Progress begins at Home

Recently, I was thinking about my family history, specifically regarding mental health and addictions. It was quite a sobering process.

My dad died at 66. That was probably partly because of a lifetime addiction of smoking, and another one for alcohol that he held in check for his last twenty years. I suspect he was also a problem gambler. His sister was a lifetime alcoholic. She had a dysfunctional relationship with her husband that might have been abusive, and they did not have kids. Dad's earlier marriages ended in divorce, with at least one child suffering from multiple addictions for most of his life.

My dad’s parents did not have addictions that I know about. However, my grandfather had an affair with his secretary that led to a child. Everyone knew about it, including his wife, and hushed it up.

My mum did not have addictions, unless you count an addiction towards money. But I believe she was abused as a child by her mother, and that her mother also abused her father. It is possible that my grandmother was abused by her own parents too. My mother’s sister did not suffer addictions nor abuse, as far as I know, but she seemed to me to live a rather unfulfilled life, short of money and drive.

My ex-wife suffered from an addiction for more than half of her life, her behaviour masking depression and self-loathing. I am pretty sure that she was abused by her own father a a child. Her father left her mother, and in the thirty years that she lived after that her mum refused to acknowledge his existence.

None of these marriages appear to offer conducive situations for bringing up well-balanced children. My own parents certainly loved each other, but their affection was rather platonic; I understand that my mother had a fear of sex as well as a puritan attitude towards its enjoyment, and that she chose to live a celibate life for over 75 of her 82 years. 

Then there are childhood influences at school to consider. I attended various private schools. From one, one teacher ended in jail for abusing boys, a least one other demonstrated unhealthy affection towards young boys, one other was alcoholic, one took an unhealthy interest in corporal punishment, another committed suicide and various others had sexual hang-ups, in some cases due to closet homosexuality. These are just the examples obvious enough to be noticed by an adolescent.

Despite all this, somehow my sister and I, and all our children, seem to have forged a path avoiding addiction or other mental trauma.

I relate this history not in order to seek sympathy or to be sensationalist. In fact, my intent is rather the reverse. I believe I have had a very privileged life. I was born male into a rich, peaceful country, with relatively wealthy parents who prioritized my education. I have never had to cope with the trauma of losing a loved one long before their natural time, or of serious illness. Perhaps most serendipitous of all, the barking of my mother led me to a decision forty years ago to eschew alcohol during lent, something which I have kept to ever since as a check against any alcoholism risk. Mum was convinced such things were hereditary, in which case I would have been almost doomed.

There are three pieces of context behind this tale. The first is the new book by the marvellous Steven Pinker. I have so far only read reviews, but I will surely read the full volume, and probably blog about it as well. His theme is one of my favourites, of rapid and relentless human progress, obscured by the drumbeat of the news cycle. If we think in terms of days, or months or even decades, we tend to see problems and setbacks, but the reality is that humanity continues to march forwards. This thought is a great antidote.

The second context is a simple quotation from a PBS Newshour report, one that I have not been able to substantiate but feels correct. The reporter stated that the strongest indicative factor for addictions, by far, is having had parents or other close influencers with addictions. So mum was right after all!

This insight might go a long way as a root cause of Pinker’s progress. We tend to think of things like technology and medicine and human mingling and emancipation as drivers of progress. These are all important, but perhaps it all starts at home. The more of us that are comfortable in our own skin, the more we have an ability to drive progress. Living in addictive and abusive families, or families with secrets or out-dated dogmas, people are less likely to develop to their potential. If each generation can address these inhibitors better than the one that came before, humanity will progress more quickly.

This is where my own family history comes in. Even in a privileged setting, few of the people in my back story could have felt fully comfortable in their own skin, though each generation may have found it easier than the one before. Then I look at my children, and at the kids I interact with in choirs, and I see relaxation and respect, people equipped to drive human progress. All of them will have something in their background that might hold them back. But reducing abuse, reducing addiction, reducing prejudice, and learning to talk openly about such things have removed some of the burdens. Progress begins at home.

Then the third context came to me as a gift while composing this blog, when I attended a mass yesterday. The gospel was about the two summary commandments, loving God and loving our neighbour as we do ourselves. I have recently taken to turning the second half of this around. For some of us, we have to learn to love ourselves as we love our neighbours.

In his homily, the priest, God bless him, followed this theme. He stated that when he was growing up he was ordered to devote all his love to God, to use any love left over to look after his neighbours, and be to careful about loving himself. He had learned to turn this hierarchy upside down. Only by loving himself, by taking care of his health and his habits, would he become effective in loving his neighbours. And loving himself and extending this to his neighbours is how he can show love to God.

I can’t imagine any priest offering such a homily even fifty years ago. I could have stood up in my seat and cheered. It shows how we have progressed, even in religion, and also how we can continue to progress. Imagine successive generations, each with humans better equipped to love themselves, each progressively more free from abuse and addiction and mental illness. That is precisely what is happening right now, if we look beyond the crassness of some people in power. Further enabling this should be our prime personal and policy goal.