Structural Proposal for the Care and Civilization of Children
"It was so unbelievable, small children, 5 or 6 years old, but even infants had been left to die with the bodies of their dead parents. No food, no one to protect them from the rats and snakes and cats and half breeds and monstrosities who came to feast on the dead. We found their bodies ripped to pieces where the animals had eaten them alive. It was slaughter. Nothing should be that evil."
A Society in Collapse
The lifespan shortening effects of Magichem Poisoning had a profound effect on the family structure of ancient society following the Jordbani. When the mean lifespan of humans fell from fifty to thirty-five, parents were dying before their children had an opportunity to become capable of living independently. Children without caregivers when their parents died ended up on the street or holed up in ancient apartment buildings where they frequently starved to death, or were killed by feral animals or half breeds, as these children were unable to effectively find or prepare food. Amongst those children who survived, cannibalism of dead children by their siblings became common practice among these child run communities. Child run families and larger bands of orphaned children did what they could to replace missing parents, but as the problem of orphaned children became more widespread, the collapse of the family was recognized as the dire crisis it was.
Middles and Elders realized that even if they were able to prepare for their own death and the impact on their children, the masses of uncivilized and almost feral communities of children that had developed would make the future for their own offspring grim.
The movement to restructure the family was led by Elisapeth Fortune and Tabia Haleydoter who were members of the Church of Sol . They worked among their local community to establish better care for these orphaned children. They convinced their local community Middles and Elders to participate in a new structure they termed "the Village " based loosely on the traditional family/extended family structure but expanding the concept to encompass a community wide care net for all orphaned children in a territory. After trying this format for several years, they documented and popularized it in their paper A Structural Proposal for the Care and Civilization of Children.
This paper laid out definitions of "child" (prepubescent individuals) and "adult" (individuals who are over the age of 20 or fertile), and broke human maturity levels into "child" (individuals up to the age of twelve), "middles" (individuals between the ages of 12 and 24), and "elders" (individuals over the age of 24). The paper laid out a new extended family structure they called a "village" that would bring the children out of the established relationships and responsibilities of each group and suggested traditions and practices to be adopted into local communities. Their proposal was generally accepted throughout the world and forms the foundation of modern societies.
Mission Statement
We the and sons and daughters of the Convocation of Sol recognize that the future of the human race depends on the ability of our people to have children and raise them to become functioning adults, We acknowledge that historical forms of securing this future are inadequate to the existential crisis brought on by the Jordbani, and must be augmented by changes in social responsibility and structures. We are compelled and led by the example of Sol to sacrifice ourselves and our wants to secure the very future of the human race.
Statement of Values
The statement of values portion of the Proposal laid out a series of almost religious tenants. The major items of the Statement of Values were:
- We follow the example of Sol who called us to a life of selflessness in service to the greater good expressed as enabling the life of others.
- Every human, regardless of age, has value and purpose.
- Every human has responsibility to assist in securing the life of every human child they encounter, starting with their own children, and extending to those in their community first to the village, then to the tribe.
- The raising of a child to responsible adulthood - being able and willing to shoulder the responsibility of caring for the next generations is the highest calling of the community.
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