The Obsolescence of Family Ties and Interpersonal Social Ties

I remember many good classroom discussions during my college adjunct faculty years when I was teaching Sociology of Marriage and the Family. I recall thinking at the time of how the focus on family life seemed of less a priority to the typical college student in my classes on the subject than it was to previous generations.

Now onward to this entry -

The Obsolescence of Family Ties and Interpersonal Social Ties.

As more time has gone by, I am even more convinced that people no longer value family ties to any great extent; perhaps, I should clarify by specifying that statement is more applicable to the ties of family other than one's minor children or spouse.

The study of Marriage & Family Processes can be very interesting from an academe perspective. The observation of family interactions is even more interesting from a personal perspective; it is also very perplexing and troubling, or least it is to me as I see what I perceive as the deteriorating importance of extended family life.

The theme song of Family Ties enters my mind as I compose this commentary. That, in turn, leads me to express an analogy to that show. As the television series Family Ties went off the broadcast airwaves into the sunset, re-runs excepted, so has real life family ties totally dissolved as each person goes his or her own separate way as did the actress who portrayed the mother, Elyse Keaton in the television series Family Ties.

Real life interpersonal social ties are also obsolete, or so it seems to me, as I wrote in a couple years ago in Roland's Ramblings Law of Diminishing Returns, in which blog entry I closed with a link to Roland Hansen Commentary Social Network Services Diminish Family Life And Friendships.

I Don't Need No Stinking Independent Politicians!

People who want to elect more and more "independent" politicians unaffiliated with any political party must have their head up their keister. I mean, come on people, think. Or is that too difficult for you?

If you think it takes too long to get things done in Congress or the state legislature or the city council with those bodies basically composed of representatives from two major political parties, how long do you think it would take to get things done if the majority of those elected officials were "independent" and not affiliated with a political party????

The fact of the matter is very basic: "Independent" politicians have no common grounds on which to base their public policy decisions and in which to enact legislation. Their only commonality is that they are independent of political parties and of one another. Period!

Now, if you were to say, you are desirous of more independent-thinking politicians who have a common perspective with others who are part of a general coalition of people with varying beliefs but who belong to a political party with a set of planks of a political platform in which there is room for some differences in opinion and different levels of adherence, then I would wholeheartedly agree.

That's my take on it all, and I am sticking with it!

I Don't Need No Stinking Independent Politicians!