That was indeed a looooong and confusing question. It raise in my head as soon as I realized that there were so much more conflicts between my parents and myself than those between my grandparents and my parents. However, in nearly whatever measure, I could say, very confidently, that my parent actually did a much much better job than my grandparents did when my parents were just "kids." Maybe you would think that those two statement were clearly not self-explanatory. But, since I just clam myself down five minutes ago after a "debate" with my father, I think I have a clue of what I'm trying to address.
The whole story of that quarrel is very long and intricate, and I assume nobody wanna heard all of that crap. Long story short, when I was in intense fury and grievance, I did remember that my dad came all the way to States for my one little impulse thinking of taking high school in a country that he does not familiar with in culture and language, and was made to attend a fixed working schedule with barely new area of studying other than his own and etc. Still the fury and grievance did had a probable cause since he barely eats supper, the only meal that we had a chance to eat together, sitting next to me hearing the day I went through and exciting works I have accomplished. Instead, he plays some "stupid", boring Internet computer games (pokes, chess, flash billiards) with people sitting in the opposite side of the earth, and complaining about how I do not eat my supper in time (I always try to finish my work for almost 15~25 min after responding "All right!" to him when he said "supper's ready!", which a behavior that he always did when he's not the guy who cook and wash the dishes.)......
After saying something that defend myself for not see through my weakness and discover my merit and true identity, one ancient Chinese proverb, which has almost equivalent effect of "Spare the rod spoil the child" pops in my head. I can still recall the life my parents experienced in their childhood, which associated with less affection through action, but only some farm work and nothing about academics. In their minds, deeply inside unconsciousness (since that's what they learned when they were little), parents are parents, who had some authority over their children. But little affection through action in their own experience also led them to a road to be a democratic parenting style, which "rule" by reasoning not "violence." So what they did was actually make their output (action on me) according to their consciousness (I'm lucky b/c they were really educated), and still wanted to receive a "respect" and reputation as same as their parents had received in the past (which was determined by their unconsciousness.) This provides a conflict: giving the children the freedom to put themselves at the same level as their parents as adults as they are growing (through thinking processes), but requiring children's respect and obedience plus pointing out mostly faults not achievements (since that's a child's "duty").
Seems like a little bit of off topic. But notice the bold words that I had highlighted above. Yes, "Spare the rod spoil the child" and "duty". This is where I get my answer for my question at the top. When my parents became grown and educated man/woman who have fully developed critical thinking skills, no matter their previous comments or opinions about their own parents, they must realize that even their parents did not show affection through obvious everyday actions in their childhood, their parents had worked very hard at least partial for their good. No what they felt was no love (at least is not all about love), instead "duty", no matter according to the society's moral value or their conscience. So that's why now I can see my dad calling my granny back in countrysides in China every week, and if he had not done so, he's afraid if his mom was worried. He will not argue even a single word with my granny if my granny consciously told him to wear more cloth now (which we were in early Oct. at Houston......), b/c, in some degree, he think it's his duty to make their old man happy in order to have a better memory for the end of life. So, people in conscious mind tends to response positively when they were under an authority who did some thing for their own good. And this means they felt it is their duty to obey at least partially. And it is this kind of duty made up of patriotism, unity, and even treason. That is, every "emotion" or "love" that was formed through the process of conscious thinking was treated as "duty". And wait a second, isn't the duty-like feeling was formed by realizing had received good treatment? Are you saying some "love" was formed by purely profits? I would say not exactly. Even some people did not receive actual profits, there is still love for their authority inside their conscious mind as soon as they was convinced with or figured out themselves that their authority was doing good for them. You could find some stupid extreme patriots (unfortunately, terrorists were one kind) in any part of the world.
But this consciously building duty feeling could also formed between people have equal status, but require much, much, much more amount of profits they think they were gaining. This was like you felt you really owe somebody, and are enthusiastically wanting to do something for him or her. The reason that this happens much more rarely was b/c their were not your authority. Like relations between my dad and me, I, truthfully, cannot gain a feel to gain a duty like affection with him. Instead, if he could stop trying to receive my "obedience," we could be true friends, which was the goal of him when trying to be a democratic parent. True friendship, which I believe was based mainly on unconsciousness, should not include some extreme personal loyalty including doing things against your own basic instincts, which were always demonstrated in TV serials and movies. However, that kind of personal loyalty could form when a person get a duty feeling about his of hers "friend." In contrary, people in different social level have lesser possibility to form a friendship.
Duty and friendship also had and reverse effect. Think about if you force (maybe through some dirty procedures) your friend whom you only can share emotions, opinions and etc. with and who was always a good person that never lie to others seriously tell a big lie to you, and then you keep him from raveling the truth (or forgive before his or her confession) or stop him from helping you in equal degree in a relatively significant amount of time, guess who he or she will probably become? Your subject (b/c form a duty relation in a friendship)! Unless you let him pay back as soon as possible or let him realize it is a trap, he is unlikely to think through and willingly to be your subject. So, as a conclusion, I find out that subjects tend to connect authorities they recognized with a duty; friends and friends tend to have a connection of sharing of emotion, opinion and etc through an unconscious process. It is hard to make friends in authority, and apply duty to your friends. If you had done so, sooner or later the relationship is going to swap.
Caution: this following paragraph is CRAZY, and possibly wrong Please do not read if you don't understand! (background: how do you know if you understand a theory or not before you read it???)
In my opinion, the most efficient system of working should be under purely duty relations. Which means a conscious hierarchy system based on meritocracy (actually more precisely, natural talents). That is, a system that was highly united, cooperative should look very, very familiar with a individual (at this time I believe a young, health organism that belongs to homo sapiens) organism's body structure (BTW, if mankind is incapable of achieving this system, I believe nature (or God, whatever) will destroy human and evolve/create another organism which had better internal structure and are able to form that structure socially). My duty theory above was partially inspired by this original idea that I will probably work all my life to prove it. Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!
Really, think about these for a second: cause of cancer in a cellular level, and cause of corruption, esp. in gov., on individual level. Also, constipation compare to a society had a knowledge/technology boost. AIDS & ideas including terrorism (heresy and esp. ones that break down a particular society's moral value) secretly spread inside a society, which is hard to discover at first, and hard to remove when it's serious, and that particular idea was probably not going to vanish and if some other international issues were brought up, then they can be disastrous.......etc.etc. I can actually write a 500 page only about this. And some weirdo like me will believe me................and I am working to a day that everybody believes me and then, BIOLOGY became SOCIAL STUDIES!!! (People finally can study them as one major, hohohohoho!)
