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This is ultimately a dichotomy between having the family unit or "the state" as the central point of governance. Many totalitarian regimes looked at newborns as

This is ultimately a dichotomy between having the family unit or "the state" as the central point of governance. Many totalitarian regimes looked at newborns as "belonging to the state". The result is a unified mass person who dresses, thinks and acts in predictable ways. The more power, personal connection and influence parents have over their children, the more diverse society will become.

dqv 2y ago
What? What does this have to do with orphaned children?
- rgrieselhuber 2y ago
  It’s not a reference to orphans.
  - dqv 2y ago
    Then I'm completely lost on how it is relevant to an article that specifically mentions the care of orphans as its central example for how care does not scale.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - spwa4 2y ago
      I think the idea is that many totalitarian systems treat every child as an orphan, in some cases taking them physically away from their parents and then have people look after the children as a job. Hence the comparable situation. And, of course, all such systems I've ever read about do not care about the practical limitation of 1 caretaker per 1 child. I believe youth services in the Netherlands, for example, has 1 caretaker (effectively available to the child) per 15 children, or 7 or 8 if they're trouble. Does this work? No, of course not. They don't care. The kids grow up caring for nobody, probably because effectively nobody cares for them. One person watching 15 children can only hope to prevent disasters, if that, they cannot provide decent attention to children. By the standards of this article, there's probably 2 people who work in the same "group". If there's a third one, they will be shared between at least to groups. So 2 to 2.5 per 15 children ... comes to one parent figure per 7 children, which is a third to a fourth of the care children would receive in even a huge family, and much less than in a small family.
      - orwin 2y ago
        > I think the idea is that many totalitarian systems treat every child as an orphan This idea is just wrong. Wrong isn't strong enough, it's conterfactual. At most some of them treated female bodies as owned by the state. I do not remember any example of totalitarian society where a child of a political opposant would be treated the same as any military child. Maybe Salazar? But even then, it was so corporate-aligned I doubt children from owners were treated the same as children from workers at anytime.
kubb 2y ago
Totalitarian regimes often uphold traditional values like family as a means of control, promoting unity and loyalty to the state-yet they’ll redefine these values whenever it suits their ideology.
- username332211 2y ago
  That's not really true. Marxism-Leninism famously sought to abolish the family and the Soviet union performed quite a few experiments in communal rearing of children in it's early years. The reason why totalitarian regimes end up promoting traditional values relations is that to them the only imperative superior to ideology is survival. There is a reason the Soviet Union backed off from it's repression of religion in the middle of WW2.
  - kubb 2y ago
    Early Soviet Union did try to reshape family, but it went back on it eventually, seeing the value of the conservative family model in building social cohesion and loyalty.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Expressed differently: they tried to abolish the family, found that doing so created more problems then they solved, and backed off in order to avoid tearing their country apart. They discovered that in some things doing nothing is better than doing something, but Westerners of all political stripes (both for or against authoritarianism) chronically make the mistake of assuming that everything that a totalitarian state does is done with some grand plan in mind rather than them just flailing about to find a centralized policy that kinda-sorta works. Your comment reminds me a lot of modern speculation about China's grand plans. Sometimes a government chooses not to touch something because they learned from bad experience that they'll break it if they do, not because they're playing 4D chess manipulating it behind the scenes.
      - kubb 2y ago
        I don’t think they ever tried to “abolish family”. Where are you getting this stuff? It sounds like bad history lessons. They did stuff like legalizing divorce, or collectivization of parenting.
geysersam 2y ago
A false dichotomy some would call that. Children can be raised in units different from the current western perception of "the" family unit. Besides, what countries are you talking about? Have you ever been there and met the uniform mass persons?
- bluetomcat 2y ago
  > Have you ever been there and met the uniform mass persons? I was born in Eastern Europe in a society headed in this direction. I observed its transformation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. You felt the overarching power of the state from as early as the kindergarten. Signs of individuality were suppressed and all children were supposed to do things "the right way". When such an institution decided that a child "systematically misbehaves", it was able to take the child away from its parents in another orphanage-like institution that was supposed to teach them good socialist manners. Eventually some of them would end up seriously harassed, physically-ill and sent to an anonymous grave in the backyard of that institution.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    I grew up in the USSR, and in the kindergarten, our teacher actually tried to convince us that the correct 5 year old kid's answer to the question, "which person do you love the most?" ought to be Lenin, and not e.g. "mom". That said, in practice, the quality of indoctrination was extremely variable for the same reason why it was variable for everything else - most people weren't really buying into it themselves, and so even if they were in a position where they were expected to indoctrinate, they did the bare minimum that was demanded of them, which usually wasn't very convincing. I didn't get to witness it as an adult, but according to my mother, by the time you were old enough for Komsomol, very few still had their rose-tinted glasses on.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Did you read the article? "Care" doesn't scale. You can't just replace "the family" with some industrialized system of raising children and get the same results. Not being able to scale "care" and make it more efficient is almost tautological, really. > Besides, what countries are you talking about? North Korea? Former Soviet Union? At the very least appearance of conformity was ruthlessly enforced and even private conversations were infiltrated to detect dissent.
peepee1982 2y ago
You’re describing the extremes on a spectrum, but you only go to one of the extremes, which exposes your bias. And it’s a false dichotomy to begin with, since shifting more care work towards society doesn’t equate to a path toward totalitarianism. You’re conflating socialism with totalitarianism. Understandable, but misguided. Frankly, your whole premise is based on a capitalist narrative that keeps workers in their place because individual care work is so inefficient—it drains energy that could otherwise be channeled into organizing worker councils to balance out the power now disproportionately held by banks, IT corporations, political parties, and the military-industrial complex. I’m aware that I may come across as an arrogant prick in this comment. I wish I had more time to craft a friendlier response with more sources and explanation, but I simply don’t. I need to work to feed my children and their mother, but anyway, here’s a reading list for anyone who’s interested: "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?" by Mark Fisher - Fisher discusses how capitalism has permeated every aspect of life, including care work, and critiques the idea that alternatives like socialism lead to totalitarianism. "Workers of the World: Essays Toward a New History of the Working Class" by Philip A. H. G. D. Van der Linden - This collection explores the historical context of labor movements and the importance of organizing against disproportionate power structures. "The Care Crisis: What’s Wrong with Care and How to Fix It" by the Institute of Public Policy Research - This report outlines the societal implications of care work and its impact on worker organization. "Wages for Housework" by Silvia Federici - Federici argues for the recognition and compensation of domestic labor, linking it to broader struggles against capitalist exploitation.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > shifting more care work towards society doesn’t equate to a path toward totalitarianism There are plenty of reasons to believe that yes, it does. This is something that is almost completely unknown (except on the extremes). And history has those two coupled in very complex, hard to understand ways.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Could you tell us what you are referring to? Almost every developed country provides a lot of care via government.
fph 2y ago
You are assuming all family influence is good. There are lots of abusive families and poor parents, though.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  He is (or perhaps he's ignoring that issue). But when a totalitarian government is abusive, it affects all the families, not just the bad ones.
  - svieira 2y ago
    Our principal exports, all labelled and packed, At the ends of the earth are delivered intact: Our soap or our salmon can travel in tins Between the two poles and as like as two pins; So that Lancashire merchants whenever they like Can water the beer of a man in Klondike Or poison the meat of a man in Bombay; And that is the meaning of Empire Day. Songs of Education: II. Geography by G. K. Chesterton
- sabarn01 2y ago
  In general people take care of their kids. In general the family is good you can always find edge cases.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by that. What does 'good' mean? What ratio are not 'good'? And where does it all come from? Our personal experiences could be very misleading about what others go through.
  - fph 2y ago
    > According to recent statistics, 70%-80% of Americans consider their families dysfunctional. https://mcnultycounseling.com/moving-past-dysfunctional-families/ https://mcnultycounseling.com/moving-past-dysfunctional-fami...
    - sabarn01 2y ago
wolvesechoes 2y ago
"The result is a unified mass person who dresses, thinks and acts in predictable ways." Like in the Democratic, liberal West, where everyone's individuality is created by consuming the same stuff?

dqv 2y ago

What? What does this have to do with orphaned children?

rgrieselhuber 2y ago
It’s not a reference to orphans.
- dqv 2y ago
  Then I'm completely lost on how it is relevant to an article that specifically mentions the care of orphans as its central example for how care does not scale.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - spwa4 2y ago
    I think the idea is that many totalitarian systems treat every child as an orphan, in some cases taking them physically away from their parents and then have people look after the children as a job. Hence the comparable situation. And, of course, all such systems I've ever read about do not care about the practical limitation of 1 caretaker per 1 child. I believe youth services in the Netherlands, for example, has 1 caretaker (effectively available to the child) per 15 children, or 7 or 8 if they're trouble. Does this work? No, of course not. They don't care. The kids grow up caring for nobody, probably because effectively nobody cares for them. One person watching 15 children can only hope to prevent disasters, if that, they cannot provide decent attention to children. By the standards of this article, there's probably 2 people who work in the same "group". If there's a third one, they will be shared between at least to groups. So 2 to 2.5 per 15 children ... comes to one parent figure per 7 children, which is a third to a fourth of the care children would receive in even a huge family, and much less than in a small family.
    - orwin 2y ago
      > I think the idea is that many totalitarian systems treat every child as an orphan This idea is just wrong. Wrong isn't strong enough, it's conterfactual. At most some of them treated female bodies as owned by the state. I do not remember any example of totalitarian society where a child of a political opposant would be treated the same as any military child. Maybe Salazar? But even then, it was so corporate-aligned I doubt children from owners were treated the same as children from workers at anytime.

kubb 2y ago

Totalitarian regimes often uphold traditional values like family as a means of control, promoting unity and loyalty to the state-yet they’ll redefine these values whenever it suits their ideology.

username332211 2y ago
That's not really true. Marxism-Leninism famously sought to abolish the family and the Soviet union performed quite a few experiments in communal rearing of children in it's early years. The reason why totalitarian regimes end up promoting traditional values relations is that to them the only imperative superior to ideology is survival. There is a reason the Soviet Union backed off from it's repression of religion in the middle of WW2.
- kubb 2y ago
  Early Soviet Union did try to reshape family, but it went back on it eventually, seeing the value of the conservative family model in building social cohesion and loyalty.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Expressed differently: they tried to abolish the family, found that doing so created more problems then they solved, and backed off in order to avoid tearing their country apart. They discovered that in some things doing nothing is better than doing something, but Westerners of all political stripes (both for or against authoritarianism) chronically make the mistake of assuming that everything that a totalitarian state does is done with some grand plan in mind rather than them just flailing about to find a centralized policy that kinda-sorta works. Your comment reminds me a lot of modern speculation about China's grand plans. Sometimes a government chooses not to touch something because they learned from bad experience that they'll break it if they do, not because they're playing 4D chess manipulating it behind the scenes.
    - kubb 2y ago
      I don’t think they ever tried to “abolish family”. Where are you getting this stuff? It sounds like bad history lessons. They did stuff like legalizing divorce, or collectivization of parenting.

geysersam 2y ago

A false dichotomy some would call that. Children can be raised in units different from the current western perception of "the" family unit. Besides, what countries are you talking about? Have you ever been there and met the uniform mass persons?

bluetomcat 2y ago
> Have you ever been there and met the uniform mass persons? I was born in Eastern Europe in a society headed in this direction. I observed its transformation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. You felt the overarching power of the state from as early as the kindergarten. Signs of individuality were suppressed and all children were supposed to do things "the right way". When such an institution decided that a child "systematically misbehaves", it was able to take the child away from its parents in another orphanage-like institution that was supposed to teach them good socialist manners. Eventually some of them would end up seriously harassed, physically-ill and sent to an anonymous grave in the backyard of that institution.
- int_19h 2y ago
  I grew up in the USSR, and in the kindergarten, our teacher actually tried to convince us that the correct 5 year old kid's answer to the question, "which person do you love the most?" ought to be Lenin, and not e.g. "mom". That said, in practice, the quality of indoctrination was extremely variable for the same reason why it was variable for everything else - most people weren't really buying into it themselves, and so even if they were in a position where they were expected to indoctrinate, they did the bare minimum that was demanded of them, which usually wasn't very convincing. I didn't get to witness it as an adult, but according to my mother, by the time you were old enough for Komsomol, very few still had their rose-tinted glasses on.
jimbokun 2y ago
Did you read the article? "Care" doesn't scale. You can't just replace "the family" with some industrialized system of raising children and get the same results. Not being able to scale "care" and make it more efficient is almost tautological, really. > Besides, what countries are you talking about? North Korea? Former Soviet Union? At the very least appearance of conformity was ruthlessly enforced and even private conversations were infiltrated to detect dissent.

peepee1982 2y ago

You’re describing the extremes on a spectrum, but you only go to one of the extremes, which exposes your bias. And it’s a false dichotomy to begin with, since shifting more care work towards society doesn’t equate to a path toward totalitarianism. You’re conflating socialism with totalitarianism. Understandable, but misguided. Frankly, your whole premise is based on a capitalist narrative that keeps workers in their place because individual care work is so inefficient—it drains energy that could otherwise be channeled into organizing worker councils to balance out the power now disproportionately held by banks, IT corporations, political parties, and the military-industrial complex. I’m aware that I may come across as an arrogant prick in this comment. I wish I had more time to craft a friendlier response with more sources and explanation, but I simply don’t. I need to work to feed my children and their mother, but anyway, here’s a reading list for anyone who’s interested: "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?" by Mark Fisher - Fisher discusses how capitalism has permeated every aspect of life, including care work, and critiques the idea that alternatives like socialism lead to totalitarianism. "Workers of the World: Essays Toward a New History of the Working Class" by Philip A. H. G. D. Van der Linden - This collection explores the historical context of labor movements and the importance of organizing against disproportionate power structures. "The Care Crisis: What’s Wrong with Care and How to Fix It" by the Institute of Public Policy Research - This report outlines the societal implications of care work and its impact on worker organization. "Wages for Housework" by Silvia Federici - Federici argues for the recognition and compensation of domestic labor, linking it to broader struggles against capitalist exploitation.

marcosdumay 2y ago
> shifting more care work towards society doesn’t equate to a path toward totalitarianism There are plenty of reasons to believe that yes, it does. This is something that is almost completely unknown (except on the extremes). And history has those two coupled in very complex, hard to understand ways.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Could you tell us what you are referring to? Almost every developed country provides a lot of care via government.

fph 2y ago

You are assuming all family influence is good. There are lots of abusive families and poor parents, though.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
He is (or perhaps he's ignoring that issue). But when a totalitarian government is abusive, it affects all the families, not just the bad ones.
- svieira 2y ago
  Our principal exports, all labelled and packed, At the ends of the earth are delivered intact: Our soap or our salmon can travel in tins Between the two poles and as like as two pins; So that Lancashire merchants whenever they like Can water the beer of a man in Klondike Or poison the meat of a man in Bombay; And that is the meaning of Empire Day. Songs of Education: II. Geography by G. K. Chesterton
sabarn01 2y ago
In general people take care of their kids. In general the family is good you can always find edge cases.
- mmooss 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by that. What does 'good' mean? What ratio are not 'good'? And where does it all come from? Our personal experiences could be very misleading about what others go through.
- fph 2y ago
  > According to recent statistics, 70%-80% of Americans consider their families dysfunctional. https://mcnultycounseling.com/moving-past-dysfunctional-families/ https://mcnultycounseling.com/moving-past-dysfunctional-fami...
  - sabarn01 2y ago

wolvesechoes 2y ago

"The result is a unified mass person who dresses, thinks and acts in predictable ways." Like in the Democratic, liberal West, where everyone's individuality is created by consuming the same stuff?