As the title suggests, discussing with others the reactionary nature of this bourgeois psychology fallacy.
Comrade A: A classmate is talking about this “original family” theory, which seemed to have become popular a few years ago. I feel like we need to criticize this too later. I remember someone said before that this is also a fallacy.
Comrade A: I’m attending a psychology class.
Comrade A: The reason this theory became popular is actually connected to the prevalence of Confucian family systems in the Chinese revisionist context.
Comrade A: My classmate is now talking about how to “reconcile” and how to get rid of the influence of the original family, which shows that this theory ultimately leads to a philosophy of servitude.
Comrade A: It’s Zhang Zai’s philosophy: hatred must be resolved through reconciliation.
Comrade A: This theory is actually supported by the Chinese revisionists; the classmate also mentioned TV dramas like “All Is Well,” which promote this idea.
luanma: I recall it being said that this concept is very reactionary, roughly about human nature theory, believing that a child’s “human nature” is controlled by parents and family.
Comrade A: Ancient Confucianism and today’s Confucianism.
Comrade A: “The original family refers to the family in which a person lives from birth to adulthood, usually composed of parents, siblings, and other members. The original family is the earliest social environment a person encounters and is an important place shaping personal character, emotional patterns, and behavioral habits. According to the view in ‘The Original Family: Psychological Dynamics Affecting a Person’s Life,’ the original family is not only a physical space but also a psychological system. The interaction patterns and emotional communication among family members have a profound impact on the individual.”
Comrade A: It’s hard to bear; the classmate is now lecturing on how to avoid mental internal friction again. Sooner or later, we have to thoroughly criticize these popular psychological concepts.
Comrade B: I feel the confusing part of this theory is that family background indeed has a big impact on a person, but this theory ignores people’s social practice.
Comrade B: So the concept of the original family might seem “reasonable” at first glance but is actually unreasonable.
Comrade A: Many people empathize with this theory.
Comrade A: For example, parents suppressing children leads to children being prone to inferiority.
luanma: It’s a kind of empiricism.
luanma: Or vulgarizing the principle that practice determines cognition, turning it into the French materialist idea of “environment determines consciousness.”
Comrade B: I feel that’s the case.
luanma: Eventually it turns into the opposite, becoming “opinions dominate the world,” which ultimately is idealism.
Comrade A: Why does it end up as idealism?
luanma: French materialists say that social environment greatly influences people’s thoughts and advocate education to save the country. If a person grows up in a good educational environment, they will have good thoughts, and vice versa.
Comrade A: For example, parents’ opinions dominate the environment, and the environment dominates the children’s thoughts?
luanma: But they cannot explain how the social environment is formed because they don’t understand that the masses create history; millions of people’s practice creates the social environment itself.
luanma: That’s roughly the idea.
luanma: So in the end, they fall into historical idealism, believing that the social environment is determined by the will of a few emperors, generals, talents, and beauties, thinking it’s either the “enlightened monarch” or these “enlightenment scholars” who decide the social environment.
luanma: The same applies here.
luanma: Just like Comrade A said.
luanma: A child’s thoughts are determined by the family environment, but the family environment is determined by the parents’ will, yet they cannot explain where the parents’ thoughts come from.
luanma: So in the end, it either becomes like patching the “Smithian dogma” (saying c can be decomposed into v and m), claiming that parents’ thoughts are determined by their “original family,” by their parents’ thoughts, and so on, which explains nothing, or it directly says parents’ human nature is bad.
Comrade A: The influence of family background on a person reminds me of what Comrade C said about social relations. For example, my brother wants to buy a big house, luxury cars, and live a decadent life, but due to social relations (born in a not wealthy family, social relations are like this), he cannot engage in wasteful, decadent practices.
luanma: Yes.
Comrade B: Indeed, the original family theory doesn’t address class.
luanma: Marx refuted this French materialist theory.
luanma: Marx said the environment is changed by people, and educators themselves are educated, as he stated in his Theses on Feuerbach.
luanma: That is, the family where children live is controlled by parents’ thoughts, but parents’ thoughts are formed by their own practice, and children themselves are also creators of the family environment through their practice.
luanma: For example, take myself.
luanma: My parents are those who became bourgeois through speculation; their practice determined turning my family into a bourgeois family and wanted me to speculate. In this family, I was influenced by my parents and developed many bourgeois ideas.
luanma: But I also have my own practice, which often differs from my parents. Most of the time, I don’t want to speculate; I want pleasure and struggle with my parents. So through my own practice, I turned my family environment into a highly contentious one, forcing my parents to concede, allowing me pleasure, and thus my thoughts became those pursuing personal liberation.
luanma: So the key problem with the concept of the original family is that it ignores the role of practice.
Comrade D: I remember there was a TV drama promoting the original family theory called “All Is Well,” my whole family watched it at the time (
Comrade A: My classmates all use it as an example.
Comrade B: Indeed, compared to other bourgeois families being “harmonious,” my relationship with my parents is different.
Comrade B: I feel it ultimately ignores class and social practice when discussing family background.
luanma: That’s right.
Comrade A: I haven’t watched it actually; I only know the father in it is very brutal to his daughter, and after my mother watched it, she even praised the father in an extreme way, which disgusted me. But I just searched and found the drama is quite absurd, glorifying the father, saying although he is bad to his daughter, he is still a good xx, and that the mother is brutal to her daughter.
luanma: “The materialist doctrine that environment and education have a transforming effect forgets that: environment is changed by people, and educators themselves must be educated. Therefore, this doctrine must divide society into two parts, one of which is placed above society.
The change of environment and the unity of human activity or self-change can only be seen and reasonably understood as revolutionary practice.”— Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach"luanma: Also, I recommend reading Plekhanov's "On the Development of the Monistic View of History," which discusses French materialism well. Although the author later degenerated, this early article is quite good, and both Lenin and Stalin acknowledged its positive significance. luanma: After reading it, I roughly understood the French materialist theory. luanma: @Comrade A Actually, both French materialism and the original family theory use this set of ideas to oppose the philosophy of struggle, saying your struggle is useless, your thoughts are determined by the environment, your fate is already decided by the social environment, and you cannot change it. Furthermore, they say your thoughts are already decided by some big figures, your parents, so even if you struggle with your parents, it's useless.
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How does the TV drama “All Is Well” promote the theory of the original family? I only feel that this drama is about class conciliation. The female protagonist was treated with a preference for boys over girls by her mother since childhood. To pay for her brother’s tuition, her parents even sold her room and changed her college choice from Tsinghua University to a normal university without her consent, because the normal university offered scholarships and no tuition fees. During university, they also didn’t give her living expenses. In the end, the female protagonist still cried for her mother when she died and quietly spent money to buy back the old family home. She reconciled with the second brother who bullied her and did not criticize the eldest brother who always looked on coldly, who was actually also an oppressor. It promotes the idea that no matter what suffering you endure, you must accept it, and in the end, it all comes back to “we are all family,” a view of class conciliation. But how exactly does this promote the theory of the original family? Is it saying that the female protagonist’s “self-reliant” character comes from her mother?