This was originally a comment from Astral Codex Ten, a great Substack with lots of interesting analysis and deep insight on a far-ranging array of topics. If you’re into politics, history, and science, you should check it out. The question posed by that article, which I attempt to answer below, is “What makes Great Families Great?”
As a father trying to figure out how to give his 1 1/2 year-old son all the best opportunities in life (and also how to engineer in him the aptitude to actually capitalize on those opportunities) I've thought about making a study of great families quite a bit.
It’s interesting that one of the greatest Sci-Fi epics—and now greatest films—of all time, Dune, is about families when so many others, Bladerunner, I Robot, Princess of Mars, are about individuals. Author Frank Herbert’s universe is filled with aristocratic houses, each with its own way of doing things. How to educate its members, how to govern its subjects and servants, how to vie for power and control its holdings. Then there are non-familial organizations like the Bene Gesserit, a millennia-old institution of nuns who send their female students out to influence and shape these families over generations through breeding. The end goal, while not exactly the same, is nonetheless similar: to create a person who can guide the group towards a thriving future.
It’s space opera at its finest. The single-minded intensity of pursuit from the various factions in the novel may be simplistic, but it illustrates a fine point: Family Culture makes all the difference. Time and again the characters in the series return to what they were taught, ancestral memories, and what their DNA has internalized over generations to deal with the current problems before them. That’s as good a reason as any to start thinking about what future we want our families to help create, and how we might equip its members to make that happen.
Sure, not every offspring of your Messiah-breeding program will pan out, but if it's family policy to train them all to survive the Gom Jabbar test from birth, you're going to have some history-makers.
If you think it’s all fantastical and a bit too Game of Thrones-ish, remember that fiction is based on real life. And plenty of successful families do exist who are very conscious about their institutional identities.
What Makes Great Houses Great
Great houses have mottos for a reason, they've institutionalized what it means to be a "Vanderbilt" or a "Darwin" or a "Tagore". This provides a set of guiding principles which, even if they aren't totally effective, at the very least generate a kind of placebo effect that having a normal last name coming from an unremarkable family does not. That whole thing about how "a man must live by a code" even though most boys today have no idea what should be in their code or how to go about seriously living by one? That problem doesn't exist if all your uncles and grandparents and great grandparents set being a doctor, or winning a Nobel Prize, or pushing the limits of human achievement as the ultimate value. To be born a Bush is to be handed an identity at birth along with a set of guidelines for how to live it. You won't necessarily become president, but you have a far better chance than somebody whose only access consists of David McCullough books and Ken Burns docs.
Like any organization, you'll have members who rebel against these principles, many of whom wash out and are forgotten (hence why great families also seem more likely to have burnouts and early tragic deaths). Maybe some of them do their best to create an approximation of average and get to enjoy a normal life, so it’s not like family members can’t choose to go their own individual paths. It’s just that consciously forming a family culture gives them options and opportunities. And who doesn’t want that, if not for themselves then for their children?
Then there will be those who actively embrace the culture, get that the times change and the destination is more important than following the family footsteps exactly, and succeed. A great example of this is the Gracie family. What began as a series of grappling lessons taught to a well-respected Brazilian circus owner’s son by a traveling Judoka evolved into a global movement to bring effective self-defense techniques to the world.
To prove the supremacy of the family approach, an open challenge was issued to any and all who wanted to try their technique in unarmed, “anything goes” matches. This meant the family not only needed strong fighters, but they also became experts in the holistic health needed to be ready for continuous bouts. Each generation had its champions, educators, and promoters of Gracie Jiu Jitsu, all trying different ways to improve both the art and its reception. The end result is that one cannot discuss martial arts in the modern era without having that last name arise over and over again. Not every member is a lethal fighting legend, but every member knows what it means to bear the name. Everyone knows what it takes to overcome.
Even Bad Houses Can Make Great People
I understand that for some, having a notorious family name is a curse. Having a last name like Manson or Hitler can come with a lot of baggage, but I would nonetheless try to reframe things. Ryan Holiday has this great metaphor for success that’s built around canvases, aka opportunities for expression. To get seen you have to have canvases you can express yourself on. The best way to curry favor with a successful person is to find canvases for them to create and be seen. A well-defined family ethos is an ongoing mural on which you can decide whether to add or subtract.
Of course, “what it means to be part of your family” isn't everything. But it does offer opportunities. It’s another option for who you want to be. Another story you can help tell or change. American society loves the rugged individual. The cowboy or mogul or entrepreneur who comes to this country alone and achieves greatness, their parents and siblings thousands of miles away, effectively making them an orphan.
The ancients knew better. For them, it was important to be related to someone great, even if they may or may not have actually existed. The Caesars tied their house to Rome’s founder heroic founder, the Trojan Anneas. Alexander the Great claimed to descend from Achilles. My father likes to tell me that we’re related to Zeng Guo Fan, scholar, statesman, and hero in charge of putting down the Taiping Rebellion. Guo Fan himself believed he was a descendant of the mythical Shao Kang, an exiled prince who restored the Xia Dynasty by defeating his father’s usurpers and began the Chinese tradition of ancestor veneration. So in a way, me telling you to consider what your house stands for is just carrying on the family tradition!
The truth is, for most people, self-belief isn’t enough. In those moments of doubt and difficulty, remembering an uncle or a grandfather or a distant relative who overcame their struggles using the same grit and ethos instilled in you… that probably makes a much bigger difference than we think.
At the end of the day, the question of what our families mean to us may not be asked overtly, but it’s being asked nonetheless. What we do or don’t do is how we answer it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Gracie family and the style of grappling they’ve made world-famous, I highly recommend the book, Breathe: A Life in Flow by one-time family champion, Rickson Gracie. What struck me most when reading his story were the similarities present in every immigrant family’s story. It doesn’t matter who you were back home, how prosperous or famous you were. In the era before the internet and mass communications, you arrived in this country with relatively few advantages compared to what you had back home. How you persevered or thrived largely depended on what you learned from all the relatives you spent most of your time with back home. Money, fame, connections, they aren’t meaningless, but they matter far less than the intangibles a healthy family can impart upon its members.
If you would like some guidance as to how to what code to construct for yourself and your kin, how to develop a relationship with mentors, and how to live a holistically healthy life as you face the fights and obstacles that confront all of us, check out Deng Ming-Dao’s Scholar Warrior. It offers insights into many of the things this blog discusses, as well as actionable exercises, meditations, and more.
Thanks for the shout-out! The only tangential comment I would make is that the Chinese in history have gone overboard in claiming "familial connections," even if those assertions may well have been fictitious. Particularly among martial arts lineages, there are numerous claims of a famous person being the creator when eventual scholarship (or even simple logic) shows otherwise. This also happens with the scriptures. Many people, for example, think that Laozi and Zhuangzi weren't single authors. Still, those who have good families are fortunate—and the actual heads of those families are the luckiest still when their descendants are happy.