The Seventeen Traditions (11 page)

If you have read this far, you may be wondering, what kind of children did all these traditions produce? I may not be the right one to ask; such questions require subjective answers, and mine would be biased in a way I find unbecoming. What I can do is describe the paths taken by my two sisters and brother.

My brother Shaf, who passed away in 1986, was a student of anthropology and then of law. He was a practitioner of community economic development, the spark plug for an industrial park, and a lifelong proponent of local democracy. He did not believe that the way to effect real change was to start at the national level; much of what happens there, he believed, only served to concentrate power in ways that infrequently benefited the people. Change, he believed, must start at the local level. For this reason he was a champion of community colleges, which took their relations with the community seriously. He was the principal founder of the Northwestern Connecticut Community College, in Winsted, Connecticut, which celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2005, and he went on to work in the community college movement nationally.

Claire received her Ph.D. in public law and government from Columbia University. Her thesis was a front-running work on the relationship between science and government, and she followed this with early research on energy conservation with a group at a national laboratory. She coedited and coauthored an early book on science and technology and development in Third World countries, and also wrote scholarly articles concerning health and safety regulation for science and technology. She started a number of citizen groups and projects dedicated to fostering systemic change and democracy at the community level, and works with them to this day. For many years Claire chaired the Council for Responsible Genetics, founded by MIT and Harvard scientists who wanted to develop ethical and legal frameworks for the momentous technology of genetic engineering. After the closing of our local hospital, she was instrumental in mobilizing the citizenry to restore health care services in Winsted, Connecticut, under a creative arrangement based on community control. Thus the Winsted Health Center Foundation was born.

Laura received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University and went on to become a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. Her annual course on “controlling processes” has been a magnet for thousands of students. Through her fieldwork, writing, and teaching, she has been a leading scholar in the field of law and anthropology and of the hierarchies of power and control in industrialized cul
tures. She has served on commissions to develop more enlightened policies for all our children, and on several energy policy commissions that led the way in advocating sane energy policies. Her eldest daughter is a lawyer who defended children in court and then turned her interest to family, home schooling, and community. Her son has a doctorate in ecology and does hands-on fieldwork toward the biological and cultural preservation of tropical forests. Her youngest daughter, also raising a family, has a Ph.D. in infectious diseases, and is currently a working laboratory scientist in the area of cell destruction and cancer.

Laura's children maintain a keen sense of civic interest and responsibility, something they share easily with their friends, fellow citizens, and their own children. Like their older family members, they believe in talking about matters that matter, about events that affect or afflict the human condition. They use words like “just” and “unjust.” They ground their arguments in fact, and display an abiding passion for liberty with responsibility and for freedom with fairness. They believe that deeds legitimize words, and that there can be no authentic pursuit of happiness without the pursuit of justice.

I shared their youthful enthusiasm. When I was a high school student, I remember reading a quotation that was like a path of light for me. It was Senator Daniel Webster's description of justice as “the great work of man on Earth.” Webster understood that no society could be improved without effort. Em
barking on the journey I found it hard work, to be sure, but sublime gratification as well. There is great joy in pursuing justice—and that joy should be available to everyone.

Children develop their notions of fairness at a very early age. In their innocence, they are often able to imagine a world without poverty, war, or pollution far more easily than their elders. They have no axe to grind, which gives them a wonderful clarity and optimism. Through their words, deeds, and traditions, my family gave me the gift of believing in such ideals. Their strengths were my metabolism. They propelled me to try to reach as many people as I could, and to try to show them that most of our problems had solutions, if only people would give themselves enough time to stand up and be counted, and if only some of us would stand tall and lead.

For the people do have that power—but only if they recognize it, and then take the time to apply it. That is the biggest “if” in politics, isn't it? But that is the best reason for trying to make the flowers of democracy bloom.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb whose words I carry with me everywhere I go, one that captures the spirit of my parents' legacy: “To know and not to do is not to know.”

Mother and Father viewed our activities during adulthood with a modest equanimity. When I emerged onto the national public scene, and started making regular appearances in the national media, their reaction could be summed up this way: “Okay, Ralph, if there's anything harder than becoming famous, it's learning how to endure it and keep on track without
letting it swell your head.” David Halberstam's mother and mine were friends, and he tells a story along similar lines: The first time I appeared on the cover of a major national magazine, Mrs. Halberstam called my mother early Monday morning to congratulate her.

“Really?” my mother replied. “I think I'll go out and get a copy.”

David could only chuckle. “What modesty,” he mused. “If I was on the cover of Time magazine, our family would have emptied out every newsstand in Litchfield County.”

Perhaps it was my father who best captured their attitude. Once, when I told him that I'd done my best at something, he leaned over quietly and looked at me. “Son, never say you did your best, because then you'll never try to do better.”

Our parents always intended to place us on productive, stimulating pathways, to guide us along until we began to pick up the pace ourselves, and then let us go when they felt their work was complete. Mother used to tell other young mothers in the community that if a child's parents haven't done a proper job by the time their child reaches six or seven years of age, their challenges will only be compounded. “The earlier, the easier,” she would say—and not just when it comes to learning languages, she added with a smile.

There are millions of healthy two-parent and single-parent families who are still guided by traditions as rich as my parents' were. Of course, there are also millions of families who struggle daily under social, economic, or cultural pressures that are ur
gent enough to crowd out all other concerns. Today, more and more families are farming out their responsibilities—feeding their children and entertaining them, educating and counseling them, providing day care and advice—to commercial service providers. The “family industry” is swiftly becoming a real factor in our economy. And this comes with a price, as more parents lose confidence in their own judgments, in their ability to make decisions without the help of the “experts.” As corporations deliberately encroach on the parenting of our children, and children spend less personal time with their parents, those all-important traditions are falling by the wayside.

Still, just as young people continue to attend Shakespeare's plays and to perform them, for many the verities and the frailties of family life are still instinctive, as they have been since time immemorial. In these pages, I hope more parents will find reasons to start rebuilding their connections with their children—by reaching back through the generations, drawing on their family heritage, and passing along the lessons they themselves learned as children. What better way to provide the climate for nurturing what Thomas Jefferson called “an aristocracy of virtue and talent”? If today's parents are to fulfill their acknowledged desire to leave each generation stronger and healthier than its predecessor, cultivating these transcendent family traditions is a good place to begin.

For a volume of recollections and reflections about our family traditions, acknowledgments rest deeply on my parents, sisters, and brother, to whom this book is dedicated. More immediately, my gratitude extends to my sister Claire Nader for her on-point contributions, and my sister Laura Nader's anthropological insights. My nephew Tarek Milleron made precise suggestions in his review of the manuscript.

Special thanks to my colleague John Richard and to my editor, Calvert Morgan, whose skill as an editor is rendered finite only by his limitations of time.

Illustrations by David Wolf

Cover design by Matthew Cacciola

Cover illustration by David Wolf

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