In the ancient times when scientific knowledge was less and universal philosophical quests were more popular, people used to take the human being as the model to understand the rest of the creation. Anything and everything that is found in the human body and human soul was treated as a microscopic model of what is out there in the nature and universe. So, if you wanted to learn and analyze the creation, you did not necessarily need to go anywhere. All you needed to do was to watch and listen yourself. Even now, this kind of philosophy is used by many. I am not trying to object to this idea, but here, I want to take a different direction using the same metaphor, and ponder over what is happening to the families in the modern life.
Today, scientific knowledge has increased tremendously. We have mathematical laws to understand and predict the behavior of much of the existence known to us. We have instruments to actually observe and measure what is happening out there, even if it is billions of kilometers away from us. Using these laws and observations, according to the premise "human is the microuniverse", it is possible to deduce some lessons about the fate of the families and individuals in general. To do this, first, I am going to take you to a brief journey into the "ideal gas theory" and "kinetic theory of gases".
Let's start with the basic assumptions. The gas consists of particles at the atomic level. These particles are point-like entities, and they move around independent of each other. The particles interact with each other only through collisions. What we call as temperature is related to the average kinetic energy of all of these particles. To give that average, however, some particles travel much faster and some others travel much slower, and many of them go in the vicinity of that average.
Whenever there is a chemical reaction, these particles unite or break apart. With increase of temperature, the gas particles move faster so that, when a velocity threshold is reached, the molecules break apart upon colliding with each other.
With further increase of temperature, the electrons in the individual atoms are energetic enough to break free from their atomic nucleus. If you keep heating up the gas, even the atomic nuclei can go into reaction to make up a new atom through fusion or fission.
Having looked at our knowledge of the universe (i.e. macrohuman), we can start shedding light on the human beings and their lives. To do that, we are going to model the individual human beings as the gas particles. By applying the assumptions mentioned above, we are going to hold that the individuals are "moving independent of each other", and are interacting through "collisions". Now let's think, what these assumptions could correspond to in real life, and if they are correct.
Individualism is a concept that is more and more prevalent among the modern societies. Here, I am not going to talk against individualism, because personally I believe that it is not necessarily the same as selfishness and ego-centrism. Nevertheless, we know that people are suffering from a desperate "solitude among crowds". We know that with the increase of population and intensification of urban life, people are more self-focused. Therefore, our first assumption seems to be acceptable.
Clash of civilizations is a concept that was suggested years ago, but the recent world history shows a growing list of wars and conflicts. Societies seem to oblivious to their mutual needs, and are interacting only through interest-motivated actions. Moral values seem to fade away in the face of immediate satisfaction of desires and material benefits. So, the second assumption seems to be correct, too.
If we focus on the interaction of the genders, instead of a family concept that is established on mutual dedication for an eternal life, instant gratification of sexual desires and acquisition of worldly benefits are gaining dominion. So again, self interest and physical/material obsession are approval of the validity of the assumptions listed above.
Today, the human population is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Also, with the advent of technology and with extensive use of energy resources, people are moving faster and over long distances. This state of the humans is reminiscent of a gas that is becoming denser and hotter. Increase of density and temperature leads to more frequent and more violent collisions according to the theories we glanced at above. Indeed, the widespread violent conflicts at the large scale is a confirmation of this analogy between the microuniverse and the humanity.
When we come to the individual humans, There are two major observations that are unlike anything in the known history. First, the rate of divorce is increasing globally. In fact, the developed countries that host the individuals that are "traveling more and faster" have higher divorce rate. The divorce can be thought of as the break up of the molecules due to the magnitude of the collisions in our model.
The second of those unprecedented observations is the gender-based evolution and revolution. There are shifts from one gender to the other, or there are people who exhibit mixed traits that traditionally belong to the straight individuals. This state of the humans is analog to the break off of the electrons from the atoms so that the atoms exhibit different chemical and physical properties. Again a sign confirming the increase of temperature in the gas.
As a side note, and ironically, the global warming that we observe actually is just a cream on this cake!
If you fast forward to see what could possibly happen in the near future, our model says that the atoms will disintegrate due to the further increase of temperature. In order to see what this could mean for us, we can get help from the science fiction stories and actual scientific developments. The advancement of android and smart instrument technology and with further control of the genes of humans and animals, there could be "half-animal half-human" or "half-human half-robot" or "half-animal half-robot" individuals around us. Even in this environment, there still will be pure humans with straight or trans-gender characteristics, but they are going to be few.
So what?
We can use this analogy between humanity and the microuniverse, and speculate about other things too. These speculations can helps us better understand the two sources of religion better, i.e. Quran and hadith (e.g. slavery, marriages), which in turn can help us orient ourselves in that train of convolutions. Besides that, for the people now and here, what lesson can we take home?
One quick answer is if you want to preserve something, you must cool it. This is something we already know thanks to the refrigeration technology. But now, we see it again in a much broader context. We must create islands of slowness (calmness, isolation, peace) and resist the ever-accelerating pace of the daily life at certain times. Doing this, we can preserve a healthy state of what makes us human. Otherwise, the more frequent and more violent interactions of the end of times are going to threaten us both from outside and from within.
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