Hanging onto Concepts or Changing Them

Abstract

The word elevate is understood in terms of Hegelian dialectics as both preserving and changing at the same time. Here we find connecting points with conflicts. Preserved concepts strengthen the family loyalty; changed concepts go hand in hand with a process of detachment or restructuring of the family. The relationship between two generations becomes the welding joint of tradition. There are various kinds of loyalty and thus a loyalty conflict. It can become an insurmountable problem if one has to choose between the father’s suggestion and the mother’s, for example. Such a decision is accompanied by direct and immediate consequences: “My daughter has become the same kind of slob as my wife. When I see her running around in her rags, I can’t help being angry,” says a forty-three-year-old civil servant who grew up in a family of government officials and married a musician. In a similar way, family loyalties can become conflicts when the partners cling to their concepts while no one is willing to relinquish his responsibilities to his family origin, even if such a change would enable the partnership to forge a new identiy: “My husband is just as pedantic as his father. He expects me to be just as fussy. I’m proud of the fact that my parents raised me in an easygoing way and that warmth and social interaction were more important to them than good grades in school,” says the wife of the government official as she describes the problem as she sees it..

Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

—Rabbinic saying