In this Chapter we are concerned mainly with human development.
In respect of supporting families in distress two aspects of human development, or, if you like, anthropological branches are relevant. These are the social/cultural and the legal/justice branches.
But before we explore those it might be interesting to describe what life might have been like thousands of years ago before any history was written down, and before civilisation as we know it nowadays came to be.
At that time societies were very much in tune with all aspects of not only nature, but the natural world as I described it in the Introduction. Much of this website is concerned with awareness of that world.
Also, there is a lot of evidence to indicate that the day to day pressures (the stress and strain described in the previous Chapter) of the modern world are causative factors in many of the mental illnesses and much of the emotional distress that occurs nowadays.
In other words, their incidence may be more down to environmental and cultural factors than factors intrinsic to us humans. (Though, you may argue, it was factors-intrinsic-to–us-humans that caused us to construct both our environment and culture over many millenia to what it is today)……….
Neither is it a big step to conclude that neurosis, mental distress, addiction and high anxiety among those of us who care for children may also be causative factors in our being out of tune with children’s needs.
As an aside, and without doubt, some of our neuroses, fears and anxieties were imprinted tens of thousands of years ago.
Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs and Steel cleverly proposes that this might explain why we are afraid of spiders and snakes – that rarely if ever kill us – and not cars – that kill millions of us. (Though to challenge Jared a little on this one; I believe that another factor is that we are in control of a car, but not in control of a snake, which leads us to – falsely – assume that we are safe hurtling along the road covering fifty meters every second in a metal box)!
There is also the fact that we are afraid of (and get totally panicky actually) in the face of viruses like Covid 19 but we seem to be in denial of the dire consequences of global warming that might kill tens of millions of us – indeed some might say make our planet uninhabitable.
All the above are fears of our physical safety – which, of course, cannot be ignored when we think of how we feel.
However, I will be focusing on many of our deeper psychological and emotional fears and anxieties that are undoubtedly of more modern origin and come from our obsession with our place in society, our image, and ultimately what many describe as our class.