True family values

For a long time the concept of family values has been completely misconstrued. It was used to mean a return to 1950s-style arrangement and exclusion of all innovation that came after 1950s. As a father, and one dedicated to the well-being of my family and my daughter, I say this: That is not family values.

True family values is about bequeathing to one's children a better world than what existed when one has found it. True family values is about making sure that one's children have a chance. True family values is about providing for the future. And that means, a long-term, sustainable, livable future, and not one that is supposed to end at the time that the baby boomers have died.

True family values is about preserving the planet in all its richness and splendor, and using intelligence and technology to provide for material needs while minimally impinging upon the world's climate, air quality, water quality, and biospheric diversity. It means using high-intelligence, high-technology abundant clean energy solutions to keep the civilization running while preserving what man has not created and does not know how to recreate. It means sustainable agriculture, sustainable industry, sustainable energy, and sustainable technology, using the best of man - his intellect, effort and dedication - to power the world of civilization that man has created while being nonobtrusive to world of nature that man has not.

True family values is about creating institutional transparency, so that one's children do not have to live in a snakepit of corruption, deception and cruelty that takes place when this does not exist. It means ridding institutions of rackets and cons that are used to silence people from telling the truth. It means creating media, court, and political cultures that practice transparency and integrity and are not afraid to confront corruption in whatever form it may take.

True family values is about creating covenants in which one's daughters have a chance at a life worth having, and do not have to worry about abusive partners, corrupt and ensnaring communities, bullying in school and in workplace, and religious, social and institutional abuse. It is about making sure that one's daughters can attain to their potential and not be undermined in it by entities or individuals hateful of women's advancement or of human rights. It means full enforcement of human rights and civil rights and standing up to all things that are hateful to the preceding. And it means protecting meaningfully people's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, even when and especially when this is not popular.

True family values is about putting the future ahead of the present, rather than making the future pay for irresponsible borrow-and-spend policies and planetary destruction of the present with no eye toward posterity. It is about doing what needs to be done, now, in order that there is a livable future for one's children. It is about fiscal sanity and environmental sanity, and about using intelligence to make possible the preceding.

True family values is about imparting to children real education that gives them understanding necessary for good citizenship and for avoiding rackets and cons. It is about making primary education sufficiently strong that the children come out of it with knowledge and with intelligence that allows them to be better citizens as well as better workers. It is about making college education more affordable, so that those who seek to rise to that level can, regardless of income of the family.

True family values is about recognizing and giving the way to fruition of human genius, goodwill, intellect, love and beauty, making it possible for these endless sources of good to flourish and to impart to the world and its inhabitants of the magnificence that they have to give.

True family values is about creating an honest society and ending corruption, whether it be in law or medicine or government or business or small town or society itself. It is about making things clear and making that clarity and integrity the basis of social covenants and interactions, with no room for corruption, oppression, deception or abuse.

It is about creating a livable society for one's children, as well as a livable planet.

And that, is the true family values that are at stake in the world at this time.