Disquisition: Welfare and the Extended Family Unit

The first ethical question in extended family units that I suspect hampers closer union and people staying in touch is the idea of financial obligation in face of want and need – in my view, this is no longer obligatory beyond the level of direct mother and father bond – this is where “Ebi” lies for anyone born after 1960, and more precisely after 1983 and the collapse of the 2^nd republic, though everyone born before then will obviously hold on to many of the older ideas of how the solidarity society should be structured. The strongest horrific question you can ask from this – is how should you respond to someone who is ill in your extended family – and asks in belief that you have the resources to address their matter?

The ethical response is that where it is not in our means to be cured – the hospice is the location of compassion – in the absence of a generalised welfare state and solidarity society; the welfare obligation of the extended family unit that cannot afford to treat an illness is to be a good escort to the ill or dying person into the afterlife.  This does not mean abandoning improving care and welfare – it instead means that where it belongs is in the work of the non-personal state – a universal benefit, either as cash transfers and direct provision free at point of use. Where this is the case, what then is the work of the extended family unit? Firstly, it must have a clarity about headship – and body. The society run by absolute primogeniture – has the oldest person as the head of the family unit, and where they are dispersed – the head is from the highest political authority relevant to the ethno-language; there is then a heart of the family, and this is the person of another gender that is the same age or closest in age to the head of the family; as in the human body, the head and the heart stand together to form the hearth of the family unity.

The core welfare action is prayer, and the core market welfare action is discrete promotion of things done by people in your extended family unit. The key community action is reunion outside of birth, death and marriage, for which the principal vehicles are logically birthdays and harvests, and harvests most especially neutral to any expectation of progression as opposed to stability in life.