A Society of Father-less Families

One of the most unusual socio-cultural operating systems ever created by mankind is that of the Trobriand Islanders of the South Pacific.  I concluded this after reading Bronislaw Malinowski’s The Sexual Life of Savages followed by reading Trobriand by George Fathauer.  The latter was an attempt to bring together and systemize all of Malinowski research data with the goal of presenting to the public a "comprehensible model of Trobriand social structure."   

   

Viewing from my top-down, inside-out frame of reference which starts with man "created in the image of God" and therefore endowed with constant and true Universal Principles for living "written on the heart," it became clear that the Trobriand life-way represented the extreme as to how much a society could diverge from the Divine Meta-Script "within" and still function as a society.  

     

This divergence  and maiming effects are manifest in many ways.  It begins with the denial that fathers have a role both socially and biologically as fathers. In fact, if Trobriand fathers were to assume their natural roles as fathers, the entire social structure or socio-economic operating system would collapse.  

     

In Trobriand mythology, for example, biological fathers are symbolized as the great ogre Dokonikan who had "several rows of teeth and could not speak properly." This suggests he probably refused to be addressed by his biological children as "husband of my mother" when they should have been addressing him as tama, 'father.'  

     

If the Trobriand father-less kind of family was to survive, then the ogre Dokonikan needed to be slain.  Through the use of magic, Dokonikan, the threat to the Trobriand life-way, is slain by the mother's son. This means that the real enemy of Trobriand society, the spiritual idea of Fatherhood existed as a mental concept in the subconscious and needed to be suppressed.  In addition, the myth of Dokonikan was created in order to protect the divergent form, the fatherless-family. 

   

This divergence from the Divine Meta-Script began at some point in history when they collectively rejected the covenantal "one-flesh" principle of husband-wife.  Rejecting an Order of Creation stated by Jesus in Mark 10:6-9,  they replaced the universal principle with the biological "one-flesh" principle of  brother-sister. 

 

Faced with a Dilemma

Unlike the matrilineal Mikasuki who replaced the husband-wife dyad with that of sister-sister and then created a supporting myth that declared: "In the beginning life began with two sisters," the matrilineal Trobriands replaced the husband-wife dyad with brother-sister. "In mythology a brother and sister emerged together from the underworld, the sister to establish a sub-clan and the brother to act as her guardian. ...There should be no intimacy between them."4 As moral beings, they recognized that becoming intimate with one's siblings would constitute an incestuous relationship and must be avoided at all cost.

 

But this left the Trobriands with an ontological problem. They had to explain how sisters became pregnant without breaking the Universal Rule of Incest which classified brother-sister marriages as being "sinful." To their credit, they chose to obey a Moral Rule. They did not have to be taught this rule because the Universal Rule of incest is innate. Figuratively, it is "written on the heart."

 

Their solution? They declared that every birth was a virgin birth brought about by baloma, a 'spirit.' Now anthropologists suggest they were mistaken because of biological ignorance. Instead of being ignorant, the answer we propose is this: Trobriand society innately knew the Universal Rule of Incest. As moral beings, and to their credit, they simply refused to "engage in evil."5 They simply did not want to be known as being an incestuous sinful society.

 

But in so doing, they had to come up with an explanation as to how sisters became pregnant because Trobriand life did not begin with Adam and Eve who became intimate as husband and wife living in the garden. Instead, it began with brother-sister emerging from the underworld who innately knew that becoming intimate constituted a sinful act.

 

Because culture is a spiritual phenomenon rather than a material phenomenon, the explanation as to how sisters became pregnant was supplied by the Great Trickster who "masquerades as an angel of light" (II Cor. 11:14). Rejecting the Universal Principle of Fatherhood "written on the heart," they constructed a socio-cultural operating system that "fit" the material environment of the South Pacific. In short, Trickster is a selective boundary eliminator. It was a socio-cultural law-system that attempted to suppress and hold back the qualities of Fatherhood from coming to consciousness. Let me explain the process as I see it. 

 

Rejecting the Creation Order

 

To relieve their anxieties over existence the Trobriand constructed a socio-economic operating law-system that attempted to eliminate the biological and social role of father while promising them economic security.  In so doing, they assumed that they could free themselves from universal fixed standards for living and freely "go their own way" (Acts 14:16) without suffering the stultifying consequences.  This meant not only the rejection of the divine meaning of the status position of Fatherhood, but also the Creation Order which establishs the nuclear family as the foundational norm for all mankind. 

 

So when a Trobriand woman married, according to Malinowski, her brother became “the head of her family,”  not as father, but as "guardian." As "guardian" it was his ascribed function to protect the Trobriand construct of a fatherless-family. If the Trobiands were to have appropriate ideas about how to live, the ideas of fatherhood, marriage, and what constituted a family had to be deleted from consciousness.

 

Rejecting the dual role of father in the nuclear family, they  created a new kind of family, a family that not only replaced the covenantal dyad of husband-wife with that of sister-brother, but also one that attempted to suppress the concept of   FATHERHOOD, which existed in the mind, from being "triggered" and brought to consciousness. 

 

This shift from the spiritual to the biological, from culture to nature, prayer to magic, and from the Creation Order of nuclear families to father-less families is but one example of ETIC DIVERGENCE.      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rejecting the Divine Meta-Script for living "written on the heart," a design grounded in Conceptual Constants (Etic Data), they created a design for living that promised them security as long as they had the right magic (like the power to control the weather) and each person fulfilled his or her ascribed function.  In this design for living, according to  Fathauer, biological fathers are “regarded as ‘outsiders’ since the children belong to the [matrilineal] lineage and sub-clan of his wife, their mother.”  

 

But the Trobriand Islander’s socio-economic operating law-system was grounded in a biological lie, namely, that no father was a genitor. The lie meant jural rights over the father's children had to transferred to his wife's brother who had now become the "head of the family." Maternal uncles had become the new "guardians." As "guardians," maternal uncles masqueraded as "fathers." This meant assuming many of the moral duties of fatherhood, duties like providing yams to feed their sister's children. 

 

In addition, "the brother who is responsible for a sister's food is the one who plays the main role of disciplinarian and tutor of her children."  Of course, such behavior is in fundamental opposition to Biblical teaching that the role of the father is to discipline his children, "For the LORD disciplines those he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights"(Hebrews 12:6).  No Trobriand father has the right to discipline the son he dearly loves because no son, according to Trobriand law, has a biological father. 

 

Some Behavioral Features of Etic Divergence among the Trobriands

 

The Trobriand rejection of a Divine Meta-Script "within" for a script of their own making is manifested primarily in how they restructured the nuclear family. 

 

• First,  the internal structure of the nuclear family consisting of a biological father and mother, and their sons and daughters was replaced with husband of mother, mother, and virgin born sons and daughters.

 

• Secondly, this new kind of family was constructed on a lie, that is, no child has a biological father.  Biological fathers are perceived as being "outsiders" since their children, according to the laws of the Trobriand, do not belong to him. 

 

• Thirdly, rejecting the Orders of Creation, of necessity, the Trobriand were compelled to create misrepresentations of the Universal Concepts of family, fatherhood, and the meaning of marriage. Marriage had nothing to do with becoming "one-flesh"; rather, "marriage is the Trobriand means for political alliance and tributary obligations; it is, therefore, not surprising that adultery‑‑‑(wife stealing) has political overtones.  A man's personal prestige is dependent upon his mar­riages as is much of his income.

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Rejection of these Universal Truths of marriage, family, and fatherhood, led to a transfer of power away from fathers and the nuclear family to a new kind of family, one I would classify as being a "fake family."