Family is on everyone’s lips nowadays. The church loves it, and so does the state. In the minds of the many, family is at the very hub of human existence. But there is much confusion about what the term entails. The nuclear family of this day and age has nearly nothing to do with the extended family a century ago, let alone the clan. Kinship has changed meaning many times over in the last millennium or two. Going back ten millennia or more, kinship was an entirely different notion, and family in today’s guise did not even exist. Mothers were known with certainty while fathers were but a guess of the wise. Brothers and sisters were of the same mother and hearth, but that was about all. The tribe was on everyone’s lips at the time, for it was the hub of human existence beyond any doubt. The only reason for the insistence on the family as of late is property and its passage down generations. Property as such goes back only five or six millennia, though. All in all, there is little else except property that holds the family together at present. And family is but an impediment to jealous brothers and sisters, as well as their even more jealous children. Family quarrels over inheritance are thus rife. Which is perhaps the only reason why family is beloved of both church and state, for they are always there to intervene one way or another. As for me, I cherish the return to prehistory that lies ahead. Or posthistory, to be a bit more precise. At long last, the silly banter will stop. Family will first fade into a vague memory, and then it will vanish altogether. The bliss.