> This is very interesting, and brings to mind something I've been struggling with recently (I'm USA-ian by the way). As a father I want to instill in my children a sense of self reliance, a sense that they can go into the world and make their own way, and be successful, without my help. In my world view, that is the best gift I can give them.
Me too. I have spent more than 1/2 my life in the US, though I have one Indian parent and one parent from a culture where families have, for lack of a better term, "collective success" (as you put it well, "my wealth as their wealth, or my success as their success.")
But I moved out at 16 and feel that my life now, decades later, is the life _I_ made. And my son is perfectly happy knowing that he won't inherit a penny (I find even the concept of "estate planning" grotesque and anti-republican).
None of this should imply I am any sort of Randian libertarian. I was incredibly lucky to be born in a wealthy country not at war, to have been able to go through a excellent school systems, and to have had a stable family and to have spent most of my working life in western democracies. It certainly has bred an orientation to be of benefit to society and to support my own child to be self reliant and also to be, I hope, a net contributor to society as well.
But the atavistic desire to emphasize obligations within a family is to me a sign of a weakness in a society.
Me too. I have spent more than 1/2 my life in the US, though I have one Indian parent and one parent from a culture where families have, for lack of a better term, "collective success" (as you put it well, "my wealth as their wealth, or my success as their success.")
But I moved out at 16 and feel that my life now, decades later, is the life _I_ made. And my son is perfectly happy knowing that he won't inherit a penny (I find even the concept of "estate planning" grotesque and anti-republican).
None of this should imply I am any sort of Randian libertarian. I was incredibly lucky to be born in a wealthy country not at war, to have been able to go through a excellent school systems, and to have had a stable family and to have spent most of my working life in western democracies. It certainly has bred an orientation to be of benefit to society and to support my own child to be self reliant and also to be, I hope, a net contributor to society as well.
But the atavistic desire to emphasize obligations within a family is to me a sign of a weakness in a society.