node spends w other nodes
You could totally navigate your family by--
- traversing the edges, finding nodes
- developing stronger ties with the positive nodes
- rationing negative ties / strategically send back positive energy
Your family is a built in insurance policy against rainy days. This was evolutionarily beneficial.
- contribute to the rainy day bucket during ordinary times
- draw from the bucket during trying times
The fam has to have a verification mechanism to guard against fraud--this is what culture / religion is for.
Does this mean over time culture converges?
Ok, but where do black sheep go? Why do biological family have black sheep--what is the advantage there (from an evolution standpoint?) Not clear, but they should have all died off. There should be no black sheep of the family.
![vin diesel](/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic%2Fmedia%2Ffamily.e3a91388.jpeg&w=1920&q=75)
Unless. Black sheep are there to guard against groupthink.
As an aside-- Individuals are so revered in modern American culture, yet human beings are basically wired to be the same / overwhemlingly group-thinking, socially bound by rules of family/religion type people. Like who really is uniquely individual? Every "Successful Individual" drives a lambo...
We worship individuals but talented individuals self-aggregate and come from a collective pool of other talented individuals. All tech bros know each other. Same with comedians. Musicians seem to self-select.
No man is an island, but when you pee, you're a nation.
Family tries very hard to make you one of them. If you think/act too differently you should lose your privilege of accessing family resources. The trick is to be yourself while being part of the group.
Being self-reliant is a good strategy. To be a part of the group while being different--
- don't draw from the collective pool of resources
- actually contribute to the pool.