THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

now live in a single parent home. What is even more enigmatic is that
the same movement - although with different starting points - seems
to happen almost everywhere.
In Italy, for instance, a few decades ago la famiglia still referred to
extended family: 60 or 80 people, including, of course, several
generations such as grandparents, parents, uncles, cousins, nieces
and in-laws. Now, norm has moved towards the nuclear family,
particularly in the more 'modern' northern half of the country. Other
Southern European and American cultures are following an identical
trend.
From the Hopi in Arizona to the Kogi in Colombia and the Chipibo
the Peruvian Amazon, we hear the comment that the young are
losing their connection to the tribe and identifying themselves with
smaller subgroups or even just blood relatives, 'as white people do'.
All of this is usually written off - depending on the age and political
persuasion of the observer - as the price of progress or the signs of
decadence of society. But could community breakdown be a
contagious disease? Is it thinkable that they all may have a deeper
common cause? What could it be?
To understand how community is lost, we must find out how it is
created. Of all the disciplines, which have studied community, the
most useful insights come from anthropology. Anthropologists
discovered that community does not necessarily arise out of
proximity (otherwise, a 200-apartment high-rise building in a big city
would produce community). Similarly, common language, religion,
culture, even blood, doesn't automatically produce community
either. All of these factors can clearly play a secondary support role in
the process, but the key ingredient is something else.